In Which There Is Tatting

TIAS 1 2 3

2012-01-16T20:26:00.000-08:00

I'm tatting and seeing! I started a little late and knocked off the first three days in one sitting. The only problem with doing it this way is it makes it soo hard to stop when you come to the end of the last day published. I am itching for Day 4. This thread is size 10 and I don't remember the brand. I bought a huge ball of it from Michaels because the color "simply spoke to me," as the hot buttered toast simply spoke to Toad in Wind in the Willows. As for what this entertaining pattern is a pattern of, my best guess is a stoplight. I don't think it can be actually, as Jane would have specified some colors if it was! But a square with a circle in it is the perfect shape for a stoplight, you must admit.

'Tis the Season...

2012-01-16T09:35:00.000-08:00

to tat snowflakes! Yes, Christmas may be over, but it is still winter and in my book snowflakes are still fair game. Plus, I haven't shown you any of the snowflakes I tatted through December. Here is a sampling.

From the bottom left corner around in a clockwise spiral to the center, these snowflakes are: Angels in the Snow by Miranda, Star no 1 from page 39 of Blomqvist and Persson's book,

Beaded Snowflake from Vida Sunderman's book (obviously I tatted it unbeaded), Le Flocon Frivole from (of course) Frivole, and Ribbon Snowflake and Ribbon-Floss Snowflake also from Vida Sunderman. I have eyed Angels in the Snow ever since Miranda published it, bought it in June, and finally tatted it 6 months later. It did not disappoint! The pattern from Blomqvist and Persson was not intended to be a snowflake and I started it while at someone's house with only that book to choose from. I really did not expect to like it as a snowflake, but I do very much, and plan to make it again. The Ribbon-Floss Snowflake is the reason I wanted Vida Sunderman's Tatted Snowflakes. I adore it and it works up very quickly, making it a perfect gift. And Le Flocon Frivole is probably my favorite snowflake pattern this year. It is so gorgeous. Did anyone else note the similarities between it and Quatrain? I tatted them one after the other and spotted the identical stitch counts right away. With an ancestor like that and its recreation of characteristics from real snowflakes in a manner still true to the tatting it is made out of, this snowflake has it all.

Again from the bottom left, this picture has Frivole's Stellar, her Criss-Cross, and an adaption of Julie Patterson's Christmas Snowflake. Like Miranda, I am bothered by "snowflakes" that do not have six points. So I messed around with the stitch counts on this pattern, and found that with 2-2/5 on the split rings and a little blocking it will lie flat with six points. "Stellar" really means starlike, but fortunately the Stellar snowflake fits the meaning of the word not in the sense of resembling a star visually, but in the sense of "setting a high standard", as I have found all of Frivole's snowflakes to do. I am definitely going to buy "Regal." It is only a matter of time before I do.

I have given away most of these (and many repeats that are not pictured). Here are the cards I tucked them into. I just got happy with scrapbook paper, cardstock, tatted bits, and my very favorite Christmas carol line of all. It is a breathtaking thought -- Christ the baby, the silent Word, pleading, not yet verbally but by his mere existence, on our behalf.

These snowflakes were all tatted in December, but I have extensive plans for more snowflakes in the coming weeks. As mentioned, I will tat the Star no. 1 again (I wonder if anyone would mind if I renamed it?), and I also want to repeat the Beaded Snowflake (again, this is crying out for another name...), and I am still collecting a file of patterns I want to try. Some of them may have to wait for next year after all -- it is almost time to start tatting hearts!

Pop-a-Bobbin!

2011-11-23T15:17:00.001-08:00

After hankering after a Pop-a-Bobbin for a year or so, I have finally treated myself to one! I tried for the cherry, but while I navigated first a surprise request from Etsy for me to create an account before they would send me to Paypal and second the chore of remembering my Paypal password, someone else bought the cherry. Fortunately I am just as excited about the walnut and I was able to snag that. It came quite quickly and I loaded it up as soon as I opened the package and tatted this little motif.
This shuttle is so smooth and light and cries out to be held, and it flies back and forth like a song. I'm not going to tell my family how much it cost; they would never understand how addicting it is to tat with a finely crafted piece of wood instead of plastic. I do love Clovers, but they don't even compare.

