Dreams of Flying

Last night I dreamed I was flying, being blown this way and that at the mercy of the chill night breeze. 

Each balloon is made in half stitch with 2 pairs of passives. I had thought it would be nice to make them as little samplers, maybe add a few spiders. To keep the solid look of a balloon, in the end, I kept to the forgiving nature of half stitch.  

Made with a two pair edge, I used 5 threads and a worker to make the rolled edges, quite thick edges for such little pieces but it worked out nicely.  To make the rolled edges, a technique common in Withof, Duchesse, Honiton and similar laces, I rewound the worker onto a small Honiton bobbin which made the sewings much easier than fighting with the beads and length of a Midlands bobbin. 

To make a rolled edge, the five threads are bound to the outside edge with, what is effectively, a blanket stitch. This called for the use of a 0.4 crochet hook and care to not split the worker thread when pulling it through.  

I accidentally made the pricking too small for my thread, so, to make the honeycomb work, I only used two twists around the pin on the alternate rows which only had half the pins, the other rows just had half stitch, pin half stitch.  This seemed to work well and created a closer ground than I usually make.  The variegated pink thread gave a gentle shading in the honeycomb and worked well on the arms. 

The inspiration for this lace came from one of many designs I created for colouring in cards.  This lace design is a more grown up version, but still has the fanciful notion that a handful of balloons can carry someone away on a breeze. I may need a few more than a handful nowadays though!