[lace] Lace Tells, etc.

[Elizabeth Ligeti.]

Many of the Bucks Point prickings have only about an inch of dots for the
ground pins. It took a long time for me to find out that this was because
after the last row of ground pins the lacemakers would be able to work the
ground without any pins, so the work would be a lot faster.
I wonder if the tells were spoken quicker, or were there different tells for
working faster ground? !!
These are the sorts of mysteries that will never be answered, but are
fascinating to ponder on!

(OK, we are in the midst of a sudden heatwave, - so maybe I have had too much
sun!! :)  )

If only I could remember more of Grandma’s stories about those days!!  I
always enjoyed listening to them,. But never listened hard enough to remember
them!!
Thank goodness for people like Thomas Wright!!

Regards from Liz. In Melbourne, Oz.

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[lace] Christmas Exchange

[Maria Greil]

Dear All,

Today I received from Alice in Oregon a wonderful angel with the details of
it and great wishes for the holidays.
Unfortunately when I send out my little surprise to the States I missed the
card but now (a bit early) let me send you all warm wishes for the upcoming
festivals

Maria
from Spain

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[lace] lace schools

[Bev Walker]

Hello Devon, cc Diana and everyone

Your mention of what the lace schools were like brought to mind Alan
Brown's poignant publication, "Take the Children..."
https://www2.cs.arizona.edu/patterns/weaving/books/ba_2_2000.pdf

I found this  informative message in the lace mail archive, about lace
schools per research in Northamptonshire as Diana wrote:
https://www.mail-archive.com/lace@arachne.com/msg40674.html

I haven't anything to offer about the lace tell, sorry to say.

On Wed, Nov 22, 2017 at 5:18 AM, DevonThein  wrote:

> ... I am
> undecided about whether these lace schools were Dickensian work houses
> where
> children were forced in silence to work all day adhering to rigorous
> standards
> of quality, or whether they were more like kindergartens where they were
> inspired with rhymes and competitions while their harried elders tried to
> get
> something reasonably salable out of them.
>
>
>


-- 
Bev in Shirley BC, near Sooke on beautiful Vancouver Island, west coast of
Canada

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[lace] Sorry, forgot to trim lace tells posting

[DevonThein]

Sent from Mail for Windows 10

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[lace] Cattern Cakes

[DevonThein]

Many thanks to all for the advice on Cattern Cakes. I started out with a sheaf
of recipes and a transcript of the Arachne comments, incorporating all of them
into one attempt. You can see the results on the International Organization of
Lace’s I facebook page, as I took photos all along the process.  I used cake
flour (to mitigate the protein problem- Leonard) and baking powder, using a
formula on the internet, 3 1/3  teaspoons, and then add the flour to the gram
requirement (to compensate for the self rising flour). I set my food scale for
grams in order to avoid any confusion about whether we were talking about
ounces as a weight, or fluid ounces as a measurement. I ground the almonds in
the food processor, then added the currents which I had frozen on a plate in
the freezer, so they could be ground, and not interfere with the cutting of
the cookies. The currents didn’t want to be ground, so I had to run the
processor for quite a while resulting in very finely ground almonds and
coarsely ground currents. I used the biggest egg I could get, a Jumbo.
One thing that I have not seen discussed is the temperature of the butter. One
recipe said that you should melt it, and let it cool. So, I tried this. My
dough was overly sticky and moist when I finished adding the dry ingredients
and I was afraid that it would be taking in a lot of flour during the rolling
process. This is at odds with what most people in North America were
experiencing, as the “too dry” comment was a constant theme. In fact, if I
were doing it again, I would have stuck the dough in the refrigerator at that
point. The moistness of the dough proved to be a problem during the rolling
out and the rolling up. Acting on the advice of Lin, in an effort to get a
spiral. I put black current jam on one third, red current jelly on a third and
a mixture of cinnamon and water on a third. After baking the black current jam
was dark red, the red current jelly was pale orange, and the cinnamon one had
no visible color variation.  None of this produced a spiral in the end because
the cookie just melted together in the oven. (Again, it would be interesting
to see if this would happen if the dough had been cooled.) In retrospect,
perhaps something dryer with a red color would have been better, but the
cinnamon and water mixture didn’t do it either. Perhaps a dry food coloring?
But, that wouldn’t be traditional.  I was planning to take the advice to
spread the almonds and the currents on the surface of the roll instead of
making them part of the dough to enhance the spiral effect, but I decided
against this because I was afraid that the ground almonds might be imperative
to the texture of the cookie. I think that was probably a correct decision.
I rolled the cookies up like a jelly roll, but I could see that the dough was
too mushy. Many recipes called for making the slices ¾ of an inch wide, but
one called for ½ inch and I went with the ½ inch recalling that several
people said it took 30 minutes for them to bake. At ½ inch they took the
requisite 10-12 minutes that several recipes say they will. The slicing was
difficult because the rolls were so mushy. Finally I opened the window and let
them have a good blast of New Jersey frigid air in an attempt to firm them up.
It made a difference, although the cookies produced from this process were
smaller and in some ways not as sumptuous as the ones that spread
uncontrollably in the oven.
The resultant cookie was not what we had been hoping for, spiralwise, but it
was tasty, somewhat reminiscent of a Snickerdoodle, except for the caraway
seeds. The caraway seeds are actually very good on it, something I had had
some doubts about. I took a video of my husband tasting it and pronouncing it
good and posted it on the International Organization of Lace’s facebook
page.

