Apologies - rambled on too long and off subject to get on to the book. Hope no-one minds a plug - I have no commercial interest in this book, though would like it to do well. The reason for this is that it has been produced by a Japanese lace class, all profits to go to the Japanese Red Cross, to meet the continuing needs of those affected by the tsunami, earthquake and atomic accident.
I must stress that while I think that a good enough reason to buy the book (I need very little reason to buy a book...) this book would be a good buy purely on its own merits. Rieko Tamura, a member of the UK Lace Guild, whose patterns have appeared in the magazine from time to time, has produced "Bedfordshire lace patterns from the Rose Family Sample Book", which itself was published on CD by The Lace Guild. There are 30 prickings suitable for working in Egyptian Cotton 36/2, and samples have been worked by 26 of her pupils. There are full diagrams, no colour, but none necessary, as the lace is pictured, and it is all cloth, plaits, picots and tallies or cucumbers, with very little half stitch. The level of difficulty of the lacesis such that anyone who has managed the first 11 of Barbara Underwood's 20 lessons or worked through The Lace Guild's Introduction to Bedfordshire Lace would find them well within his or her grasp. I have found it fascinating, in the light of current debates, to consider how having the pictures of the lace with the diagrams would help one make one's own version. The students' work is very different, some clearly prefer tallies, some cucumbers, and a few manage to make their cucumbers and tallies look the same. These of course often occur between two trails, and I think the first thing one could do is decide which you're better at, and stick to them if there is a difference... and then, if changing cucumbers to tallies, move a couple of pairs between the trails. In some cases, one would ignore "right" and "wrong" and make petals, assuming yours turn out ok! One aspect I found really interesting was looking at trails joining, and the cross-overs between circles. On some, I was surprised that the lace worked, while the diagram looked as though it would not, but there are cases where I personally would try something else to avoid the gap in the sample. By coincidence, I have been reconsidering my prejudices on whether the join between two circles should be done by the half-spider method or the joining and splitting of two trails method. The piece on which I'm working at present has trails joining at odd angles, and to my pleasure and surprise, a half spider method has produced better results, or rather, results I prefer. I may extend this in future to circles. I should expect any Beds worker, or anyone interested in floral techniques, to gain from this book, and certaily someone at the intermediate level would find this a very useful next step. [email protected] - To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [email protected]. For help, write to [email protected]. Photo site: http://community.webshots.com/user/arachne2003
