I don't make enough bobbin lace to have a preference about Continental or E. Midlands techniques of bobbin use; I guess I stick with the E. Midlands ones because that's what I was first taught to use. As to actually working the bobbins, Alice wrote:
<snip>
"When the slightly domed 'cookie' pillow was developed, the spangled bobbin was developed to lay better on the pillow..... If a person has a
sore thumb or can't squeeze anything, this process is difficult to do with comfort or speed."
<snip>
then Jane wrote:
<snip>
"As to picking up the bobbins - I tend to find that quite often I start off picking up between index finger and thumb, but move naturally to
bending my index and middle fingers and picking the bobbin up between them. I haven't had problems with my wrists from making lace, but a few years ago when I was working about eight hours a day for a month on one of my City & Guilds projects (a Bucks pillow case edging), I had RSI type pains in my right shoulder from the movement of taking the pins from the pincushion and putting them in place - switching to using my left hand for that job helped, but was incredibly difficult to do as I am right handed!"
<snip>
Almost the first thing I was taught about bobbin-lacing was to hold the hands palm-down and in the shape of a "claw." The bobbins are actually picked up in the gaps between the claw-curled four fingers, *never* using the thumb to hold a bobbin! The bobbins roll around a bit less this way, but of course the *best* reason is that RSI is just not as likely to be a serious problem. As I say, I don't make enough bobbin lace, myself, for RSI to haunt me --- I never looked back once I discovered needle-lace :-D --- but there it is, if anyone wants to try this for their own benefit.
Yours in Lacing, Beth Schoenberg -- in beautiful downtown Fisher, Canberra
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