Small tip

Wanted to share a quick little tip with you.  If you wind your DMC floss on those plastic bobbins, then you probably already have the winder tool.  What a marvelous thing – so much faster than winding those bobbins by hand. 

But not perfect.

The small peg that holds the bobbin in place is made of the same hard plastic as the winder and (for me at least) works best with the paper/cardboard bobbins.  But I want the durability of the plastic bobbins.

Over the years, I’ve tried a bunch of things to either snug up or take the place of the peg, most often stuffing a piece of paper in the hole with it so the peg doesn’t fall out after three or four turns.  Some plastic bobbins are thicker than others and I’ve had ones that barely fit into the slot – the peg was unusable with those as the holes did not align perfectly and then I used a piece of copper wire snipped out of a bit of leftover romex.

Having quite a bit of floss to wind right now (will explain that below), I was once again mentally grousing that the peg has no give and then inspiration struck.  Years ago, a friend suggested using knitting needle point protectors on the tip of my embroidery scissors to protect both my fingers and the scissor points and at some point I’d bought a package of them.

Ta-dah!  A softer, friendlier peg!

And why am I winding all this floss?  Some of you might remember that Wonderful Husband gifted me with an incredibly scary amazing chart of the Unicorn in Captivity tapestry for Christmas. 

I took advantage of a great sale at my favorite online needlework shop to get fabric for the unicorn.  And since I expect this project to take approximately forever, it seemed wise to just go ahead and get new DMC, so have been using coupons at Michael’s and JoAnn’s to accumulate all 119 colors in the design.  Eeek!

The other day, Wonderful Husband asked me what I’d like for my birthday.  And being mindful that the size of the Unicorn is 285 x 404 and is solidly stitched (eeek again!), I thought perhaps something smaller would be a better first for a solidly stitched piece.  So I suggested this, which is a detail from the Cluny tapestry known as  À Mon Seul Désir. 

(image from Scarlet Quince website)

Hey, it’s only 123 x 274 stitches.  And has only 109 colors of DMC. 

Yes, I probably am crazy.

Hope you had a lovely weekend!

>^..^<