Lace sightings in Europe

Do you enjoy traveling and seeing other parts of the world? My husband and I, along with our youngest son (30 something), his wife and their 9 month old baby, took a nice, long, 5 week trip to Europe in August and September of this year. It was amazing! We went to 7 countries: Belgium, Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Italy and France. The weather was between the 30’s (near the glaciers in Switzerland) to the 90’s (in Italy and Paris), so we had to pack accordingly.

I planned to visit and see several places with lace during our trip and I was pleasantly surprised to see several more! The first place I/we visited was in Belgium. I knew about the city of Bruges (from Bruges Lace Crochet that imitates Bruges Bobbin Lace), so I planned to visit the Kant Centrum (lace center and museum) in Bruges during our trip. I definitely wasn’t disappointed with the lace center at all! The museum was very nice, but the highlight of the trip for me was actually taking a bobbin lace class while I was there! I had read online a few weeks before our trip that they were having “lace days” during the time we were going to be there. I found a class online that I wanted to take the exact day we were planning to be in Bruges and contacted them. They said the class was full, but they’d let me know if someone had to cancel. Low and behold, the day before the class, someone had to cancel and I was able to take the class! I was giddy with delight! I had planned ahead for taking the class, just in case I could get into it. My local bobbin lace teacher loaned me some of her beautiful bobbins and some linen thread for the class. The lace center said I could borrow a bobbin lace pillow during the class, so I didn’t have to bring my own pillow, which would have been with me during the whole trip, taking up extra room in my luggage.

During the bobbin lace class, I sat next to the nicest lady named Ruth. She let me use some of her blue film to cover the bobbin lace pricking pattern. And when the class was over, she carefully pinned my piece in progress to her bobbin lace pin cushion that a friend had made for her and gave me the beautiful pin cushion to safely take my lace piece home with me! Wasn’t that a loving gift from someone who was basically a stranger to me before the class? I will remember Ruth and be thankful for her kindness for the rest of my life!

My bobbin lace piece isn’t perfect, but I learned more during the class. I’ve improved since returning home and working on it more, as you can see by the bottom part of the lace being more even than the top. What do you think? This style of bobbin lace is called Milanese. It’s a style of tape lace, which is one of my favorite bobbin lace styles.

When we were in Norway, my son’s friend, Fredrik, who lives in Hamar, took us to the local mall. It was a large mall for the size of the town (at least I thought so). Inside the mall was a yarn shop. Of course, I went inside! I didn’t want to take up a lot of room in my luggage with yarn, but I found some size 80 DMC cotton thread for tatting and bobbin lace. I bought some for me and some for a few lacy friends!

I went into another yarn shop during our trip, this one was in Bergen, Norway. None of the yarn “spoke to me” and said “take me home”, but it was fun to look!

Another one of the highlights for the trip for me was going to the island of Burano in Venice. Burano is famous for lace! There is a museum there called “Museo del Merletto”. It had a lot of lace to see. The museum also had lace making books for sale. Some of them were on Aemilia Ars needle lace, which I love and am slowly learning to make! I have book 1 of 3 in the series of Aemilia Ars books, but it’s in Italian (I use Google translate to help me understand it, but I’ve found Google’s translations are a little odd for craft instructions). They had the books in both Italian and English! However, they only took cash for the books and we only had 20 euros between us. Since each of the books was 15 euros, I decided to buy the second book in the series. I would have LOVED to purchase all 3 books in English, but we didn’t have the time to get to an ATM and back before they closed. So I had to choose between the 3 books. I think I made the correct choice so I can practice needle lace and improve!

Another highlight of the trip was visiting the lace shop near the lace museum in Burano. The name of the shop was “Merletti dalla Olga”. They had hundreds, if not thousands, of lace items for sale there! There was a nice lady who worked there (I didn’t get her name or a photo of her), who took my husband and me to the third floor and showed us some pieces that are absolutely stunning! She showed us a needle lace tablecloth that took 10 years to make and costs $85,000 euros!!! It was exquisite, to say the least!!!

There was a very nice shop in Brussels, Belgium that I looked in, also. They had beautiful baby clothes and lace doilies, tablecloths, etc. It’s fun to see lace for sale and know that it’s still going strong in Europe!

I’ve been learning a new crochet lace technique called “Veronese Crochet Lace”. This technique comes from Verona, Italy. Since we visited Verona, I decided to wear a Veronese Crochet Lace necklace and earrings one day while we were there! Here’s a photo of my husband and me in Verona at the Arena, which was built in the 1st century and is still standing! It’s used for operas and more. In fact, our son and DIL went to the opera one night at the Arena while we babysat our grandson. What fun!

We went into a lot of churches in Europe. They were spectacular! The architecture is wonderful to see. And the stained glass windows! Oh my!!! Many of them had beautiful bobbin lace or crocheted lace altar cloths. Here are a few of them:

It was lots of fun to see so much lace in Europe! I’m sure I’ll find more lace there when/if we go back for another trip/vacation! Have you seen lace, crochet, knitting, etc in Europe? If so, where? Where was your favorite place to see lace in Europe?

We had a wonderful time on our trip. We saw so many beautiful, stunning, scenic places in each of the countries we visited. And we got in lots of “grandparent” time, which was a blessing!

Happy crocheting and lace making!

Susan