Pittsburgh Lace Group

Pearls from Your President
Time flies when you’re having fun. I hope you’ve all had an enjoyable and even meaningful summer and are all hyped up to make lots of lace and tear into your other myriad activities. The Pittsburgh Lace Group has big plans to help you fill your hours: We will celebrate our 20th anniversary at the fall Bedfordshire workshop on October 19-21. To com-memorate our special birthday, a beautiful bobbin is being created. (See elsewhere also for information on the workshop). There are demonstrations at Phipps Conservatory, Frick Park Nature Center, the Youghtoberfest, and the Pitt Nationality Rooms. Please call Amy (412-828-7362) if you can help out.
Amy Gibbons, Robin Panza, and Suzie Johnson attended the annual convention of IOLI in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in August, and returned bearing our char-ter as a new Charter Group, a President’s pin, an infinitesimal gavel, impressive signs suitable for framing, and a book of patterns.
We received a nice note from Connie Zatek, the cultural/craft coordinator of the Pittsburgh Folk Festival, thanking us for demonstrating. “You guys always make such a nice demo/display. I appreciate your diligence, effort, and skill.” If they would just do something about the loudspeakers
Hope to see you all at some or all of our activities:
and don’t forget the Thursday evening gatherings. Have a glorious autumn! -Margot Barbour

This year is the Pittsburgh Lace Group’s 20th Anniversary’, and we are getting commemorative bobbins to be picked up at the workshop in October (or later at a Thursday night meeting). The design is being painted by Lori Howe of the Lace Fairy. It will be white with a gloriously detailed “Blue Willow” pat-rem in blue. (The 20th anniversary symbol is china.) At the bottom it will say “PLG 20.” The cost will be $10.00, and orders must be received by October 1. Notify Joan Trimble how many you want on the workshop reservation form (even if you are not plan-ning to attend the workshop) and include your pay-ment.

HELP! HELP!

As always, any and all contributions to this newsletter are most welcome and desperately needed. Any news about members, other lacemakers, bobbins, threads, patterns you love, books, ideas, pictures, Internet glean-ings-send ’em in and keep ’em coming!

October 1~21, 2001-Lecture ?Lace Around the World” and Workshop: Bedfordshire Lace with Judy Zeiss and PLG 20th Anniversary Celebration Thursday, November 1, 2001, 7:00 P.M.-Regular monthly meeting
Sunday, December 2, 2001-Demonstration in the Croghan-Schenley Nationality Room at Pitt (call Amy)
Saturday, December 8, 2001-Regular monthly meeting will be supplanted by the gala Christ-mas Party at Amy Gibbons’ (details to come).
Thursday, January 3, 2002, 7:00 P.M.-Regular monthly meeting
Saturday, February 2, 2002, 10:00 pm.-Regular monthly meeting with a chance to review the study box from IOLI

On Saturday, August 3, early in the morning, we (Amy and Robin) left Pittsburgh for Oklahoma. The Trip-Tik made it look like solid construction from here to there. Perhaps since it was Saturday, at least some of the sites were not slowing traffic much. We took the scenic route-I saw signs for Paris and Berlin. I seem to remember Brazil and we spent the night in Cuba, but we were too tired to look for Castro. We got up bright and early and headed toward Tulsa. Kinsey Milhone rode most of the way with us, but later we were joined by Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe.
We registered at the convention about 1:00 P.M., which gave us a break to check out our goodies and greet friends before shopping began at 2:00. If you have never been to convention you have no concept of the amount of goodies we received. A large canvas carry bag big enough for a 24″ pillow, pincushions, bobbin holders, and more things than you can imagine! When the sales room opened it was a mad rush. It was a very large room full of vendors with everything you could possibly want. We shopped to exhaustion. Tracy Jackson from The Lacemaker was there and kindly gave us our own key to her room so we would have a place to pull ourselves together during the week, since we were staying “down the road.” We are so fortu-nate to have nice friends who look out for our comfort.
That evening we went to a wonderful buffet. The food was excellent, especially the desserts! We sat with Tracy and Golda Cooper as well as Joyce Gascoyne and some lovely people from New Mexico. After the mini program, which was hard to hear, we drove to the home of Amy’s cousins, Pam and Bud, who welcomed us with open arms. It was nice to have a place to stay where it is understood that you have work to do in order to get the most out of your classes! but also that you need to take breaks from too much focus on lace. During the week, we were usually up and out before they were up, since classes started at 8:00 A.M.
Amy took a class on Free Lace Design with Ulrike Lohr. The class assignment was to design a neckpiece. Robin studied Chantilly with Lia Baumeister-Jonker. Those classes were four full days of instruction, which was a lot more intense than our typical weekend workshops. It was so good to have such a nice break returning to Pam and Bud’s home each evening.
Monday night was another buffet for dinner with salads and desserts. Robin won a pincushion in the raffle.
We skipped the Tuesday evening festivities, a reception at a historic house sponsored by the International Linen Registry, a local non-profit organization devoted to cherishing old textiles. This organization had also helped with arrange-ments. in the Display Room and provided lots of raffle goodies for each evening’s activities.
On Wednesday, Pam drove in with us to the convention site and shopped for awhile, allowing Amy time to check out a technique with Ulrike Lohr. After the shopping, we visited the International Linen Registry. We were disappoint-ed to discover that it was a small shop in a mall, but perhaps it will grow into something wonder-ful. We enjoyed a delicious barbecue buffet at Pam and Bud’s church on Wednesday evening. By this time, Pam had adopted Robin as a cousin, too, and a few people we met at the buffet said they could see the resemblance.
By Thursday evening when the IOLI meeting was held, we were so worn out that we decided to skip it and go home. Every time we stepped out-side, we were struck by heat and humitdity that was pretty overpowering.
Friday was the last day of classes as well as the banquet. This was a sit-down dinner and Pam and Bud joined us. The entertainment was a display of Native American dancing and singing. That was followed by presentation of Charters to new Charter Groups (that’s us!). When our turn came, Susie Johnson joined Robin and Amy as we received our charter, our signs, a pattern book for Charter Groups only, the president’s pin, and The Gavel. Margot showed some disappointment when she found that the gavel was the same size as the president’s pin, and she will have to continue using the Thursday night “can” to struggle to maintain order.
The drive home was uneventful, accompanied by Archie and Nero part of the way. We split the driving more evenly and got home late Sunday afternoon. There was still room in the car: we could have shopped harder! Lace supplies are small, and Robin’s new bolster pillow was the biggest thing we got. Also. Amy wouldn’t stop at any of the advertised antique malls along the way.
We want to thank Amy’s cousin and her hus-band for putting us up and putting up with us-Tracy and Golda for letting us use their room-Tracy for shopping for Amy when she was too tired to think; and each other for being so under-standing about our individual quirks.
-Amy Gibbons and Robin Panza