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It was a huge honour to be invited back to Ithaca, NY, to teach at the Finger Lakes Lace Guild’s annual lace weekend, and to give their after dinner speech. Ithaca personifies gracious hospitality and collaboration, the same group of friends having organised the event for more than 30 years, with generous help from other participants who travel across the US to attend.
As an example, their raffle is huge and the prizes magnificent, with a mini-raffle for each one into which you can tip all your tickets if you are desperate to win a particular prize; many participants, not just suppliers, had contributed, some with wonderful hand-made items, or perhaps a piece of old lace. Those who had helped in any way with the weekend were asked to stand at one point during the dinner, and it seemed that half the room were on their feet.
The weekend included classes for beginners and classes to extend the experienced, new techniques and old ones, bobbin and needle – it was my privilege to share a room with the Australian, but half-Greek, knotted lace tutor Elena Dickson. I’ll be trying her Oya flowers, as soon as she’s finished writing her next book, although needle-lace really isn’t ‘me’ at all.
Since it is a long way to go for a weekend, and my body has rebelled before, I was lucky enough to be invited to acclimatise for a couple of extra days with Betty MacDonald in Philadelphia, before Nikki Nelson drove us up to Ithaca. My talented class of designers included three ladies from Canada, who took inspiration from rubbings of a piece of embossed wallpaper – each producing something completely different.
Other students took pattern stamps, bark and leaves as their starting points, while Betty (in her 80s) crawled on the floor of her hotel bathroom for last-minute inspiration, and cat-lover Nikki created a scarf design inspired by the pattern on the coat of her favourite pet. Needless to say, Betty had no intention of interpreting her pattern as straightforward Torchon and embarked on a free lace of her own devising.
I have asked one of the organisers, Holly Van Sciver for the secret of the event’s success. She told me: ‘Although the Guild has given me lots of accolades for providing the business model and being the backbone of the event, I know better than anyone else it is without question a team effort by a core group of the same talented and dedicated people who year after year are so passionate about lace, gifted and practised at their task and proud of the result.’
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