Dear Arachnids, I hope you all are doing well!
I watched a very interesting online talk this weekend with Mathew Gnagy, a historic costumer who makes some of his own needle and bobbin lace. You can find his work on his website: https://themodernmaker.net/ I've heard him discuss several times how he tries to observe makers who are skilled in manufacturing things by hand to try to glean the most efficient ways in working quickly. Obviously, decades of experience working at a task day in and day out is the best ways to get faster at it, but it made me wonder if there aren't some shortcuts in lacemaking to help speed up the process. For example, I studied bobbin lace at the Hotel de la Dentelle in Brioude, and they have a trick for making tallies that allows their staff and graduates to work impressively fast. It's hard to explain, but essentially you never pick up and carry your bobbins palms down. Instead you rotate your hands 180 degrees in a seamless flow and fling the bobbins back and forth. Sorry if that isn't very clear, they must have videos of it somewhere. Anyway, just for fun, I was curious if anyone else had experiences or advice to speed up lace through shortcuts or other tricks to share with one another. I certainly find I am much faster working palms up, but most of my projects are better suited for cookie pillows so I rarely work that way. Best, Elena - To unsubscribe send email to majord...@arachne.com containing the line: unsubscribe lace y...@address.here. For help, write to arachne.modera...@gmail.com. Photo site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lacemaker/sets/
