Hippocrafty aka Ami

"I think of my comrades, do they think of me?"

Silver says "perhaps, just perhaps, you're a god-damn genius"

Had to refill my worker-bobbins for the scallops three times! They *eat* thread! Now I'm running low on some other bobbins so I decided to stop here.

So fascinated by how the colours move!

It's this pattern from Jo Edkins worked in DMC Perle 8 on a 4mm grid.

Getting the pricking right was a challenge!

It's an about 30cm long strip of rose ground on a background of cloth stitch and twist ground in a lighter blue-green and a darker blue-green.

The rose ground (being half-stitch, pin, half-stitch) makes the colours travel in interesting ways. I used Jo Edkin's Bobbin Lace school beginner Torchon lace pattern for rose ground and fans as inspiration, but rather than making fans on the sides, I just made cloth-stitch-and-twist ground.

This is my lace cushion. I made it myself. I started with a 1 foot by 1 foot cork flooring tile (hardware store) then added nine 10cm x 10cm x 5cm cubes of foam. Here's one of my foam cubes that I use as my pincushion:

It's 10 by 10cm and 5 cm thick/tall. I got them from a foam-and-rubber (and swimming pool supplies) store and the people at the store were kind enough to cut them for me -- I got 15 of these cubes cut. My dad recommends, if you want to cut your own foam and don't have the specialist tools, use an electric bread-slicing knife (and wear a dust-filtering mask!). I had success cutting one of my blocks in half myself using a very long serrated knife my brother-in-law usually uses to cut very large birthday cakes with, but the right tools would be a lot faster!

Once I got my foam blocks home, I used double sided tape to stick a layer of thin craft foam (the kind that comes in A4 sheets from the office-supplies place) on the two 10 by 10 cm sides, then stuck a thin layer of felt (the kind that kids use for craft, which also comes in A4 sheets from office stores) on top of that. Then I cut up an old bedsheet and sewed fabric over the blocks (that's the red stitching along the edge, I handstiched as I'm afraid of sewing machines).

So I used strong sticky heavy duty hook-and-loop tape to fix the four outer corner blocks to my cork tile, then just fitted the five inner blocks to the cork tile so they slide.

The four green besquiggled blocks are the fixed ones, and the two purple besquiggled blocks and the three with my pattern on are free-sliding.

Now i just pin squares of the thin foam & the felt over the blocks I'm working on, as well as my pricking, and bobbin-lace away. When I get near the end of the block nearest my belly, I push the three blocks in the middle up and insert a half-a-block in.

My half-a-block. Then when i am too close again, I slide another full block in. That's when I usually take the pins out of the block at the top of my cushion (furthest from me) and roll my progress up.

About to take the pins out and roll up the progress: that's what the black bundle/coil is - the bobbin lace what I've already made on this project thus far.

So I love my cushion and I think it works really well, certainly better than the pillow-with-a-towel-on-it I did my very first projects on. The best bit is that I don't have to slide my work up and try to re-pin it because I can just add new blocks to the side closest to me and take completed blocks off the side furthest from me - I never actually reposition my work on the pins or the pricking, I just move it around while it's still pinned.

Favorite color: I love to look at blues, greens and yellows, but my favourite colours to wear are the jewel tones: bright, saturated pinks, purples, reds, blues and greens.

Last song (I listened to by looking up on the spotify): How to Make Gravy and Rita Wrote a Letter by Paul Kelly (I'm Australian, we had our family Christmas late because I had the covid, I was feeling the sentiments strongly - yes I cried a little).

Reading: non-fiction, paper - Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green. Fiction, paper: I've nothing particularly current but I'm going to read Moby Dick book-club style with my niblings this year. Non-fiction, audio - The Anthropocene Reviewed, by John Green (it's our "car" audiobook). Fiction, audio: Never Whistle at Night, an excellent short-story horror collection by North American Indigenous authors.

Watching: I'm about to start a Black Sails rewatch! I just did a The Terror one and it's of course a part of the regular schedule. I watch & listen to a lot of Youtube & my channels I watched today were 'Adventures Gone Wrong' and 'The Lore Lodge'.

