[lace] Corbet

[Lorelei Halley]

This is an excerpt from a private email that I sent to Susan. Don't jump to
conclusions too quickly about what other people are thinking.

 

"But I should also say that I understand this issue from an
author's/designer's perspective. When writing a book one often comes up with
2 versions of a pattern and one can't decide which to use. She probably has
a diagram that matches the pattern, but just grabbed the wrong one to give
to the publisher. In my TORCHON BOBBIN LACE PATTERNS book (self published) I
didn't work the entire edging with 4 corners for some of the designs, but
just one corner. But my design wasn't symmetrical, perfectly, with the
result that there would have to be 2 different corner prickings and
diagrams. I only discovered my mistake after the book was finished. Writing
a bobbin lace how-to manual involves incredible levels of detail accuracy.
Even those of us with diagram-it is don't always get it right."

 

Lorelei

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RE: [lace] Corbett's Flanders

[Annette Meldrum]

Ladies, we should not be too critical of author's mistakes as publishers are
often to blame. From my own experience of writing a book, it can be very
difficult to get corrections made to everyone's satisfaction as every
correction means a time delay and publishers can override an author's
requests for corrections to save money and time. It can be so disappointing.
Annette, in a cold and wet south coast NSW, Australia

From: Lorelei Halley
The pattern and the diagram do not match. 
if I try one of her patterns I will carefully check the pricking against the
diagram before I start.

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[lace] Re: Demise of Fine Linen Lace, was Faery Lace

[Jane]

Thank you to everyone who replied to my question - just how fine is fine 
linen thread?


Sorry I've not replied to everyone individually.

One of the reasons I asked was because I had a rummage in my boxes and I 
have some old wooden 'cotton' reels that originally held Knox's linen 
thread. One is Knox's Falcon 2 cord 150, another is Knox's Dragon 3 cord 
150. I can't decide if the scrap of thread on the 3 cord 150 is original 
or not. It looks fine - I can only imagine what 240/2 must have been like.


Just for fun, I have an old Braggins price list tucked in my 
Grandmother's copy of Maidment. The finest linen thread listed is Knox's 
Falcon linen thread white no. 160. Anyone fancy guessing the price?


3/11d per 1/4 oz skein.

(If I remember pre-decimal correctly, that is 3 shillings and 11 pence, 
say 20 pence in modern money)


Such an interesting conversation. Thank you.

Best wishes,
Jane

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[lace] Corbett's Flanders

[Lorelei Halley]

I wrote to Susan Hottle in answer to her question about Corbett's pattern.
She asked me to post the answer to arachne as well, so here it is (minus the
diagrams).

Susan

Your are right. The pattern and the diagram do not match. And it isn't just
a matter of how many pinholes. The connection in one movement and the
connection in 2 movements have a different pinning array of the side which
lies between the close work and the ground.

 

In FLANDERS CORNER the blue boxes identify where a connection in one
movement should occur. The orange box shows the array when a connection in 2
movements should be made. However, if you look at IMG 117 you will see that
every single pinning array, on all 4 sides has the connection in 1 movement.
Nowhere is there the correct pinning array for the connection in 2
movements.  OOPS

 

So I would say, just do the normal connection in 1 movement, and put in
extra turning stitches at the corner, or remove some, to make the corner
looking good.

 

Corbett isn't the only author who has made mistakes. Pam Nottingham also has
diagrams that don't match her photos. I suppose we should be grateful that
they are writing books and giving us instructions and patterns. Without them
we would be in a worse case. I still think Corbett's book is pretty good.
But if I try one of her patterns I will carefully check the pricking against
the diagram before I start.

Lorelei

 

Susan

I forgot to mention that on the diagram I put colored rings around turning
stitches or fudge stitches. Put them in wherever you need to, to keep the
weaver in the cloth area more level and straight. I think if you undo just
the last row or2 you could manage with turning stitches. I assume you know
various ways to do turning stitches. Or skip an outer edge pin if that is
what is needed. 

 

I would start with a scan of the pattern at high resolution, so you can get
a printout of just the corner area. Draw in all the directional lines for
the weaver and ground connections. Work it out on paper first. I do that
when I get stuck.

