In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes >The Amy DAWSON book was published in 1977. It is a very basic beginner's >book with instructions how to make your pillow first. The torchon designs are >all edgings. There is a chapter called "The family of lace: Torchon, Cluny, >fine lace, Russian. Honiton" which gives even more basic instruction in these >others.
I bought this one as a beginner, in 1984, for 2.95 GBP and got so muddled with it that I put off any further attempts for five years, until I found a class to go to! It has stayed on my bookshelf since, I wouldn't have wished it on anyone.... That said, a first edition copy was amongst some equipment recently passed on to my class for sale, with the proceeds going to the local hospice. One of my students did decide to buy it, and having given it another look what confused me at the time, having been taught initially the very basics in "English Torchon" terminology, was the Cluny bias of the book. Now I'm years further down the line, I can cope with that, so it may be of some use. For an absolute beginner, as aimed, I'm not so sure. The worked samples are not as well made as we would expect from modern authors (it was published in 1977), which she explains by saying that her patterns are taken from traditional sources and if you want to have more accurate prickings you need to draw them out on graph paper, but that it would then lose the "hand made look" (!). Trying to find an explanation, yet alone a diagram, of how to work a picot for my student to refer to (other than the instruction right at the beginning that a picot was made by "looping the far left hand thread round the pin" - later in the book mention is made of the picot being twisted three or five times, but I could find no mention of using more than one thread...) was very frustrating (despite the patterns using them) - my student has decided to use it as a background to a foray into Beds lace, and was working one of the simple insertions from it. On the other hand, when the book was written there were few instruction books around, and few classes. Writing instructions of "how to teach an alien to make a cup of tea" style is not the simplest of tasks, bits are bound to be missed - especially that which the instructor has done automatically for years (eg "make a pricking"). Hence as a book for someone without English Lacemaking blinkers on, with a lacemaker to turn to for the occasional "how do I...?" or "what does .... mean?", it isn't that bad. For an absolute beginner with no one to turn to, I'm not so sure. -- Jane Partridge - To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
