Lacy Endings

As you may have noticed, I've been in a lacy place lately.  I finally got the hankie (doily) done:

There are definitely some mistakes and I'm not the best with rolled edging for the hankie (doily) but I couldn't be happier with it.  I'm going out later to get a window box to mount it in for display.

While I was at it, I had a yardage project that I started early last year that's been sitting patiently across the room.  I knew I only had about 8 inches or so to get to the yard mark so I pulled it over and started working on it.  I'm working it on my little homemade travel (sort of) roller pillow.

Here's a close up of the pattern.  It's a little hard to see against the patterned fabric but it's called Fir Tree Edging.

The Lacemakers group in Chicago that has been so wonderfully helpful and welcoming to me started a yardage club and I decided to do this simple pattern since I was such a rank beginner.  The only thing is now I can't remember if they said you have to do 1 or 2 yards.  I was just going to stop at 1 yard but all my bobbins have plenty of thread and I've got the hang of it now and the beginning is pretty dreadful so I may just keep going for a while. 

This project was a big lesson to me.  Not so much in how to do bobbin lace but there was something about committing to keeping going, even in the beginning when it was pretty dreadful (by anyone's standards).  I was so tempted to stop and throw it away but I kept going and it kind of flipped a switch in my brain about the rhythm of bobbin lace.  I experienced the same thing in tatting when the lady in the dvd I was watching started doing it at speed.  It was a totally different rhythm than what I was dong and copying her speed helped my technique tremendously.

I believe that everything from language to lace has a rhythm to it and when you can tune into that, it does something to your brain and your learning and it helps you make sense of the new information.  I'm not a scientist but I learn a lot of new things all the time and it's something I've observed.  It reminds me of when I first moved to Scotland.  The area I lived in had a really broad accent and I was a young girl who'd barely been outside of Texas.  I would go to the chippie (fish and chip shop) and they would ask me, "Do you want salt and vinegar."  Of course, I didn't know at first that's what they were asking, I just nodded my head and observed what happened!  They shook some salt and then drowned it in vinegar.  (Oooh, that's making me hungry.)  But once I got the rhythm of the accent, it helped me hear where the speaker moved from one word to the next and I never had a problem understanding anyone again.