Weighted

Well, we had a bit of an unexpected hiccup on Friday. The husband's car decided that running was for chumps while he was at work. The running about to get the car to the shop kind of ate up a huge chunk of the day. Also we're still waiting to hear what might be wrong with it, so I'm feeling very fiscally frightened right now. You don't want to hear about all that though, unless of course one of you is hugely wealthy and want to gift me copious amounts of money to fix all my problems. No? Yeah, I'll just get back to the lace making.

The bobbins are a bit clunkier to work with now that they have the spangles, but with the addition of them and the use of some older, thicker cotton thread I had on hand, the pieces are working up faster and I think better. I just went back to some of the first pieces I worked on to see how it felt and I guess the verdict is yes, bobbins work better with weights on the bottom. Though the addition of what are probably too large spangles has more thoroughly illustrated the limitations of the foam board I've been using from the Lacis kit in lieu of a proper pillow. It does not have the room to hold all these bobbins and then weight kept tilting the board one way or the other a bit. Though the spangles do seem to keep the bobbins where they ought to be easier. So I suppose the minus is countered by the plus there.

I certainly won't be getting a pillow anytime soon (see 1st paragraph) and though it's been suggested that I could make my own, I'm fairly certain I would botch that job wholly. I'll just keep working with what I've got and after a few more practice pieces I'm going to tackle that damn square piece again.

We still have a week and a half of homeschooling left before summer, so I'll just keep working on the bobbin lace until that's over and I have even more time to kill. I'm hoping by then that either my etsy shop will start selling things again or I have some tatting epiphany that leads to new pieces. Really, I'd love both but for now, I'll just keep on as is.

Spangles

Oh, the frustration. I was getting ready to work on the bobbin lace piece and as I worked from the freshly turned corner I realized that I had made a mistake well before that turn. I hemmed and hawed over whether I could undo back around that corner and then I just grabbed the scissors and started cutting. Yep, I just lost it and said never bloody mind. I think I just need more practice on prior techniques before I'm going to get this one done right.

I was going to start another piece straight away when I remembered that I had planned on spangling my bobbins. I really had no idea what I was doing, but I did it anyway. I grabbed my Dremel and drilled holes in the ends, probably too big, but I did mention that I had no real clue. I'd seen plenty of spangles in photos so I knew they were rounded, usually with a larger element in the center, So I grabbed some flexible wire and my box of random beads from years of Fire Mountain grab bags. I tried my best to go with pairs colors, but like I said, the beads are random, so some match better than others, but none of them are exact pairs.

I got 20 of them made up yesterday so there's just four more to go. I'm down to the dregs in the bead box, so the rest might be less matchy, but I'm told that's not really the point of the spangles anyway. I also made sure that the construction of these spangles was done in such a way that I can eventually cut them off and do new ones should I acquire better beads for the purpose. I have no idea if these are too small, too big, too bulky, or too anything wrong, but I suppose I'll figure that out as I work with them. So today I'm hoping to get those last four done and then I'll pin something on the board to test them. Of course the best part is that I spent no money on this experiment, so if they turn out to be a failure, all I've lost is a day or so. Here's hoping the day wasn't a waste.