How to tell that the Canada Post is no longer on strike

2011-07-01T16:02:00.000-07:00

I present my evidence in the form of a lovely package from Fox! Here definitely are good things coming in a small package. In just one envelope, a little bag of rings and filigree to tat on, a pretty piece of tatting, and a big spool of the thread she was generous enough to give away. I have obscured the tatting a little in the picture, as Fox wanted us all to know it was tatted a looooong time ago and she doesn't feel it meets her standards now. But I couldn't bear not giving at least a glimpse of it, as I personally love it and the colors and beads keep drawing my eye back to it and my hands creep over to touch it again. The thread also is making me very happy. As soon as I unwrapped it I started itching to get it on the shuttles and before the day was over I had finished this Small Motif of Jane's.

It felt kind of wrong tatting something with Fox's thread and not putting beads on it! But I don't think I have any beads small enough for this thread yet. Still, it was meant to be a connection anyway, for just a day or two after I finished it what should pop up on Fox's blog but a familiar motif! I would be more surprised if I didn't know we had both taken our cue from Miranda, whose rendition is what put the Small Motif in my mind anyhow. This isn't all I've tatted with this thead by any means! I've done another small motif and am starting on an edging, and all in the space of a week. I'm definitely enamored. It tends to fuzz up a little with too much handling, but that is all right with me, because I like the way the colors flow on this thread and I have been really hankering after small thread sizes the last month or two. It is just perfect for me right now. Thank you, Fox!

Effective Advertising

2011-06-06T20:00:00.000-07:00

I was in Michaels the other week for an unrelated purchase, but couldn't resist checking to see if this location sold tatting shuttles. I'm always jealous when I hear about other tatters casually going to Hobby Lobby or JoAnns and picking up tatting shuttles or Lizbeth thread. There aren't any Hobby Lobbys around me and my JoAnns seem to have never heard of tatting. The best they can do is huge balls of size 10 thread, advertised as for crochet, with maybe a brief mention of tatting in small print on the label. Sometimes there are balls of size 30 mercerized thread, but only in ecru or black. This time, I still had no luck with shuttles, but I was very excited to find size 80 thread, in a color other than white, black, or ecru, and most amazingly of all, clearly labeled "Tatting Thread". In fact, I was so excited that it was labeled specifically for tatting that I decided I needed it and bought it straightaway. Thread manufacturers should take note: It is such an ego boost to find tatting recognized in a store that if they advertised their mercerized thread for tatting, sales would jump! Well, among tatters.

A Small Portion of the Reason I Love Garage Sales

2011-05-21T15:53:00.000-07:00

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?

2011-05-07T09:46:00.000-07:00

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

2011-05-02T23:04:00.000-07:00

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?

Meeting the TSA

2011-04-28T10:35:00.000-07:00

I'm flying tomorrow! Call me crazy, but I always enjoy airports. I haven't flown in several years though, and while I've flown since I learned to tat, I haven't flown since my tatting bug got so bad that I can't imagine a trip without a shuttle. I've been poring over the guidelines for clearing security and deciding what I'm willing to risk. Here are the things I've decided to bring.Wish me luck! And if you have any tips on clearing security with small metal objects of the tatting trade, please let me know.

He is Risen!

2011-04-24T08:26:00.000-07:00

Hope you all are having a wonderful Easter Sunday. I thought a tatted cross suited today, since the main reason for today involves a cross. In fact, that is why crosses became something to wear or hang in your homes. Have you ever thought about what it must have been like to do this in the early years? A cross was the instrument of grisly executions -- it would be something like an American wearing an little model electric chair on a chain around his neck. When you think about it, that really is what the cross means. It tells of a horrible death, full of greater pain than we can imagine --physical, emotional, and spiritual. But the cross is also empty, and that tells of a greater glory than we can imagine. As the angels said to the women at the tomb, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, He is Risen!" And in His resurrection from the dead, we too are raised. We are sown perishable and raised imperishable, and since that great pivot of history, every Sunday is Resurrection Sunday. Christmas may be the most widely celebrated Christian holiday, but surely Easter is the most glorious.

Blast from the Past

2011-04-02T12:54:00.000-07:00

Just now I opened up one of the decorative boxes sitting on my bookshelf and I found this little doily. I hadn't even thought of it for several years, and I made it even longer ago. I must have been about 14 or 15. It's from the very early stages of my tatting, when I had four humongous balls of size 10 crochet cotton in hunter green, navy blue, maroon, and white. I never tatted with any other thread. In fact, I STILL have four humongous balls of size 10 crochet cotton, because, people, those things LAST. They're each about half depleted right now. Of course, now I also (almost always) tat with other threads.

