Wednesday, April 07, 2004

Filling my mind with Reticella

I'm on Reticella overload. Spent the better part of Sunday and yesterday immersed in reviewing my books on Reticella. The 10 page handout is mostly done (hurrah!!). The bibliography is over a page long! I am spoiled though - I spend my money on books. One book is actually a huge oversized 2 volume set of the Elisa Ricci's Old Italian Lace. There were 300 printed in 1913 and I have #217. The photos and tipped in prints are WONDERFUL. On many I can see each stitch. I makes me feel much better that my piece is a bit flopsy (another Linn-ism) even with using the needle pillow. Ahhh total immersion.

Have "designed" the class project by looking at and decontructing one of the pieces. There are a couple ways to do it, but I think it is one I can present to novices. It has every thing I need to teach - make the base square, satin stitch overcast edges, figure 8 overcast "brides" with picots, single thread "brides", buttonhole covered brides, and a section of detached buttonhole. Have decided to be nice to my students and bought them 28 and 32 count Irish linen and 12 pearl cotton. I originally was going to really make them work with 36 ct and 80 dentelles. Now I have 3 days to make the model :).

Feels really good to be immersed in needlework (sigh). Well almost immersed - spent Saturday gathering more information and classes for the be A&S weekend in July. Need to get the website done next week. A friend also tapped me to teach a section of her college class on ADR - so it will be a "professional" night next Tuesday in front of 30, hungry for information about Arbitration, students. Fortunately I have done this before. The overheads are done and the talk only needs to be updated at bit.

Now back to finishing the handout. It is hard to explain in words what would be easier in pictures - but I don't have the luxury of time. At least I'm stitching.

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