 

The red rings are places where the weaver doesn't go all the way to the ring
pair. The green rings are turning stitches midway through the cloth work.

Lorelei Halley

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RE: [lace] Lace legends?

[J-D Hammett]

Hi Lyn,

Cataracts can even occur in babies and small children (not frequently, thank
God), not just later in life.

Happy lace making,

Joepie.

From: lynrbai...@supernet.com


Dear Elise,
What you say makes sense.  I have often wondered, and I was voting for
cataracts, but then I realized that happens quite late in life.  I am truly
impressed by the expertise that various members of Arachne bring to the
discussion.  In our own way, we are a powerhouse of passion for lace,
intellectual questers, and a variety of expertise.  Yay us!


"My email sends out an automatic  message. Arachne members,
please ignore it. I read your emails."



>I agree Devon, the theory of blindness from making lace has never made sense
>to me.  However, I disagree that syphilis was the usual culprit ...

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[lace] Flanders question

[Susan]

Solved! Many thanks to all who wrote with help & suggestions regarding the Pale 
Blue Square In Flanderische Spitze. It turns out that in spite of all my 
pinhole counting, I failed to notice that the pinhole arrangement on the 
pricking did not match the arrangement on the diagram. Luckily, that fact did 
not escape the sharp eyes of a very experienced & helpful Arachnean! So—if you 
own this book, now is the moment to make a “note to self” that modifications 
will be needed when you work the corners on this pattern. It’s a cute piece so 
I’m glad a solution is available for future efforts. Hope this helps others who 
want to try Flanders. It’s a very nice book with pretty designs. Sincerely, 
Susan Hottle USA

Sent from my iPad

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[lace] Alice’s prize-winning lappets

[Susan]

Good show Alice—congratulations!  I just checked Arachne Flickr but did not see 
a photo? Please post one (or more!) so we can all enjoy your success & be 
inspired. Many thanks. Susan Hottle USA

Sent from my iPad

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Re: [lace] Lace legends?

[lynrbailey]

Dear Elise,
What you say makes sense.  I have often wondered, and I was voting for 
cataracts, but then I realized that happens quite late in life.  I am truly 
impressed by the expertise that various members of Arachne bring to the 
discussion.  In our own way, we are a powerhouse of passion for lace, 
intellectual questers, and a variety of expertise.  Yay us! 


"My email sends out an automatic  message. Arachne members,
please ignore it. I read your emails."



>I agree Devon, the theory of blindness from making lace has never made sense
>to me.  However, I disagree that syphilis was the usual culprit ...
>My pet theory is Clamydia trachomatis. This is still the leading infectious
>cause of blindness today in 3rd world countries. It’s epidemiology makes it
>a likely candidate in my opinion. Even today, it affects significantly more
>women than men. Blindness, when it progresses to that point, usually occurs
>during adulthood, striking women today in their late 20s to early 40s. By this
>age, most lacemakers would have been making lace for a good many years, thus,
>it may have appeared that it was the lacemaking that caused the blindness.
>Then as now, it was endemic in poor areas with poor sanitation. It’s natural
>reservoir is young children, and the adults affected are virtually always the
>caretakers of young children— hence, the overwhelming majority of those
>affected are women. It is far more prevalent  in households with multiple
>children, lack of water, poor personnel hygiene, open fires for cooking, and
>group sleeping. The part I found the most compelling as far as the lacemaking
>legend, is that the early infections in children present as a typical
>conjunctivitis— highly contagious, lots of eye discharge, and a pretty
>noticeable infection. In adults, however, the scarring that leads to cornea
>opacities and blindness occurs after repeated infections earlier in life. By
>adulthood, they no longer get the typical conjunctivitis with the active
>discharge due to changes in their immune response. Their infections at that
>point are latent and often no longer result in what we would consider to be a
>“normal” looking conjunctivitis. So to observers with no knowledge of the
>disease progression or even germ theory, it would appear that adult women who
>took care of children, lived in poor conditions and had poor sanitation and
>hygiene, and made fine lace, tended to go blind after a couple of decades of
>fine lacework. By recognizing that lace took sharp eyesight, they made the
>assumption that the lacemaking caused the blindness. When in actuality, lace
>and good eyesight were just confounding factors and the true culprit wasn’t
>recognized because the really noticeable infections had taken place years
>before.
>Blindness due to C. trachomatis faded away in Europe long before antibiotics
>were available to treat it because sanitation became better, access to clean
>water was more readily available, and most importantly, knowledge of using
>cleanliness to avoid disease became more widespread.
>
>I love it when my worlds collide!
>
>Elise— microbiologist in Maine
>
>