This doily was my first Celtic tatting. I remember it being a huge deal that I needed four shuttles for it. That was back when my only shuttles were the metal Susan Bates shuttles that my grandmother bought for me at JoAnns. The JoAnns in my town wasn't big enough to carry them. I was a little intimidated by the idea of Celtic tatting, but I loved the design enough to attempt it. That seems so long ago now, but with this little bit of the past in my hands, I still love the design, and I would still do it again. I know you all understand the feeling. We tatting addicts must stick together.

Largesse from the Queen of Bling

2011-03-31T20:34:00.000-07:00

Several weeks ago (just how many I am ashamed to say) I got a package in the mail. I ripped it open right away and look at what was inside. A glittery Mardi Gras bag! If you are saying right now, "Oh, that is not the best part," you are very right. Inside there were three balls of thread and the star of the show, a shuttle blinged by the Queen of Bling herself! This is LaceLovin' Librarian's Spring giveaway. Because, of course, there are only so many blinged shuttles one person can have, so she has to give some away. .... Just kidding. Every tatter knows there is no such thing as too many shuttles! However, I don't think any of us would vote that Diane stop giving them away.
Look at that pretty dotted pattern on top of the formerly plain green Clover shuttle. She even put glitter on it, for that true bling-y sparkle. The balls of thread and the pretty bag are just the right complement for this shuttle. The threads are vintage size 70, which makes me happy, because I like that size and enjoy tatting with bits of history. It really tickles me that the thread colors match the shuttle colors! How sneaky. I am really loving the color changes on the variegated green. I can't pick my favorite between the dark winter green or the bright springy green or the fresh kelly green. When St. Patrick's Day came around and I wanted to tat shamrocks, I knew just where to go! Here is the shuttle and the green thread in action producing dimpled-ring shamrocks.

If any of you are jealous of my awesome new shuttle, don't stick around here -- go straight to Diane's site and enter her new giveaway.

Everybody's Irish Today!

2011-03-17T15:30:00.000-07:00

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

My family and I love this holiday. I am cooking corned beef and cabbage and potatoes for our dinner, my mother made soda bread, and my sister has baked a pale green cake with a darker green four-leaf clover shape baked into it for dessert. We are all wearing green, on pain of pinching. Mine is a kelly green sweater. My brother's is a shirt he swears is green but that we all think is brown. We can't pinch him, though, because he is convinced of his right to slap us back. (That is what you do when you are wrongly pinched on St. Patrick's Day, because you really are wearing green.)

Like a large number of tatters, I've made some of Gina's Lucky Seven shamrocks and one of Sharren's Irish for a Day shamrocks to celebrate the day. Sharren's name is so apt! I love how everyone wants to be Irish, whether they are by heritage or not. Ireland is just so loveable. I've got a little Irish way back in my family tree, but it is so far back it doesn't even have anything to do with my sister's Irish name. My parents just named her Bridget because they liked the name. And we just celebrate St. Patrick's Day because we like all the "Irish" things associated with it. So Irish for a Day describes American people very well, and it is also a great shamrock pattern. I loved the Lucky Seven shamrocks too. They are so simple and work up so quickly.

Next up: I'll tell you what's special about the shuttle and thread I used for the shamrocks. For now, I'll leave you with the Doxology from one of my favorite hymns, St. Patrick's Breastplate.

I bind unto myself the name

The strong name of the Trinity,

By invocation of the same,

The Three in One,

and One in Three.

Of whom all nature hath creation;

Eternal Father, Spirit, Word:

Praise to the Lord of my salvation,

Salvation is of Christ the Lord.

As Promised

2011-01-15T10:45:00.000-08:00

I hereby present to you the very first beaded tatting I have done!

