HNW - Punto in Aria; Knitting Terms

[Kim Salazar]

Punto in Aria

I did my first punto in aria piece from the descriptions in T. de 
Dillmont's Complete Encyclopedia of Needlework (aka DMC Encyclopedia of 
Needlework) a long, long time ago.  The descriptions weren't as well 
illustrated as the ones in Open Canvas - but they were intelligible.  The 
de Dillmont book has been reprinted many, many times and should be 
relatively easy to find in libraries.  Also, a quick check shows that has 
it in both hard cover and soft cover.

To do the piece, I drew a medallion type design on a scrap of leather left 
over from making my armor.  The design was about four inches in 
diameter.  I punched holes along the design's lines and couched down a cord 
about the thickness of perl cotton along all of them - trying to keep ends 
at an absolute minimum.

I did buttonhole stitch over the outermost edges to stabilize them, then I 
in-filled the "voids" of the design with various needle lace stitches.  I 
finished the piece by working buttonhole to completely cover all of the 
couching cord - including running an extra "layer" of it around the 
outermost edge in concert with a needle lace picot edging.

The scariest part was cutting the couching stitches and pulling the 
finished medallion off the leather backing.  If you do this, I strongly 
recommend using a pale color sewing thread to do the couching - something 
that won't be easily split as you are working the overstitching and 
fillings, and that can be easily spotted when the time comes to snip the 
fastening stitches (and pick out any remaining bits.)

After I finished this exercise, I decided it was MUCH easier to do 
blackwork. [grin]


Knitting Terms in Other Languages

Last week people were writing about knitting terms in languages other than 
English.  I maintain a glossary of such terms in eleven languages at my Web 
site. Additions, corrections, and translations into even more languages are 
always welcome.  Right now I'm especially looking for someone to help me 
revise the French and Norwegian entries.


Now caught up on digests and back in lurking mode,

Ianthe d'Averoigne
Kim Brody Salazar
kbsalazar at mediaone.net
ianthe at carolingia.org
http://people.ne.mediaone.net/kbsalazar <-- glossary here




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