The conference Lace: the transgressive thread, organised by UCA Lace Research Network, took place at UCA Farnham on 16th May, and was very well attended with over 60 delegates. Piper Shepard, Chair of Fiber at Maryland Institute College of Art, who was exhibiting her work at the Crafts Study Centre UCA, was the Keynote. Piper Shepard spoke passionately and eloquently about her work and ideas underlying the approaches she has taken. Other speakers and their subjects were: Professor Lesley Millar (Joint Keynote): High definition and Low definition - lace as mise-en-scène; Gail Baxter: The hidden hand; Joy Buttress: Lace: interfaces of historical pattern and skin; Angela Davies Golau: Light Networks; Emma Ferry: A Concomitant Orgy of Destruction - The Political Lace Designs of W H Pegg (Paper delivered by Dr Amanda Biggs Goodall); Dorie Millerson: Lace Time Continuum; Carol Quarini: Twisted threads - subversive domestic lace; Beth Walsh: Lace danger and death in seventeenth-century England.