Dear Tamara ‹‹ As, only three weeks out of brutal surgery, I am still listless, dull of mind, slow to move, deadly boring, and torpid amd sluggish altogether, this might not be the ideal time to reply to your letter and set forth my pre-surgery ambitions for an imaginative revival of lacemakers' crafts. But who knows when I'll crawl out of this fog? So let's go, anyway!
I did not mean, literally, let's go sit down in a bank and wave a bobbin under everybody's deposit slips. I was just using the metaphor of a bank to indicate that it would be good to bring lacemaking images closer to the real world of the 365-day year, rather than something precious and oldfashioned that appears once every summer for a couple of minutes to be stared at. Lace and lacemaking are two different things! Just as you can go to a museum and goggle at the Rembrandts and the Rubenses without necessarily rushing home to snatch up a brush and paints and have a go; so one can go to a fair and admire the pretty lace, without realizing that right there, separated by an invisible veil, is an enchanted world of lights and colors and thread-pathways and never-before-seen contours and altogether-absorbing ventures whose outcome no one can guess... and wild colleagues hidden behind the gentle, placid ladies who always seem to appear at fairs... Do I care that Rehnquist and Souter and Ginsberg and Scalia should be all dressed up and beautified by lace, and then come and be stared at? Any of those guys is going to be around for another 5, 10, max 15 years; and our lace is going to be around for a couple of hundred years, at least. No, it's the uniqueness, the beauty of the craft, the incredible complication and intricacy, the sweetness and softness and grace that emanates from a piece of lace, plus the message that -- look! you can do it too! here's how you do it! It's the process, not the product, that will make the front page of the paper, and give a couple of readers an idea that never before occurred to them, that they too could... and isn't that interesting the way those threads go back and forth... and I bet I could... Devon Thein, who has a research-scholar's head, which I do not have in spite of my doctor's degree, would write an essay on the history of lace and the judiciary. This delightful prospect would take us far afield and teach us all something we did not know; and also give weight and gravitas and great respectability to the jabot project. We have thirteen volunteer jabot-makers; and if I read you right, Tamara, then we now have fourteen! The design that I am proposing requires that the lacemaker know how to make Point Ground lace, decently, accurately, competently, but she doesn't have to be a crackerjack world's foremost Olympic lacemaker or anything of that sort. I have a pattern laid out (which I put together in those dear old pre-surgery days three weeks ago) which should not give anybody any trouble, and would still allow a certain freedom to Point Ground aficionadas who have ideas of their own. The whole jabots-for-the-judiciary was supposed to be discussed at the IOLI meeting at Convention (while I was in the hospital), but I gather that didn't happen, for whatever reason. So as soon as I eat a few more Wheaties I am going to address myself to Louise Colgan about this idea, and I hope we can take it someplace. A new avenue to publicity and contemporary interest is really what I have in mind. Just as knitting and crochet are suddenly enjoying a lively revival, lacemaking ‹‹ a far more engrossing and appealing craft ‹‹ needs to be helped to do the same. Aurelia P.S. Tamara dear, did you know that I have an extremely pretty petite little cat, coal black except for three white toes on her left hind leg? She likes to come and sit with me around 5 o'clock, afternoons, and help me make lace. Her name is also Tamara. - To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