Beads are wonderful for beautifying any piece of tatting, but there is one use for tatting in which they are nearly essential. Earrings. For earrings they are not only beautiful but also functional, as they add some much needed weight to what would otherwise be a few yards of knotted thread hanging from your ears and flipping about in the wind. So when I decided to make some earrings for my friend Heather for a Christmas present, I knew it was the perfect opportunity to finally make my first piece of beaded tatting.
Here they are with one still on the shuttle. I was looking for big and bright and paisley-shaped, and while I didn't find a full on paisley design, Mary Konior's Curds and Whey turned out even better. I really love the shape two repeats of this design makes. I picked out which picots I wanted pink beads on, strung all the beads onto my shuttle, and started tatting and it was as easy as pie. A very satisfying introduction to beads. To space the earrings a bit more away from the ear, I tatted a spiral chain with just one half stitch repeated over and over till I got the length I wanted. Actually, to get the smooth finish at the top where it attached to the earring finding, I tatted the chain backwards, kind of like a split chain works. These were so fun to make. Here they are all finished. They have been mailed and received, and Heather proclaims them "exquisite." I was going to say my bead story has a happy ending, but actually I think it has a happy beginning!

Beads

2011-01-13T22:36:00.000-08:00

In my, so far, short blogging career, I've been lucky enough to win not just one, but two, giveaways, and remiss enough not to post about either of them, even though they both thrilled me. Right when I won, I didn't seem to have words good enough to describe them. Then after two or three weeks when I started being about to write it down, I felt guilty about posting late and kept holding off every time I thought about it. No more! Here are my lovelies put down in photos and words for you.

I chose the title of the post because what these two giveaways have in common is beads. First, Sally of Tat's Heaven had her 100th post and celebrated by giving away shuttles to two lucky winners. I still feel that luck; it's lasted all the way since August when I saw my name in the announcement of the winners and squealed at my computer screen with joy.

Just look at that gorgeous shuttle tucked away inside its decorative box. This shuttle taught me that my favorite shuttle material is wood. I've still a soft spot for the solidity of metal, and a plastic Clover can fly like anything, but there's just nothing like wood. I kind of need more wood shuttles. (Pop-a-Bobbin, anyone? Just as soon as I have some money to spare!)

Besides my glorious shuttle, there was a pretty tatted butterfly bookmark and of course the box. At first glance, you might think there are no beads in this giveaway lot at all, but look carefully at both the box and the butterfly. Sally has adorned the butterfly with green sparkly seed beads, and the stylish green and gray tatting on the box with two colors of gray beads. I've spent ten years tatting and looking at tatting in books, but all the descriptions of adding beads had left me cold till I saw these.

I saw no point in beads before. Tatting was tatting and beautiful on its own. All the beads I saw only seemed to me to detract. Then I met this box. I would never have thought of putting the colors on this box together, but they worked perfectly, and the beads worked even better. As soon as I started admiring this box I knew that it was no longer a question whether or not I would start tatting with beads. It was only a matter of time before I did.

For all that, I managed to take enough time getting around to it that Bree's generous giveaway came around before I had even progressed to buying myself some beads. Bree was writing tutorials for people just like me -- who wanted to use beads but hadn't worked up the courage to sit down to it yet. And she didn't stop at tutorials! She put together five lots of beads for five winners, and I was lucky yet again.

Look how many beads I have! There are big and little, green and pink and hazel, plain and shiny. She generously included a hank of variegated thread too, running through blues and greens and yellows in one thread. I broke out the rich pink sparkly seed beads for my VERY FIRST beaded tatting ever (again, in ten years!) this December. But! I'm going to make you wait till the next post to see it. Come back soon, with your bitten fingernails, and admire. Please do admire, because I am inordinately proud of it. And it would never have come about without Sally and Bree. Thank you both, so much!

Hedgehog Chocolates

2010-11-30T22:06:00.000-08:00

My mom is allergic to fur and feathers, and that is how, when I was young, I came to have a hedgehog for a pet. She was a cute little African Pygmy Hedgehog, and we named her Miss Tiggywinkle after Beatrix Potter's hedgehog washerwoman. So when I was browsing Mary Konior's Tatting Patterns and came across the pattern she calls Hedgehogs, I knew I had to make it soon. But it wasn't till I was brainstorming how to decorate my chocolate box for Isdihara's awesome contest that I knew where. In the book the pattern is an edging, and apparently designed not by Mary Konior, but by Lady Hoare. I took just one repeat though, to make a little hedgehog for my box. You have to use your imagination to see him, as he is more a suggestion of a hedgehog than a clearly defined one, but I think he's rather cute. The two rows of Chain Reaction (a pattern that is designed by Mary Konior) are his hedges, of course! At the moment he is wandering in the open field snuffling for insects and grubs.