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Re: [lace] Lace legends?

[N.A. Neff]

Hi Devon,

Well, this may be hubris on my part, but I partially disagree with your
ophthalmologist. He says "You cannot damage your eyes by using your eyes."
Actually, one gradually looses one's ability to focus at distance if one
primarily uses one's eyes for close work. In modern times this has been
largely caused by excessive reading as children and not using our far
vision enough. (In adults who drive, even those of us who read obsessively,
the problem tends not to get worse, but the damage is done by that time.)

This makes sense because focusing is accomplished by muscles behind the
iris pulling on the lens and changing its shape to adjust where the light
rays converge inside the eye. The convergence needs to be exactly on the
retina for sharp focus, so the lens needs to be more rounded to focus on
near objects. This requires the muscles attached to the lens to relax. And
focusing at a distance requires the lens to be flatter, accomplished by the
muscles pulling on the lens and stretching it out slightly. So if one
seldom focuses on distant objects, the muscles atrophy and the ability to
focus on distant objects is lost. Use it or lose it.

Perhaps losing near vision from age and far vision from only focusing close
up was what was meant by "going blind". I can tell you from experience
that, without glasses, one is effectively blind in that condition-- perhaps
one could call it the "Mr. Magoo effect", for those of us of a certain age.

Therefore it is important to look up occasionally while reading, or making
lace or other near work, and look off into the distance, to keep those
muscles active.

So I partially disagree with your ophthalmologist: you can damage your eyes
if you use them in an imbalanced manner.

Nancy,
nit-picking in Connecticut, USA  :-)

On Sat, Sep 1, 2018 at 7:58 AM, Devon Thein  wrote:

> The theory that you lose your eyesight from making lace is a
> persistent one. I once consulted my ophthalmologist about this,
> fearing for my own eyesight, and he said, "You cannot damage your eyes
> by using your eyes."  ...

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Re: [lace] Lace legends?

[Elise Waber Hays]

I agree Devon, the theory of blindness from making lace has never made sense
to me.  However, I disagree that syphilis was the usual culprit since the
stages of primary, secondary, and tertiary syphilis were well known and
recognized. Had these women been blinded by syphilis, I don’t think the
legend of being blinded by the lace work itself would ever have been started.
My pet theory is Clamydia trachomatis. This is still the leading infectious
cause of blindness today in 3rd world countries. It’s epidemiology makes it
a likely candidate in my opinion. Even today, it affects significantly more
women than men. Blindness, when it progresses to that point, usually occurs
during adulthood, striking women today in their late 20s to early 40s. By this
age, most lacemakers would have been making lace for a good many years, thus,
it may have appeared that it was the lacemaking that caused the blindness.
Then as now, it was endemic in poor areas with poor sanitation. It’s natural
reservoir is young children, and the adults affected are virtually always the
caretakers of young children— hence, the overwhelming majority of those
affected are women. It is far more prevalent  in households with multiple
children, lack of water, poor personnel hygiene, open fires for cooking, and
group sleeping. The part I found the most compelling as far as the lacemaking
legend, is that the early infections in children present as a typical
conjunctivitis— highly contagious, lots of eye discharge, and a pretty
noticeable infection. In adults, however, the scarring that leads to cornea
opacities and blindness occurs after repeated infections earlier in life. By
adulthood, they no longer get the typical conjunctivitis with the active
discharge due to changes in their immune response. Their infections at that
point are latent and often no longer result in what we would consider to be a
“normal” looking conjunctivitis. So to observers with no knowledge of the
disease progression or even germ theory, it would appear that adult women who
took care of children, lived in poor conditions and had poor sanitation and
hygiene, and made fine lace, tended to go blind after a couple of decades of
fine lacework. By recognizing that lace took sharp eyesight, they made the
assumption that the lacemaking caused the blindness. When in actuality, lace
and good eyesight were just confounding factors and the true culprit wasn’t
recognized because the really noticeable infections had taken place years
before.
Blindness due to C. trachomatis faded away in Europe long before antibiotics
were available to treat it because sanitation became better, access to clean
water was more readily available, and most importantly, knowledge of using
cleanliness to avoid disease became more widespread.

