Tenerife

I've been playing with Tenerife lace again.  I've lamented in my previous posts about how the patterns I was working with were mis-matched with the thread I was trying to use.  Since it has been a while since I made Tenerife lace, I went back to the beginning and made the very basic pattern in the Stillwell's book using a thicker thread (DMC Cebelia 30).  I hate to say it, but I think it will work better.  While making this pattern I realized I had forgotten under how much tension the medallion is while working.  This tension problem is one I have not yet solved.  Let's see if I can remember this, but I have no plans on making this again.  Due the tension, the final row of knots gets pulled all out of shape and final medallion looks very sloppy.

This is a design I had to make up on the fly.  I started with something else but didn't realize I did not have enough spokes until I was kind of far into it.  Oops.  It's a fairly basic flower pattern and I like the way it came out.  Unfortunately it is not without mistakes.  In the upper right hand side you can see where I skipped a spoke between two petals.  I didn't notice that until I was down to the last petal and saw that I only had three spokes!  I was not about to take out half the flower at that point...  I also pulled the weaving too tight in the first petal so it is more of a rectangle instead of petal shape.

Here is the back side.  Not at all pretty and it looks like with this lace there is definitely a right and wrong side.  I've been looking at images of tenerife lace and have seen thread carried across the back on other pieces.  I may try to figure out what to do about that later, but for now while practicing the basics, I can live with this.

The last piece was also made with DNC Cebelia 30.