In Which I Actually Drink Tea

2010-11-23T15:57:00.000-08:00

Because I really must make a Tatting Tea Tuesday post at least once, even if (pause to gasp) I actually do not like tea. Which I don't. At all. However, it is the perfect day for tea, as this peek out my window proves. So I decided to try some Vanilla Chai.

Every time I tell my tea-drinking friends that I do not like tea, they assure me that if I try chai I will love it. I've tried it before and I don't love it. But it is ok.

The main reason I am drinking it today though is that this teabag came slipped into a card from my friend Jessica. Yes, the Jessica I tatted a wedding doily for in July. So this tea is most suitable for a tatting day.

It also seems fitting, since my tea comes from a newlywed, that my piece of tatting for today is a heart. This is Betsy Evans' Small Tatted Heart. I've seen this pattern before, but only in a diagram, never a picture of it actually tatted up. This is probably why I've not been struck by its beauty before. Just yesterday, though, I ran across it on a blog, and knew I needed to try it. So I picked up a shuttle that was already wound with size 10 thread, and started it immediately. (That's how it came out yellow -- I think the last thing I tatted with this shuttle was Jeff's Sine Wave Star.) I am quite pleased with the results. This is an elegant little heart, and it fits my stringent requirements for heart patterns. For me to like a heart pattern, it must look like a heart. There are a lot of patterns out there that only suggest hearts and just aren't shaped enough like a heart to please me. This one does please me. But I would never have guessed it would from the diagram, so I guess my lesson for today (after "Chai is ok") is that one should always give a poor little pattern a chance before dismissing it!

Halloween

2010-11-09T10:08:00.001-08:00

Halloween was over a week ago, yes. But here is a delayed reflection on the tatting that my Halloween involved. I didn't wind up tatting any ghosts or pumpkins or other themed patterns (although I have been eying Jane's spider -- wonderfully simple and effective pattern, the kind that motivates me to learn the involved technique it uses, not so that I know the technique, but so that I can make the pattern!). The tatting that did make into my Halloween was just a simple edging.

You see, the part of Halloween that I have always loved the most is dressing up. I don't go in for any of the store-bought princess or witch costumes -- the ones made of the thinnest shiny cloth you've ever seen, all in a one-piece dress. Nor the headed and footed dinosaur costumes, although the right one of those can look great. The only store-bought costumes that have ever entered my family's house were a puppy dog suit and a tiger suit for my two little brothers when they were about 6 and 8. They were so cute that that was definitely worth it. But normally when my family dresses up we prefer to make our own outfits out of clothes we own already or buy at the thrift store. I've been a cat before, by dressing entirely in black and making myself cat ears out of a headband and construction paper. Or my brother dressed up as a 19th century insane asylum escapee -- he began the party in a "straightjacket" made out of a long-sleeved dress shirt, and gradually disguised himself to assimilate into society with a top hat and tailcoat. Naturally I and my sister and brother (he of the tiger suit, now grown up into a teenager) were delighted to be invited by some friends to go Creepy Caroling on Halloween this year. This involved dressing up in Victorian clothes and going door-to-door singing carols with suitably spooky subjects. There were a couple parodies of Christmas carols, such as "Hark the Streptococcus brings / Strep sore throat to all who sing", a song from the movie The Nightmare Before Christmas, and an H.P. Lovecraft song about a man surrounded by Fish-Men. My sister and I, however, were sold at the point where we dressed up in Victorian clothes. We scoured the thrift stores and found long skirts and vaguely Victorian jackets. I made myself a wide-brimmed bonnet out of cloth and cardboard, and was very proud of finding a blazer with lapels that could be pinned up so that it looked like a high collared blouse. It was white, and I realized that a jabot would be exactly the thing.

So, rummaging around in my drawers of tatting-related items, I found a handkerchief that I had edged in white many years ago when I was first learning to tat. I pinned it at my throat with a cameo-type pin, and voila -- a repurposed jabot which did not cost me any money at all.

