The convention was really great! Everything was so exciting. I spent lots of money in the salesroom: a 14" Simon Toustou pillow, $150 worth of Binche bobbins in different woods, some beautiful spliced wood continental bobbins from Lacy Susan, all sorts of stuff... Then I had to wind all these bobbins before class.
I took wire lace with Carolyn Regnier, which was fun and relaxing - wire lace really isn't hard once you get the basics. I also got to look into Lenka's wire class one day, and it's really surprising how different methods they use - Carolyn uses normal doubleheaded heavy bobbins with a single hitch, and Lenka uses very small bobbins with hooks and no hitch. They use different wire gauges too. So now I get to figure out which method I like best... My afternoon class was Intermediate/Advanced Beds with Holly van Sciver. Great class! It's such fun to just work a complicated piece from a pricking and figure out how to do it while working. Holly's great at just sitting down with a pricking or the actual lace on a pillow and coming up with ways of doing it - whatever works, no set-in-stone methods. I love taking classes with her. I spent almost all of my free time working on my Lester cuff to get to the flower in the middle before the end of classes, and I did it! Running between two classes with my big block pillow and stand was a bit frantic, but doable, and having a block pillow does help. Meeting everyone was great too, although I'm not very good at being social. Maybe it'll be easier next time when I'll already know some people. Still, great meeting you all! The Arachne lunch and the banquet were fun. The teacher's showcase was great too - actually a nice way for me to remember people, since I frequently remember lace pieces better than faces (it's happened a few times at classes that I wasn't sure whether I've met someone before until I looked at their lace pillow and recognized the piece <G>). I finally got to see some of Cathy's Chrysanthemum pieces that she's apparently been hiding from me for months <G>, and Liz Ligeti's wonderful Beds pieces, and Louise Colgan's beautiful Milanese, and everything... I got to meet Lenka Suchanek, who didn't have a table, but showed me some of her pieces for sale - wonderful designs. And she liked my pendant! I'm so proud of myself <G>. The one part of the convention I wasn't happy with was the Flying W Ranch trip, which I shouldn't have signed up for - I wish the organizers had told us in the description that the ranch is 1.5 hours driving away (I get carsick) and that the dinner didn't have a vegetarian option. Ah well, I brought my little travel pillow on the bus and survived fine. When going back home, I managed to get my travel pillow with a lace piece on it through security, so I worked on it in the airport and on the plane, and impressed some people, including a lady who asked me to email her some information on how she could get started on bobbin lace. Now I have a lot of pictures to put on my website... http://vole.stanford.edu/images/bobbin_lace is my lace picture album (I'm not sure where the IOLI pictures will go in there exactly, but they shouldn't be hard to find, just look through the folders), and my journal is at http://vole.stanford.edu/weronika, click on Journal under BOBBIN LACE. I just finished the journal entry, which is a bit longer than this email (go ahead and read it if you want more details), and I'm going to put the pictures online soon. There should also be pictures of my lace pieces in the "My lace" section today or tomorrow. Two requests for anyone looking at my pictures: 1. I'm not sure who the people on some of my pictures are, or who some of the lace or merchandise belongs too - if you see a picture with a name like "someones_lace" or "maybe_Withof" or "someone_working" and you happen to know who/what it is, please let me know. 2. The picture website is basically just my picture album - I use it to look at my own pictures and to show them to friends, just like a personal picture album. I put all of my pictures there, and I sometimes forget that it isn't really a personal album and it's out on the Internet... So if you see some pictures there of you or your lace, and you'd like me to take them off, please let me know. Same thing if you see any other pictures you think shouldn't be there. I am trying to ask people whether I can take pictures, but I still tend to forget to ask them whether I can put them online - sorry about that. Weronika -- Weronika Patena Stanford, CA, USA http://vole.stanford.edu/weronika - To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
