My useful non lacemaking tool is my DHm :-) He helped seperate a skein of
silk thread, he was brilliant at it and I was rubbish.
Between us we made a great team:-) He must have watched someone very
closely in his childhood.
Sue T, in dull and slightly misty Dorset UK
I use this method but only for the length of strand that I'm going to use -
because I only do bobbin lace with embroidery floss, linen and/or cotton
(never embroidery, I don't like it), I cut off a generous 2-armslength
6-ply
strand, isolate one ply and gentle tug it from the mass, allowing the
other
5 strands to bunch in a loose rosette, and yes, like Janice mentioned,
within the closed hand. I stop from time to time to straighten the rosette
or else I'll get knots. Repeat for the remaining strands. I learned the
hard
way that pulling two strands together almost always results in knots and a
frayed temper (mine), so best when wanting two plies to recombine them
afterwards. I store the separated strands in small ziplock bags if they
aren't going onto bobbins right away.
I was taught to separate six stranded embroidery thread the following
way:
Unwind the skein along the floor, or down a staircase, or in my case,
hang
it over the second floor balcony in my family room. Hold one end of the
skein loosely in the palm of your hand with the ends between your thumb
and
first finger. Take one single thread end and pull on it. You can wind
this
onto a card. The other threads tend to bunch up under your closed hand
and
occasionally you will need to straighten it out. Once you have done one
thread you can continue to do as many as you need for your purposes.
Bev (near Sooke, BC on beautiful Vancouver Island, west coast of Canada)
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