On Dec 7, 2005, at 12:27, bevw wrote:
You don't *need* bobbins to make wire lace, but they are useful to manage many wires.
And there, as we say in Poland (and in Germany, I've been told <g>), "lies the dog, buried"... Theoretically, you don't need bobbins to make _thread_ lace, either.
Bobbins (spools with handles) may not be necessary -- Susan Lambiris doesn't use any for gimps, for example -- but they're useful in several ways.
They're -- as you say -- "useful for managing many wires". That means both "many pairs" and few pairs, but also of wire which is plied. A single, thick wire, gimp pair is easy to handle (and relatively kind to the hands). A pair of the same thickness but composed of several plies would b much harder to manage, even if the plies were (losely) twisted together. Yet, plying wire -- just like plying thread -- offers an opportunity to play with colour. Also, thickness for thickness, a plied wire is more... well... "pliable"; it's easier to work with.
Bobbins are also useful for taking up the excess, gently. Working with a 15" or longer wire (especially if fine) without a bobbin is likely to put more stress on the wire than winding onto the neck of the bobbin. IOW, the project has to be small not only in the number of pairs, but in overal length as well, if you want to use it without the "spools with handles".
General advice: Keep in mind the wire is more folded than the twisted as we do with thread.
Depends on the thickness of the wire; the finer it is, the more it behaves like a thread, though it's true that certain properties _do_ differ in the two fibers and need to be considered. Susan Lambiris' basic tenet -- anything you can do in thread you can also do in wire (and, often, better <g>) -- stands, and to a much greater extent than suggested in Dyer's book. But, at the same time, some techniques are more difficult to adapt to wire work than others.
-- 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]