Of course, it would have been nice to have a jabot completely of lace, and I already considering the idea for next year. I have such plans for caroling next year. The late Victorian era is of course when tatting first hit the scene, and the Victorian style lends itself so beautifully to abundances of lace. In addition to a full-lace jabot, I would love to make a little reticule to carry around my wrist. My friends and I are much too old to trick-or-treat, and we looked on this simply as a fun outing to bless other people with singing, not to obtain candy from them. But since it was Halloween night, everyone opened their door intending to give candy, and while we continually repeated "No, thank you," there were several elderly couples who refused to take no for an answer. There's a point at which you bless people far more by letting them give you something than by refusing it, so we wound up with about 8-10 pieces of candy each, and the poor gentlemen in our party had bulging coat pockets from trying to accommodate the carrying needs of all the ladies whose skirts were pocketless. Hence a reticule would have a practical purpose. But far beyond practical purposes, I have designs boiling around in my head now which I am itching to execute. I would like to make it of black cloth, largely circular and with a drawstring, and cover the cloth with black lace. I love tone-on-tone looks, and it would be fairly easy to find a doily pattern which I could use to make lace of the same circumference as the bag. Or perhaps I should try to design or alter a pattern into a cylinder shape, to eliminate excess folds in the bag. I could also try to make this bag functional year-round, by doing something similar to the bag Frivolina recently showed, which has pockets for shuttles and space for thread, and opens out flat into a nice work surface when spread on a table. Perhaps it is a little pathetic to be so excited about something 11 months away, but I cannot wait to tat more Victorian costume elements. There are so many possibilities!

An Ebay Funny

2010-10-23T21:11:00.000-07:00

In browsing tatting shuttles on eBay I came across this description

THIS IS A NICE SEWING TOOL CALLED A TATTING SHUTTLE. THESE ARE USED TO ASSIST IN THE SEWING PROCESS BY HOLDING THREAD WHILE EMBROIDERING OR SIMILAR TASKS. SHUTTLE MEASURES 3" LONG.

This may in fact be true. People may use shuttles to hold thread while embroidering. I wouldn't know. But it amuses me, this being the main thing used to explain a shuttle. Perhaps we could explain a tatting shuttle better by saying that it is used for, oh, I don't know, .... tatting?

Wedding Present

2010-09-10T23:58:00.000-07:00

When I was 9 years old, I was the oldest of five kids, and like all good homeschooling families, we went on educational camping trips. Ok, I am sure that there are good homeschooling families out there that hate camping. And there are probably even some that take vacations that have nothing to do with learning. Maybe. At any rate, we were at Fort Clatsop, happily learning about Lewis and Clark who made candles out of tallow, when we noticed another family. Not just any old family. Another family with five kids! Just our ages. Conversation led to conversation and the discovery that we were camping at the same campgrounds led to a joint s'more night and grown-ups discussing homeschooling and churches while all of the ten kids except the ones who couldn't walk yet darted around trees and bushes playing hide-n-seek in the dark. Afterwards our moms pushed Jessica and me, the firstborns, together and strongly suggested that we be penpals. I was ambivalent about this idea, but soon we were exchanging letters like this one, and I discovered that having a penpal was awesome. We kept each other's mailboxes full of long letters, valentines, Easter cards, and birthday cards, and candles, photo collages, bookmarks, and doilies for gifts. I became a connoisseur of stationary and collected an entire boxful ready for more letters. In high school and college our output dwindled to less than a letter a year, but come June this year I found one last envelope in my mailbox: a beautiful wedding invitation! Touching story, you say, but what does this have to do with tatting?Well, I knew immediately what Jessica and her fiance needed for a wedding present. For my high school graduation present, Jessica had given me a crocheted doily, and every time I asked her what she wanted for her birthday, she would ask for something for her hope chest and hint, "Your tatting is always so pretty..." I never did make her anything bigger than a motif or a bookmark, so here was the opportunity to mend that error. For a wedding present, she needed the largest tatted doily I could find a pattern for. My tatting book collection is small yet, and I turned to the Tatter's Treasure Chest as the only source of large doilies I owned. It had to be large and elaborate, befitting a once-in-a-lifetime gift occasion, but it also had to be absolutely beautiful. I wanted to look at it and not be able to stop looking and I wanted something I thought Jessica would feel the same way about. Along the lines of picking something Jessica would like, I wanted it to look old-fashioned, although with a little modern sleekness to it, not completely Victorian, but just a bit updated. That left a lot of stools to fall between, and while I do love the doily I chose, I'm not sure it met all these criteria to the fullest. But I do think it is beautiful and I hope Jessica thinks so too. I chose the Wild Rose doily. Here it is started:

As you can see, I have a big honkin' ball of ecru thread there. I picked this up at a garage sale, already wound into this ball, so I don't know the brand or the size or even the age. But it tats up pretty nicely and looks to be about a 30 or 40. There were about two months from when I received the invitation at the beginning of June until the wedding at the end of July, so I worked on this doily nearly every night and the week before the wedding all nine motifs were finished and a Wild Rose doily was born.

