Shadowsong Makes Lace

The pattern is set up so the center spiders can be a bunch of different options. I like the haloed spiders and cathedral window spiders the best, so I’m going to alternate them, I think. The first two are a little uneven, but I’ll probably get better as we go.

I haven’t been doing much lacework lately (various other things/life got in the way; plus I was all set up for a fan but it required Many bobbins and that’s generally the most procrastinating part for me, lol).

Anyway, I did finish winding all the bobbins for the fan, yay! ...and I’ve now spent Way Too Long trying to figure out how to actually start it XD It’s basically starting from the corner (at the base/narrow end); I’ve only ever done starting from a center point (like in a bookmark) or a flat edge (like in a bracelet), and...I don’t know, I keep ending up with the bobbins not ending up where they’re supposed to? Like I’ll either have too many on the side where the fan edging is, or too many on the flat edge; I’m supposed to add two bobbins at a time? (also the numbers on the ‘start here’ graph add up to four more than the pattern says I should need???)

So, yeah, that’s been a fun morning XD I guess does anyone know what I should google for tutorials on this kind of thing? Obviously, when I google how to start a fan, I get how to do fans as in the edge of a work, not as in the entire piece of lace that gets mounted on sticks, lol.

Like, the bookmark patterns I’ve been making typically come with two scales, one for 28 - 40 wpc and the other for 25 - 35 wpc (most of the thread I have is 30 wpc, which fits in either, but I usually use the bigger pattern).

But the fan patterns I have usually only have a suggested thread list, or a single wpc number rather than a range.

For example, if I have a pattern that suggests Fresia 80/2 linen thread, which is approximately 29 wpc, I assume that 30 wpc is close enough. But what about something that’s 36 wpc? I’m guessing 30 wpc will be too thick for that...

(technically i already knew this but it. got Driven Home)

i got some fan patterns, and i figured ‘i’ll need another pillow, that way i can switch to something simpler/less frustrating, like a bookmark, if i need a break. also, if i get a bigger pillow, i won’t have to deal with unpinning and moving things when i run out of room.’

so, i ordered a 24-inch cookie pillow.

it came today.

....long story short, i. uh. overestimated the amount of pillow i would need.

Yeah I am Not Good at determining Physical Size from Dimensions. XD

But at least I will Almost Certainly not run out of room for anything I have planned right now!

A couple different pictures--I don’t really have a background that shows off the really nice green color it is in person...

So I talked in some of the earlier posts about how the fans on the side didn’t work the way they did in the sample--the sample had much more even tension, and I ended up being much tighter on the top of each fan, and then spreading out. But I kinda like the swoopy effect?

I made a couple mistakes at the bottom when I was finishing it off, but it’s not as visible as I thought it would be, which is nice! (It was. Frustrating, though, because I missed a pin at the top of the trail and didn’t realize until I was almost at the end and I had to undo and redo a lot...but it was worth it in the end, I think!)

The compound spiders, especially the five-spider compound, looks really cool, I think. And I like the effect of the double ground (with a whole/double stitch instead of a half stitch). I also like the effect of the two different types of compounds, with one much thicker and the other finer/looking more open.

Despite the minor frustration at the end (which was my fault, not the pattern’s XD), I think this one turned out really well!

(Despite using the exact same lamp as the last few photos it somehow ended up slightly different this time??? The pricking color is more this blue than the paler/washed-out type seen previously...)

I have now done three of the five-spider compounds and i think all three have different tension XD But it is a pretty cool effect either way.

I think I figured out why the fans on the side look different from in the sample pattern, but I think it’ll be a super cool effect once it’s done so I’m not going to bother to try and fix the tension there for the last bit.

Someone commented on the last post how fast I’m going through this--I have definitely gotten faster at this since I started! But I also don’t post updates every time I work on this. For this bookmark, I’ve generally done sort of one horizontal section in a sitting--i.e., the fan on each side, there’s a narrow trail and one rose ground at each corner, and then the central spider and surrounding ground/trail. It usually takes me about...two to two and a half hours for each chunk? So that’s like ten to twelve hours thus far. (Six months ago, it would probably have been at least fifteen hours into this. Not counting, like, bobbin-winding, pricking, etc., which always takes a million years lol)

(Including two pictures--it was hard to find a background that really showed what the colors were doing, these were the two best, I think; even with the reflected light in the second one.)

The regular rose ground, as always, looks super cool with two different colors going through it. I think the two-pin rose ground looks a little better in the sample pictures, with only one color--doesn’t quite get the same effect here--but it’s still nice!

I really love the way the fans and the top/bottom edges turned out! Although I think possibly I’m adding new pairs on the inside wrong--those little blue/white loops are pretty obvious, with the two colors so different XD (the lighter color is in fact a Very Pale Blue, but it doesn’t really show; possibly I should’ve gone with something just a little bit more saturated. Ah, well).

But overall, this is a very pretty pattern, it was nice and smooth going through it, and I really like the way it turned out!!

I really like how this one came out! Especially the almost chain effect in the big chunk of cloth/whole stitch at the bottom. And the braided tassel.

I’m curious to see how it’ll look when unpinned--especially the two-pin rose ground (the diamonds at the top, center, and bottom). I think those don’t have quite the same effect as when it’s all one color, but we’ll see with the pins out of the way.

This one went by pretty quickly--though part of that is that it’s probably at least two-three inches shorter than most of the others I’ve done, but it was also not super complicated once I got going, which always helps!

The French fans are a slightly different style than the ones I did before (these ones are flattened out and the others were--if you look at this bookmark, the fans on the edge are full/unflattened French fans) but they still look pretty cool.

And I really, really like the way the colors mixing works through the rose ground. Which I always do, but with high-contrast colors like these it’s even better. And it makes each of the fans look just a little bit different (because the border is half-stitch, each fan ends up having a different worker pair). Especially since the two-pin rose ground split up a bunch of pairs so I have a few pairs floating around that are one black and one blue--you can kind of see it in the fans.

This one’s looking pretty neat so far! The lighter thread is actually very pale blue, which isn’t showing through, probably because of the color of the pricking. I really love doing two different colors of thread through rose ground (which there’s a lot of in this pattern), just because I like the way it looks. It’s definitely interesting, going through the two-pin rose ground (the motif at the top, above the blocks), but I think that’ll be clearer what it looks like when everything’s unpinned, so we’ll see.

One thing I’m noticing, with two threads in such very different colors, is the way adding pairs on the inside looks? Which to be fair I may be doing wrong XD But I’m not sure how else to do it and get the threads to anchor? And I don’t think it looks bad, just...not necessarily how it’s supposed to look.

French fans in this pattern! Which I remember from the last time I did them being Very Annoying the first couple times, but then they went pretty smooth. I also had to do a straight-edge start, which went much easier than the last time I did it?