if you have two thirds of lace and another pattern calls for five ninths of lace,how much more did the first pattern call for?

"How much more" would be subtraction, so subtract the smaller from the larger. 2/3 -5/9. (You can tell 2/3 is larger because the closer the numerator is to the denominator, the larger the fraction) Get common denominators or "names" as I like to use so that you can subtract them. In this case the least common factor of 3 and 9 would be 9. So your first fraction becomes 2/3 X 3/3 to equal 6/9 - 5/9. Subtract just the numerators to get 1/9.