This is the first piece of tatting I ever blocked. Yes, I have been tatting for ten years.

No, I kid you not. My tension is pretty tight normally and I have so far remained lazy and just avoided floppy patterns altogether. But now I finally had motivation, and this doily had to be perfect. So I found a big towel, laid it over cardboard, washed my doily and pinned the fight out of every picot. Or at least every picot I had pins and time for. It.took.for.ever. I am not going to be a fan of blocking anytime soon. But I blocked Jessica's wedding present.

Then the next day I pulled out every single pin and wrapped it up in red tisssue paper. Here is a close-up on one of the motifs.

And a look at the pattern made in the center.

I feel a love-hate relationship with the negative space in this doily. The original pattern prescribes some long chains to fill the space, the

idea I suppose being to look like stems that the "roses" of the motifs are growing from. I think the chains are stunningly ugly. So I left them out. I wanted to figure out a small design to fill in the resultant space. But by the time I arrived there, it felt like that moment my high school watercolor teacher always lectured us on: the point where it doesn't quite feel done and the temptation is to mess with it and put on this color or that color (this motif or that motif) and by the time you've played around for another hour, the picture is just overdone. And you wish you

could go back to that moment when it didn't feel quite done, because it was better then. It really was done. My teacher impressed very firmly on us that you just have to know when to stop. So I decided this was when to stop. Here is the finished Wild Rose doily in all its glory.

It and the red tissue paper and my family and I went off to Jessica's town and we watched her marry her man and Jessica and I had a joyful reunion in the bathroom after the ceremony, and we ate pasta salad and cake and came home happy. I give you a deliberately blurry picture of the happy event in order to foil anyone who may want to stalk Jessica or her family.

This is the 13th summer I've known Jessica, and we'll probably correspond for many more. Maybe sometime soon I'll have an excuse to tat her some baby booties.

Gifts

2010-07-26T08:45:00.000-07:00

In general I just tat what I want to tat. This results in a long backlog of patterns that I am doing because I fell in love with them visually, not because I have anything constructive to do with them. I think this is pretty normal for lace makers. But I've recently started trying to do something that is also pretty normal for lace makers, at least for all the tatters I've found blogging: tat things to be given as gifts. So I'm starting with these simple little bracelets.

It's just a row of split rings with a square of block tatting to be drawn through the last ring to fasten the bracelet. I came up with this pattern years ago while learning split rings and reading Judith Connor's Tatting with Beads, but it's so simple that it doesn't really count as my own design. Anyway, these are just the right size to be included in a card, so I plan to send a lot of them to my girl friends as birthday presents or just because presents. I've been having fun picking just the right color for each girl. These also work well with variations, like adding picots, or alternating a ring with a square throughout the bracelet. I prefer the non-picot version, though -- most of the time what I look for in jewelry is a streamlined, simple, and classy design. I've seen a lot of tatted jewelry in books that I hate, so it took me a long time to believe that good tatted jewelry was possible. But nowadays I see more and more beautiful pieces every day, and I have quite reformed my position.

An Imperfect Post

2010-07-24T08:12:00.000-07:00

This blog has been turning over in my head like an insomniac at night for weeks now, but I keep putting off starting it because I cannot think of a perfect idea for a first post. I have decided this is ridiculous. If I don't start I will never start. So here is an imperfect post for you all.

This upside down picture is of a little doodle to use up the thread on this shuttle which I bought on ebay. I am quite pleased with this shuttle and the two others from the same lot. They are all plastic post shuttles, old enough that I have no idea of the brand, and they are actually the first shuttles I have used in ten years of tatting that are not bobbins. I started out quite spoiled, with metal bobbin shuttles with a built-in hook. I know that some people would hate that type of shuttle, but I love them. I love them so much, in fact, that I was afraid that I would hate post shuttles for the lack of a hook. Fortunately I have adjusted pretty well to using a needle to make joins, and in fact this method is much better for tiny threads which the large hook on my bobbin shuttles necessarily distorts. From now on I shall use the post shuttles for smaller threads, and save my bobbin shuttles for 20s and 10s.