Friday, April 13, 2012

I'm All Wound Up!

Kerstin showed us how to make a "correct" paper quill. Since the stick on my manual bobbin winder is tapered, I asked if it would make a quill with slightly changing diameter, to which she replied, yes, but only slightly.
This is my manual winder; the diameter at the base is 5mm, at the tip 3mm.
She also asked how I wind onto my homemade recycled paper bobbins made by winding paper around a pencil. I do that on my electric winder, which can take pirns, bobbins or quills of almost any size.
Except the straws/swizzle sticks I bought for my tiny Japanese silk shuttles; they are just a little too small for the electric,
It's also not big enough for the manual; even if I push one as far as it goes and tape the end to the stick, winding becomes uncomfortably wobbly; it's faster to wind it by hand.
Of course, I have a whole bag of them, and of course Mom was able to find baby bobbins, but Kiwis make do!

6 comments:

  1. Do you have a McDonald's in your area? The straws from McDonalds here work perfectly on those winders with a larger rod. Let me know if you don't and I will send you some!

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  2. I can get normal sized straws, Holly, but they would be far too thick for the shuttles.

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  3. But that's where I might have to look at. OR, I could wind paper around these swizzle sticks - that would be the best solution size-wise, but a tad too fiddly for my bumbling fingers.

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  4. Ah - but a double-ended electric winder is a totally different animal ;-)

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  5. The shuttle is adorable. Could you share where you bought it?

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  6. I believe Mom was given a few of them when we visited a museum or a weaver in Kyoto decades ago. But it has most likely have come from Inagaki: http://english.inagakikiryou.com/.

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