Weaving tapestry tends to mean that you have several colours on the go at once.

Which means a choice between lots of loose ends, and winding the thread onto some form of small piece of card, or another type of bobbin.

I can’t get on with cardboard bobbins. They get battered too quickly, and collapse on me at inconvenient moments. Wooden ones sound much more appealing.

The traditional shape of a tapestry bobbin has a shaft to hold the thread, a knob to keep it there, and a pointed end to help with threading it through the warp. And of course the pointed end can be used for beating the weft down into place.

Polished wood is nice to hold, and slides well through the weft, but it can be difficult to find. There are some beautiful ones available, made of exotic woods. The first few I bought were very plain ordinary wood. Although they were nicely turned, the finishing wasn’t quite as good as it could have been. There are slightly rough patches that catch on the warp.

So when I decided I needed more bobbins, I thought I would investigate the nicer ones. As you might expect, they are not that easy to find. You can’t just wander into the local craft shop and pick some up. These came from Australia, as you can probably guess from the names of the woods, like Bungeroo, Tasmanian Myrtle, Hairy Wattle, and Rose Sheoak.

I’ll be buying more of these from my fellow Etsy seller, WoodenTreen, where you can also buy all sorts of other beautiful craft tools.