Down Sizing

 

It's taken me a while to get to this point, but this morning I decided to finally begin downsizing my bobbin lace stash.

I will keep two pillows and all of the handmade/painted bobbins made by my friend Jacqui Southworth (Larkholme Lace) because, well, she (and Eric) made/painted them.  I will keep my original cookie pillow because I prefer it over most others.  It was purchased from my first bobbin lace teacher, made by her spouse and is filled with sawdust.  It's just the best pillow I've worked on (imho).  But it isn't the best for some applications, so I'll keep one of the others which is a little bit more versatile.

The rest I'll offer to my lace student if she is interested in continuing, although she may find that she doesn't 'love' it enough to invest in the equipment.  Or she can make her own.

I've sorted the bobbins that I am willing to sell into packages.  Most of them are spangled, but not all.  I'm not interested in investing in beads and wire to get the unspangled ones spiffed up so I'll offer them as well.

Then there are the books.  I've 'inherited' a bunch of lace books and have duplicates of some, and some I'm not interested in, so those will get listed and hopefully sold off.

I'm old enough, and my eyesight is not great, so I'm not going to work with anything very fine.  I'm using sewing thread right now and managing, but I certainly don't want to go any finer.  And I don't want to invest too much time into a 'big' project.  So I will work on small items - ornaments for xmas trees, or window decorations.

In the photo above, there are 3 pillows - one roller pillow, the others are cookie or square with foam.  The two bags are full of books.  This coming week I'll be looking for where to list these for sale and try to figure out 'fair' prices, given shipping is so expensive now.  

I hope the pillows will stay in western Canada due to the cost of shipping them.  However, I would be willing to ship via courier *within* Canada.  Especially if someone buys a pillow and some books or bobbins, for example.  

If anyone knows of a sales site for bobbin lace makers, let me know.  I found 3 groups on Facebook, but none allow sales.