On Monday, Nov 24, 2003, at 17:10 US/Eastern, Ruth Budge wrote:
She also says, on page 48, that the two pairs of bobbins hung on a temporary
pin are actually used double - i.e., although you have two pairs, treat them as
one. If it was me, I think I'd be tying each pair together after I'd worked
the first pin, to remind me to use them double.
I have a bit of a "hangup", left over from the early days of lacemaking -- I like my pairs to *be* pairs, whenever possible (early days, I avoided hst like a plague, since it "divorced" them <g>). So, pairs which have only one function throughout (footside and headside passives, for example) tend to be "marked" in some way -- usually by beeing a distinctive colour of wood or painting.
In that particular start, I'd have "cross-wound" the pairs: take two pairs, but don't wind them as pairs; for winding purposes, use one bobbin from each pair. When you hang those two mis-matched "pairs", open, on a pin, there'll be a "true pair" on one side of the pin and another "true pair" on the other side :)
Small rubber bands (orthodontal type) are nice and easy for tying a pair together but, frankly, I don't like tying two bobbins for any length of time -- if they don't unwind at *precisely* the same rate, tensioning them, as a unit, may become a problem.
A few months ago, Clay (Blackwell) came up with a "better mousetrap"... :) She found teeny-tiny hair clips, and uses those. You clip one of them on the shank of a bobbin, (close to the neck where it's not in the way of your fingers) you want to mark/identify and, hey-presto! it's different from the rest of the herd :)
Because the clips come in at least two of a colour, you can "designate" a temporary pair long after it's forgotten who its original mate had been. And because the clips come in quite a variety of colours (mostly hideous, but, who cares? <g>), you can mark several pairs at once. Clay uses hers to mark the ring pairs in her Binche (much to the dismay and disapprobation of her teacher <g>), but I'm thinking the clips would be equally useful for marking pairs which travel, in reserve, with the gimp (that's how I'm going to use mine, ayway). They might also be useful for marking the motif workers, especially the ones in hst, where the same thread is supposed to stay throughout...
Of course, if you like your bobbins to roll (as in Sluis Duchesse), then the clip "method" is not for you. If you always know what you're doing, then you might not need it. But, from my standpoint, it's *brilliant* :)
----- Tamara P Duvall Lexington, Virginia, USA Formerly of Warsaw, Poland http://lorien.emufarm.org/~tpd/
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