Blog & News

With my heavy work schedule at this time of year, I was unable to attend the CT Lace gathering yesterday.  I'm sure they had a great time and with the snow in January and February, the CT group had not had a chance to meet.  There was also Lace at Leis's yesterday.

I hope someone logs in to tell of the festivities!! 

If you are looking to make lace today with other lace makers - there is the Sunday Lace Group  that meets in eastern Massachusetts today.

Are you interested in making lace?  Wish to get together with other lace makers?  Then let us know - you can email us at nelginfo@gmail.com so we can look into getting a group together in your area.

I'll admit preparing the website for our visitors has been challenging and most of all fun.  It's been great to work with our President, Jill Hawkins, so that we bring more of what we have to our members.

You may notice a tool bar popping up at the bottom of the screen.  Yes, this will assist members in posting what they like on FaceBook, it will allow our website to be translated into many different languages - and if it bothers you - you can minimize it so it won't bother your veiwing.

The other small yet great improvement, is that next to our name is our Logo and now in most brower address windows - you'll see our logo and not a generic logo.

Thanks for all you do to represent the art of lace!

Enjoy lacing ---  Patty

We have talked about this before, but it came up again at Saturday's meeting in Sturbridge.  Let's show off the lace we have made and give visitors to our website some "eye candy" to whet their appetite and see exactly what kind of thing we do at NELG. 

If you have a photo of a piece of lace you have made (it doesn't have to be recent), please send it to me or Patty Foley for us to add into our Gallery.  If you would like to include a short description of what, when and why we will include that with the picture.  For an idea of what our gallery might look like, please visit IOLI's website:
http://www.internationaloldlacers.org/gallery.html

Looking forward to getting many photos!  Thanks in advance.

Jill

Last weekend at the NELG meeting in Sturbridge Massachusetts, some how we got off on the discussion of postage stamps with lace on them.  I don't remember who brought it up, my apologies. Several days later I spoke with my philatelic dealer about this subject.

Many of us in the U.S. will remember the set of four that came out  in 1987 (Scott 2351-2354).  If we continue to look world wide, there have been quite few stamps that were either for the celebration of lace in its own right or where lace was used in the artwork of the stamp.

So it's given me an idea for a project for the group.  There is a great list at LaceFairy - Lace Stamps.  I've checked the American Topical Association for information regarding our love for lace and found a small bit of information, yet it hasn't been updated in awhile. 

So you may wonder why I have a dealer.  I, like many lace makers, have other interests and one of them is collecting First Day Covers ( for newbies it is the first day a stamp is used).   In my collection, I do have some postage stamps of Lace and now that someone else brought it up, it may be fun, in the down time between projects and redues, that we could assemble some of the stamps. 

Chime in - let me know your thoughts and we could set up a Forum on the subject and collect information for all to read about.

Now here's some think big ideas - present the collection at a stamp show and win a medal, prepare a petition to the Post Office to have another set of stamps issued to celebrate lace ( there must be a anniversary coming up ? ).

Thanks for all each of you do to promote Lace.

Patty

 

What a great meeting we had on Saturday.  It was the regular meeting of NELG held at the Joshua Hyde Library in Sturbridge, Massachusetts.

Jil reported on the various events that are coming up - less than a month to get your registration in for Retreat!  Reports from Winann, our Treasurer, and from Barbara, our Member At Large. Elisabeth reported on our Library and yours truly piped up about our new FaceBook page.

Once the regular meeting was closed, Jill gave a brief presentation on the new Website.  Many thanks were offered to Jill (and me) for a great job done.  We have many other thoughts and ideas ready for the site - Just keep watching.

Carolyn Wetzel began our program on Croatian Lace - it was quite good to learn about three distinct laces made in that region - one was bobbin lace, the other two were needle laces, and one of them was made from the fiber of an aloe plant.  Truly unique.  Thanks Carolyn - great job!

If you haven't been to a meeting in a while - we miss you!  So why not mark your calendar for March 19th - same place - same time!

Sometime yesterday we reached another on-line milestone.  Last weekend I started our Facebook page and we have gone over our 25 Likes to get an official page.  First - Thank You to so many friends, family, and of course, lace makers for helping us out.

I know, I know, I can hear the naysayers, but it's here to stay or this kid from Harvard, Mark Zuckerberg, wouldn't be raking in the bucks.  It is a method of communicating that is being used today. Do you remember when getting a website was the cat's meow?  Do you remember when a mobile phone was the size of a shoebox and had it's own carry case?  How about the "first laptops" - mine weighed in at 25 pounds!

So today NELG will embrace the new technology - if you could hear me I'm so excited!  We will still communicate via phone, email, our website, in person, this blog and now FB and eventually Twitter and any other device to get the word our about Lace! 

Thanks Jill for going along, thanks to our family and friends, and to Lace Makers worldwide.

Patty

 

Well, another new additiion was made to the Home page today - a map showing where our visitors are located!  Initially I'm sure that most of our "hits" will be from the New England area, but I am looking forward to seeing dots appear in other parts of the country.....and the world!  You don't have to do anything (not even click!) to have your visit added to the map.  Check it out often, to see how many red dots we have!

Enjoy this beautiful day and the (almost) Spring-like weather.  Yeah!  More ice will melt off my driveway!

Jill

If yesterday's present didn't knock my socks off, Laura Bensley emailed this a.m. and said she has the last two issues that are missing to the NELG newsletter collection.

Thank you Laura Bensley for taking the time to look through your NELG stash and find them. 

There is something special about having the complete collection.  It's those lace makers that took their time and efforts to bring all of us together.  In the long effort to scan them, make sure they are readable, find a internet host to store the issues (free), and eventually make them available on-line to our membership.  Jill, we are just about ready to cross another to-do off our list!

Again, Thank you.

Happy Lacing, Patty

Life is like a box of chocolates... you never know what you're gonna get.

Just recieved a note from Tina and with the newsletters being forwarded, we have only two missing.

We are looking for #24 and #48  - We would love to have a complete set.

Let us know if you have these issues!  email at nelginfo@gmail.com

Thanks,

Patty