…that I just don’t have a whole lot of, most days.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I know there’s more I don’t know than I do and that I’m nowhere near the mistress of all I see and think, it’s just that I’m so danged used to having everything* I try come easily to me, being able to comprehend a lot of the fiddly bits, that admitting defeat or surrender does not come easily or readily to my aid.

The “virtue” I have that makes up f0r that? Stubbornness.

And stubbornness paid off quite handsomely as I took another look stab at bobbin lace. This time from a slightly more humble position, and with a bit of craftiness on my side.

I went back to the super-beginner patterns on Jo Edkins’ fabulous website and printed out the charts for the cloth stitch and net samples. Then promptly enlarged them from their 3mm between pins start to my workable 3/8-inch between pins finish.

The original patterns are too small to see!

Then I raided the party supplies, again, for bobbins; this time winding them with 3 different colors of sock yarn and loading them up in pairs on the first pattern.

Party picks make excellent bobbins, hands down!

In less than an hour I had completed about 4 1/2 inches of cloth stitch “lace.” I consider this more of a weaving pattern, really, though I do see it’s application on lace edges and filling of larger, solid spaces in more complicated patterns.

Tadaa!

Fresh off that success I set up the net sample, this time alternating my colors a bit, just to see what it ended up as.

Pardon the knots at the top, I was trying to avoid re-wrapping all those bobbins and wasting so much yarn (it worked fine, btw)

Again, maybe an hour later I had about 5 1/2 inches of net “ground” (space-filler, as I understand it) and the pairs of green sock yarn against the lighter pink and yellow sets made a great double helix-style pattern among the back and forth of the pattern.

That's a LOT of pins, my friend

I promise, there's lace in there!

What’s relatively frustrating about this little exercise was that I understood the basic stitch movements before starting the crown lace–what? 2 weeks ago?–but it just wasn’t fitting into my head right. I’m still not 100% ready to tackle the crown lace yet (it’s still set up on it’s towel and hanging out in the Abyss, waiting for it’s turn and my bravado), but I do think these two starter laces showed me that I *can* do bobbin lace, and that was the point of trying, right?

My finished pretties

Now that I’ve had some time to play with the cloth stitch I think I have a project in mind for it! (A wedding project, of course.) I’m going to need a considerable length of cord that is usually a braided sort, but I think it could be very nice if I take the 3 colors I was planning to use in the braided cord and made a single width of cloth stitch bobbin lace. It would certainly serve the same purpose (and it’s much easier than my inkle loom, is, I think).

Okay! Next week I have one more type of lace I want to give a go and then we will move on, I promise!

*except golf; apparently I have no aptitude for golf whatsoever