I’ve done just about all possible textile arts. I won a statewide art contest when I was 8 years old with a macrame thingy (it was 1971, OK?), and while I was at the State Fair picking up my award, I saw a woman making bobbin lace. I watched her for a while, then started asking her some questions. She frowned, like “Yeah, a friggin eight year old’s gonna have the vaguest friggin idea how to do this.” Apparently, she was unaware of my macrame prowess ( ), but there’s enough overlap between bobbin lace and macrame that I have no doubt that I could’ve picked it up much more quickly than she’d’ve imagined.
Anyway, I just read a book on it, and I have a head now aswim in images of the projects I’m going to make. But those friggin bobbins are friggin expensive. Anyone here make bobbin lace? More importantly, anyone here know of a good source for affordable supplies? Barring that, anyone here do any wood-turning, and might be willing to trade me a bundle of home-made bobbins for some lace or knitting? They seem like they’d be fairly easy to make, but you need a buttload of them.
Have you tried finding a woodworkers’ guild nearby? My father is a member, and it’s mostly a collection of retired guys who enjoy making things out of wood. Maybe you could get in touch with someone who’d be interested in turning some bobbins for you.
Also, not really related to this topic, I think you should visit http://www.wormspit.com/ . This guy is quite creative, and improvises tools as he needs them.
Um, yeah, I checked eBay first. Which is why I’m looking elsewhere. If I need like 100 bobbins, I’m not no way in hell gonna pay like $5 to $7 bucks apiece, or buy them piecemeal (which in this context is Greek for "plus shipping costs) on eBay.
honestly? It’s a matter of patience on that. You can go weeks seeing ‘collectors’ lots of bobbins on ebay and then one day you get the whole shebang.
Also check a few patterns out- you don’t need to ramp right up to 100+ bobbins. I have got books on bobbin lace, and there are many patterns that start out with a much smaller amount. My books are jumbled at the moment, but I do recall their advice being to accrue bobbins on the slow side.
I would recommend buying at least one so your wood carver gets a feel for the object and can replicate it better.
Yes, I buy buttons, yarn, movies, lots of things on ebay; I usually wait till it’s that deal I just can’t pass up. But the pattern I’m seeing is that people tend to expect at least $5 apiece for bobbins, and I have yet to see 100 at a time. But obviously I’ll keep looking.
Which, yes, I do need, because I always bite off way more than I can chew. All the projects I have in mind are huge. I’m an extremist, artistically speaking; if it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing. (My last sweater was made entirely of 2-stitch vertical stripes.)
I use rubber ring washers as counters when I knit patterns. They cost like $1 apiece at a hardware store. Which sucks when you have a complex pattern an you need a hundred of them. However, if you look hard enough, you can buy them for like $6 a gross. That’s probably spoiled me for this kind of thing. If I could find a bundle of 100 bobbins for like $25, I’d do it in a flash. The cheapest ones on Lacis would be $300 for 100. Just not gonna happen for me right now. I’d rather trade some lace or knitting to someone with a lathe.
As a woodturner, $5.00 or $7.00 each seems pretty reasonable. It would probably take me 15-20 minutes to turn something like that and probably longer if you wanted a nice smooth finish or fancy beads. Thin spindles like that are tricky because they tend to vibrate while turning, so it’s hard to avoid chattering and tool marks. Even if I were in practice and could whip off a nice looking bobbin in five minutes, that’s still 8 or 9 hours of very efficient turning to make 100 bobbins. But more likely it would be about 30 hours for anyone who’s not a professional turner, particularly when you take into account mistakes and time for sharpening tools. Not to mention the time spent cutting the blanks.
Lacis seems to have bobbins for as little as 50 cents each (pack of 24 for 21 dollars), but I’m guessing those are machine turned and don’t use very interesting wood.
Yeah, I know; people expect me to sell a sweater that cost me 80 hours work for a hundred bucks. “You make socks? You should sell them!” Yeah, at $10 an hour, not even counting materials, they would sell for as much as $200 a pair.
I know very little about bobbin lace (though I had a similar experience watching a guy at a folk festival once–watched a while, asked some questions, and he let me do a little), but I know of a lady who does this and I’m pretty sure she just uses spoons.
), but there’s enough overlap between bobbin lace and macrame that I have no doubt that I could’ve picked it up much more quickly than she’d’ve imagined.