Playing: I don't play those kinds of video games but my regular rotation of puzzle games on my phone include Drop Away, Foodie Sizzle, Arrows, Solitare Associations and Hexasort. I do a lot of colouring in on Happy Colour while listening to my "stories" (podcasts).

Craving: always enjoying time with my niblings and family, working on my craft projects, listening to & watching my "stories". Craving/Hoping/Wishing for my partner to find a good job that suits him well soon. Hoping myself to complete my studies (early childhood education) & find a job at a good childcare centre.

So, I have 13 pairs of hand-turned WA sandalwood lacemaking bobbins. Here's one with no thread on, next to a tape measure:

They're about 11.5 cm long (I didn't use the inch side of this tape measure because it's one of those Chinese produced ones with the different inch measurement, so do your own conversions if needed - a real Imperial inch is 254mm). They're 12mm in diameter at the top (the small flat end) and thinner where the thread goes, widening to about 15mm at the fattest point. Mr G, who made them, needed a picture of what I wanted them to be like, so I sent this:

I can't remember where I found this, but a little research suggests this is a typical form of lace-bobbins used in Switzerland, which makes sense why I would've chosen it as I spent a year in Switzerland as an exchange student and still speak Swiss-German so that's my connection/context for European objects/craft history.

This is what they all look like with thread on:

Here's some close ups:

According to Mr G, who made them (he's in his 70s and is a lifelong member of my hometown's Woodturners association), they're not hard to make, but "very fiddly" - another friend of mine who's a woodturner says pretty much they're about as easy to make as pen-barrels, but would indeed be "fiddly" and a bit bothersome to make compared to other woodturning projects, because of the small diameter and that the middle "post" is quite fine.

(the bit next to the orange pin-head is what I'm calling "the middle post").

About the wood:

And this is what my government says:

http://www.dbca.wa.gov.au/licences-and-permits/sandalwood-licences

So it's literally illegal to harvest, you need a licence and they're very tightly regulated. Unfortunately it wasn't always this way and many people used to get it, so if you're very very lucky and know a WA woodturner who's been doing it a long time, they might have some in the shed. I'm glad that they're managing the environment much better and don't support unethical/unsustainable harvesting of wood, even though I'm lucky & grateful to have access to *literally priceless* and possibly unique lace bobbins because of past practices.

Yes, they do smell slightly of sandalwood & it's very pleasant. They're also like *butter* in the hands, so I treasure them like the precious objects they are and will for the rest of my life. I hope to pass on the love of lacemaking and my precious bobbins and their story to someone I love when I'm no longer able to do it (may it be a long time in the future!).

My other bobbins are also "handmade" in that I made them out of pegs. Here's a pair:

This is what the pegs look like before you make them into bobbins:

You pull off the spring (any ideas for what to use them for? I have TOO MANY), and you can paint the ends so you can tell which ones are pairs (I used nail polish). You can use a little sandpaper or a nail file to smooth them out if needed. I think they're made from pine, and are not expensive, you can generally buy them in packs of multiple dozens for quite cheap. We call them "pegs" and use them to hang out our clothes to dry (outside) because WA (Western Australia, not Washington) has a very dry & warm climate. I've heard them called "clothespins" before but I know them as "pegs". They work well as bobbins:

I wind the thread around the notch that's next to this orange pin and do a lacemaker's hitch around the notch next to the white pin:

They hold the thread perfectly well and are easy to manipulate, but not as smooth and soft as my sandalwood ones, of course. I don't use spangles on my bobbins because I find they're heavy enough to keep tension with the tapered ends, and though the pegs are lighter, they keep tension well enough hanging off the side of my cushion.

My cushion is handmade too - but I'm out of allowed pictures on the post so let me know if anyone wants to hear about that!

Bobbin lace is fundamentally not really a -useful- craft, to whatever extent crafting is useful anyways, but I am making something I will use! I put my hair up in two plaits with a strip of bobbin lace in the plaits then use the lace to tie them up on my head, and so far I only have a rainbow piece of lace for it. This one's the monochrome version.