Of course, if you never make a mistake, you will never have to undo lace. Ha! I am sure that every lacemaker makes mistakes.
There are two types of mistakes, those that don't affect the flow of threads through the lace (but you notice after you've finished the lace), and those that matter. Those cause too many pairs in one part of the lace, and too few somewhere else. You need to sort it out or you can't continue with the lace.
First I must say that frequently I have felt that the lace being worked doesn't feel right. Surely there are rather a lot of bobbins here? Or too few? Or it may just be a feeling... And I persuade myself - No, I'm wrong - and then several rows further down, I find that the mistake is obvious. Bother! So now, if I get one of those feelings, I check, carefully, that things are OK.
"Sorting out" the problem means undoing the lace to where the mistake occurred, then working forward again.
You need to move to where there is a good light. Normal laceworking relies quite a lot on automatic movements of your fingers. Undoing is not quite the same, and I find a good light helps.
Now take the last stitch you did, and do the opposite. So rather than lifting left over right, you do right over left (and vice versa, of course). Lift up a bobbin every now and then if you're not sure whether you need to go over or under the next thread. If you get in a real muddle (been there, done that), you may need to take one bobbin at a time, and try lifting over or under the others as you can see where the thread catches. (This is where a good light helps.) On the other hand, sometimes you can get into a rhythm and undo the stitches as fast as you worked them. As you reach a pin, remove it. Eventually you get back to a point you knew was OK, and hopefully found the point that you forgot to add a pair into a row, or remove a pair (or even added two pairs or removed two pairs). However sometimes I have got back to an OK point, not found the mistake, worked forwards again and found the mistake had vanished. So I must have undone it even if I didn't realise...
© Jo Edkins 2018 - return to lace index