A lot to learn

This is the 4th of my 4 projects and by far the most challenging of them all. This one incorporates techniques used in Russian Tape Lace, a style that I haven't really done before. 

Fortunately I happen to have a DVD of Lia Baumeister called, oddly enough, Russian Tape Lace. Isn't that convenient?

She makes it all look so easy, so smooth. Easy peasey, nice and breezy. But for me, it's awkward and clumsy. I don't know what else to do but just keep going. What do they say, "practice makes perfect"?  

So I'll just keep going and chalk it up to experience. I don't think I've done a terrible job with it but I can already see that I missed a doodad down in the bottom right part of the pattern so I'm going to have to go back and pick it up. I have to remind myself that this is the back of the piece. Maybe it'll look better from the front. 

One thing about learning something new like this is that it keeps that awkward beginner feeling very fresh so I can really feel the pain my students feel when they're learning something new from me. 

Things aren't always...

I was poking around an antique mall a couple of weeks ago and found the pattern sheet for this doily. 

When I first saw it, I was taken aback because I thought it was a bobbin lace piece. The tallies, the plaits, the center flower. Of course I realized very quickly that it was crocheted but I bet you anything it was copied into crochet based on a bobbin lace piece. 

There are numerous examples of crocheters producing "mock" lace based on either knitted or bobbin lace examples. This would, I imagine, have been copied from some Bedfordshire pattern. 

My thought is, wouldn't it be fun to crochet this version and then work out the pricking and do the bobbin lace version?  I think it would!