On Jul 29, 2005, at 22:07, Andy Blodgett wrote:
Today I left my bobbin lace for a while and covered it nicely but, but forgot to put the hold down over the bobbins. I set it to one side and later in the day was doing something right beside the pillow and dumped it upside down. Lots of un-lady like words followed shortly there after. It took me about 20 minutes to straighten everything out.
Commiserations; that's probably the most annoying/distressing thing that can happen... At least, as a beginner, you couldn't have had too many pairs on and not wound with very fine thread; I remember a story David (Downunder) told us some years ago, about having his pillow dumped upside down (at a demo? I think it was), with a Bucks (if I remember a-right) pattern on it, and close to 100 pairs (and some of the threads broke too, all in the same place)...
Moral of the story: Anchor your bobbins with ribbon or something if get up to go anywhere or any period of time.
Alternatively... :) Set your workstation up as a "sacred place", so that nothing disturbing is likely to happen around it. My "pillow corner" is out of limits to everyone, and only I am permitted to move either it or anything around it, even if it means that I have to sweep and mop the area on my knees and gingerly. If I had to put a pillow to bed every time I got up to fix another cup o'T, I'd never get any work done; all I'd be doing is coralling the bobbins and setting them loose again. So I only anchor them when I'm about to pack an ongoing project for a car or airplane trip. And I'm beginning to have second thoughts about the car trips, where I am in control of where and how the pillow gets stowed.
The thing is... With more experience, it'll get easier to sort out the tangled bobbins and figure out which one is supposed to go where, because you'll see the pattern in the lace the way you cannot - quite - see it yet. At which point, sorting them out - once - in case of an accident will be quicker than anchoring them every half an hour or so.
-- Tamara P Duvall http://t-n-lace.net/ Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland) - To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]