Another way to do this, as taught by Pat Read and it certainly works well in the UK centrally heated homes climate, is to make a layer as follows. Cover cloth over the lace, followed by a face flannel wet and then rung out as dry as you possibly can. A top layer of a towel. This can be left on over night, but even a half an hour is enough to make a real difference. I saw this demonstrated many years ago on a Honiton weekend with Pat (she didn't always teach mainly Milanese!) where a student new to fine thread was really struggling. From the Friday evening to the Saturday morning coffee break she must have had at least 10 broken threads and was about to give up completely. Pat sat at her pillow to do yet another weaver's knot and get her going again and in the process another 2 threads broke (soooo embarassing when you're the teacher!). At this point she decided that it wasn't the student being heavy handed but a previously badly stored, newly bought reel of thread, and made the above described sandwich over the lace. Off they went to coffee and to our amazement there wasn't another broken thread on that pillow for the whole weekend. I wonder if that lady ever made any more Honiton. BUT, from my experience this treatment only helps when you are having 'broken' broken threads. The more common breaks are the type where the thread pulls apart because you haven't noticed it coming untwisted. I haven't found that the humidity in the thread makes any difference to this problem, but would love to be convinced otherwise. The only solution to this I have found is just to be very observant of the thread and retwist the ply as necessary. Jacquie in Surrey (at the moment)
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