Devon


Sent from Mail for Windows 10

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[lace] Christmas Exchange

[Sue Duckles]

Hi All

Today I was asked by the postman if it was my birthday... why? Because I 
received not one, but 2 exchanges! Thank you Sally and Janice for making my 
day!!

Sue in a cold windy East Yorkshire

Sent from my iPhone

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RE: [lace] Work the old lady out of the ditch-lace tell

[DevonThein]

Thank you Diana for reminding me about the striver pins. I will put some with
my things.
Another Arachne participant sent me privately the following message: I just
found this online, https://hands-across-the-sea-samplers.com/lace-tells/
It seems possible it was to pick up thread used in a sewing or perhaps a
thread gone astray?

This is a very informative blog post, but it is hard to know where the
information came from. It is claimed that children as young as six were
expected to work for as much as 8 hours a day and by the age of fifteen girls
were expected to spend at least 12 hours a day at their pillows. They were not
allowed to talk and had infrequent breaks.

In this article it is claimed that “Needle pin” was a tool and “stitch
upon stitch” sewing. “Work an old lady out of the ditch” pull your
sewing loop through.”

Here it would be interesting to know where the tell originated. I have been
mostly thinking about the tells as being used in Buckinghamshire, making a
continuous lace. But, if one were doing a lot of sewings, it would have to be
in the Honiton area.
Thomas Wright in the Romance of the Lace Pillow claims that the “old lady
out of the ditch” tell is from Renhold. But Renhold is in Buckinghamshire on
the River Ouse. So, I am not so sure about the concept that it is a sewing,
since the piece that I am doing, Running River, alleged to refer to the River
Ouse itself (Pamela Nottingham) has no sewings.

Thomas Wright seems to be the authority on much of what is written. As in this
article, he refers to a “glum”. It seems that they said the rhyme. Then
there was a period of silence, the glum, while they worked, and the first
child to complete something (20 pins?) called out and was the winner. I am
undecided about whether these lace schools were Dickensian work houses where
children were forced in silence to work all day adhering to rigorous standards
of quality, or whether they were more like kindergartens where they were
inspired with rhymes and competitions while their harried elders tried to get
something reasonably salable out of them. I have to say that I personally have
never been very adept at turning small children in to models of industrial
production. As I recall, my own kindergarten experience was that we sang and
played games and listened to stories and colored pictures with crayons,  with
the goal of each of us being able to write our names at the end of a year.

Devon


Sent from Mail for Windows 10

From: Diana Smith
Sent: Tuesday, November 21, 2017 6:15 PM
To: DevonThein
Cc: Arachne
Subject: Re: [lace] Work the old lady out of the ditch-lace tell

How they kept count? - I think this might be where the ‘Striver’ or
‘King pin’ was used. Placing a decorated pin on the footside where they
began a repeat, on completing that pattern or number of rows/pins they would
put in another ‘striver’ thereby ‘striving’ to complete the pattern
and so on.
They would be able to see at a glance how much work they had accomplished.
I hope that is understandable! I’m presuming that you know about the
decorated pins used by the East Midlands Lace makers?

Diana in Northamptonshire

> On 21 Nov 2017, at 20:10, DevonThein  wrote:
>
> What does it mean to work the old lady out of the ditch? I seem to recall
that
> it had something to do with working the worker through the edge. But is
that
> all? In Running River that would mean a catch pin, two linen, the edge
stitch
> and bac through the two linen.
> Or does it mean work the entire little area of tulle ground until you
can’t
> go any farther.
>
> They seemed to count things in units of 20 pins. Does anyone know how they
> kept the pins for reference? Did they count them onto a pin cushion? If
they
> removed them in groups of twenty, that would seem to slow you down a bit
since
> you have to count them as you remove them.  In the tulle area you go
through
> twenty pretty fast.
>
> Also, with the counting tells, it would seem that a systemic rhythm would
be
> difficult since the pattern determines how often you place a pin. In the
tulle
> area you would place them much faster than in the cloth stitch river area.
>
> Also, do you think these children did it really fast, or really slow? I can
> see adults could do it fast. (My wrists are hurting from the practice
session
> I just had.) But not so sure about children, especially ones who are
> memorizing and reciting rhymes. I am going to have someone read them to me
> while I work. No way can I recite a long rhyme and also do the pattern.
>
> Devon
>
>
> Sent from Mail for Windows 10
>
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