I love it when my worlds collide!

Elise— microbiologist in Maine

Sent from my iPad

> On Sep 1, 2018, at 7:58 AM, Devon Thein  wrote:

>   One theory about blindness among lacemakers is
> that, living in port towns as most lacemaking towns tend to be,
> lacemakers may have been contracting syphilis.

> To unsubscribe send email to majord...@arachne.com containing the line:
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> arachne.modera...@gmail.com. Photo site:
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/lacemaker/sets/

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Re: [lace] Lace legends?

[Devon Thein]

The theory that you lose your eyesight from making lace is a
persistent one. I once consulted my ophthalmologist about this,
fearing for my own eyesight, and he said, "You cannot damage your eyes
by using your eyes."  One theory about blindness among lacemakers is
that, living in port towns as most lacemaking towns tend to be,
lacemakers may have been contracting syphilis.Of course, as Sally
points out, there were a lot of health and hygiene issues that could
play into this.  Another theory that I have heard about is that the
lacemakers didn't really go blind, they just lost their ability to
focus closely on lace. According to my same ophthalmologist you start
losing your ability to focus at close range when you are 39 1/2 years
old. So, if you couldn't focus at close range that might render you
blind for purposes of lacemaking.
Regarding the story about the fictional account of the French village,
where people go blind, if you remember the name of the book let me
know. However, it sounds like
Villedieu-les-Poeles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Villedieu-les-Po%C3%AAles  Somewhere in
my extensive reading I ran across the remark that they made lace with
human hair in Villedieu-les-Poeles. So, I made this a stop on one of
my research trips to France in an effort to identify the lace fan made
in human hair in Chantilly technique that is in the Met. There is a
small museum there in a courtyard where I was graciously received by
the museum director and some lace volunteers. The courtyard was
formerly known as the courtyard of the deaf and the blind. The reason
for this is that the men of Villedieu-les-Poeles worked making copper
pots and pans in this courtyard and went deaf, while their wives made
lace and went blind. In the courtyard museum  there is a section about
the copper work and, also, a not unimpressive lace display. The copper
technology was brought to the area by Knights Templar, and if I
understood this correctly, there is no local source for copper, no one
knows where the copper came from, but they supplied pots and pans to
the whole of Europe.
I had brought a photo of the lace fan with me, but unfortunately,
there was no hair lace at the museum. They knew about it from
historical writings, and one of the ladies who volunteers at the
museum had seen an example from a private collection that was in a
display about 25 years before. But she really couldn't remember what
it looked like. I am growing hazy on the details of this trip, which I
meant to write up for the Bulletin, but somewhere along the way, I
think that I found confirmation that the hair lace of Villedieu was
made in Chantilly technique, so I am thinking that Villedieu was most
likely the source for our piece, since hair lace is rare and hair lace
in Chantilly technique even rarer. Here is a link to the fan
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/210096?searchField=AllsortBy=relevancewhat=Bobbin+lace%7cHairft=lace+fanoffset=0rpp=20pos=1
Devon

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[lace] Linen thread

[Alex Stillwell]

Hi Arachnids

Researching Mechlin using a Veho microscope I found that much of it was made
using linen thread finer than 240/2 Egyptian cotton, a few with thread as
thick as 200/2 and none with thicker thread. Also most were made using single
ply thread, the flax fibres being sufficiently long that they did not need
plying.

This discussion has been most interesting, this is Arachne at its best.

Blow the dust

Alex

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