Monday, June 8, 2015

Weighted

Well, we had a bit of an unexpected hiccup on Friday. The husband's car decided that running was for chumps while he was at work. The running about to get the car to the shop kind of ate up a huge chunk of the day. Also we're still waiting to hear what might be wrong with it, so I'm feeling very fiscally frightened right now. You don't want to hear about all that though, unless of course one of you is hugely wealthy and want to gift me copious amounts of money to fix all my problems. No? Yeah, I'll just get back to the lace making.

The bobbins are a bit clunkier to work with now that they have the spangles, but with the addition of them and the use of some older, thicker cotton thread I had on hand, the pieces are working up faster and I think better. I just went back to some of the first pieces I worked on to see how it felt and I guess the verdict is yes, bobbins work better with weights on the bottom. Though the addition of what are probably too large spangles has more thoroughly illustrated the limitations of the foam board I've been using from the Lacis kit in lieu of a proper pillow. It does not have the room to hold all these bobbins and then weight kept tilting the board one way or the other a bit. Though the spangles do seem to keep the bobbins where they ought to be easier. So I suppose the minus is countered by the plus there.

I certainly won't be getting a pillow anytime soon (see 1st paragraph) and though it's been suggested that I could make my own, I'm fairly certain I would botch that job wholly. I'll just keep working with what I've got and after a few more practice pieces I'm going to tackle that damn square piece again.

We still have a week and a half of homeschooling left before summer, so I'll just keep working on the bobbin lace until that's over and I have even more time to kill. I'm hoping by then that either my etsy shop will start selling things again or I have some tatting epiphany that leads to new pieces. Really, I'd love both but for now, I'll just keep on as is.

1 comment:

SWtrompeter said...

I forgot what they call it, but many bobbin lacemakers have a large, fancy pin that they use to separate the bobbins to be worked from the ones that have already been worked (in that row). It helps hold the bobbins out of the current 'work' area. Don't know if that will help you or not, but it's worth a try. :-)