A Small Portion of the Reason I Love Garage Sales

Look at those lovely beads! I went garage saling today, on my way back from an appointment. For an investment of two hours, a tad extra gas, and $17 total, I gained an assortment of possessions including a coffee table, bookcase, glass bowl and vase, salad spinner, six or seven books, cards with extra envelopes, a picture frame (watch this space to see it united with some tatting!), a board game, some shirts, a ball of 100% cotton yarn, some scrapbooking materials, pretty ribbons and gold wrapping paper. These seed beads were only $1 per vial and will look gorgeous in some tatting as soon as I decide what patterns to showcase them in. But my absolute favorite part of the haul was two small square apothecary jars. I saw them and loved them and said sternly to myself, "What will you use them for?" Fortunately, thanks to Diane, I was able to immediately think of a great use for them and so earned the right from myself to bring them home.
See how pretty with balls of thread inside of them! I am really happy. This is also functional, since, to fill the smaller one, I didn't transfer any balls of thread from other containers, but scooped them up solely from the litter on my desktop.

In other news, I have chosen a pattern for a wedding doily for Elisa and her fiance and am steadily working it up. I will show it to you all after the wedding, which is only two weeks from today! By my calculations, I'm about halfway done, although it is made up of motifs, so I will have a little leeway on how big it is, and if I grow desperate in the days before the wedding, it may end up a little smaller. I would like to make it as big as possible, but it is definitely stress-relieving to have options.

Advice?

Remember the doily I made for a wedding present? Well, another one of my friends, Elisa, is getting married now and I am searching for the perfect pattern to make for her and her husband. I want something intricate that will be fairly large when made in smaller thread (40ish) but not too frilly or girly. It also needs to be gorgeous and in Elisa's style. (I realize these last two are highly subjective!) I am kind of thinking of something square or rectangular or diamond-shaped, rather than round. Finally, it needs to be a free pattern or from a book I already have. I've got no time to wait for anything to ship, as the wedding is June 4th and I am not Superwoman. (This, sadly, rules out anything by Jan Stawasz, even though his doilies are almost exactly what I'm looking for.)

I'm afraid I'm setting way too high of a standard for this pattern and that I'll never find one in time. So I thought I would ask you all for advice. Suggest anything, even if you don't think it matches every one of the criteria. It may lead me to something perfect that on my own I would have ruled out without looking at it.

Tatting in the Skies

Guess what? It's no problem to bring small scissors into an airport nowadays! At least, not this past weekend. I breezed through security both on the trip out and the trip back -- less than five minutes from start to finish. No line, no bag searches, no backscatter x-rays. The thing that took the longest was dumping my things in bins to go down the belt into the x-ray machine. After I was free to tat as I pleased throughout the trip, and here is what came of that. I love this pattern so much. Isn't it funny how the first row of it looks so very different from the complete two-row cross? Yes, that unfinished one on the right is the same pattern! Speaking of two rows, I tried split-ringing out of the first row on these to avoid some of the ends needing to be hidden. Not sure I prefer it this way, though -- The split ring on each is definitely a different shape than the other ones and to me it sticks out and looks wrong. Can you find the split rings? What do you think?