Scania Class
Teacher Marji Suhn
commentary by Robin Panza
photo's by Lori Howe and Robin Panza



Marji showing Devon "just how to do it"! 
photo by Robin Panza		 She's a lovely teacher, and I recommend her to one and all.  The lace of southern Sweden is done without pattern.  There's striped fabric on the
roller so you can align your footside pins, but pin distance and the distance between edges has to be eyeballed. 

Since our patterns were 8-12 mm
wide (1/3-1/2 inch), that took quite a bit of eyeballing!  Even though it's a relatively coarse lace, slight variations in the pin angle are quite
noticeable, much less in how accurately you can place the pin.  And there are pins only along the edges, which is pretty intimidating when you're used to pins at every thread interaction!

 


The second challenge of this lace is that it's done "open",
that is, TCTC.  That's the only stitch we used for the first day
and, when we added cloth stitch (CTC) the second day,
I couldn't start a stitch with a cross!  What a riot--I'd switched so completely that I'd pick up bobbins and couldn't move them! 

The third challenge is that you don't watch the threads, 
you watch the holes.  The size and shape of the holes in this
lace are the primary design feature and, since there weren't any 
pins to define them, it all depended on tensioning.  Whew!

In addition, the names of the patterns are such fun! 
It's a lace  of/for farmers, so the patterns are named things
like "sow's snout" (3 variation--big sow's snout,
little sow's snout, and old sow's snout) 
and "lice on parade" (sorry--actually "lice in a row",
but they're staggered so I don't see why we 
say they're in a row).  We were laughing over our snouts
and our lice, and complaining because our nostrils weren't
clear or we'd lost some legs.  The other classes thought we
were bonkers.  Actually, by Sunday I think we were--we 
were lacing backwards, watching the lace backwards, 
and working without a pattern,
so what do you expect? <VBG>

 
 
Adele Ward
Devon Thein
 Diana Lillevig and MaryLou Kueker
Karen Alger

other attendees
 Robin Panza and Ana Patasinski

Skansk Lace Website