Feels Like Spring

 It doesn't really feel like spring outside but it does when I look at my tatting! I looked into my thread box, saw these two colors together and got inspired. Unfortunately the green is size 50 and the pink variegated is size 30! But I liked the combo enough to go ahead with it despite the very noticeable size difference and I think I got away with it. I did have to alter the stitch counts in the center of the round motif, and it still ruffled slightly. Worth it. The round motif is from Blomqvist and Persson's Tatting Patterns and Designs. Absolutely my favorite pattern from that book and one I keep coming back to. It makes a good snowflake but I love it in colors too. I'm not sure who to credit the bookmark pattern to. It's a classic pattern that I used to use a lot for making cross bookmarks, but this time I didn't feel like making a cross so I just made it as a basic strip shape. The tassel is an easy finish that I use as a clever excuse to not sew in any of the ends. 

Some Late Valentines

 I don't always tat hearts in February but this year I got in the mood and produced really a surprising amount of them:

I did some classic free patterns: two of Rosemarie Peel's heart, and Sweetheart by Birgit Phelps. Then I made two of Frivole's Heart Within. I bought this pattern quite a while ago but hadn't picked it up to actually tat yet. (This is what I mean when I say I don't always tat hearts.) I'm definitely a fan! It was fun to tat and I think it produces a nice-looking heart. I'll definitely return to it. Then the last one in this picture is the Peacock Heart, which I believe is also Birgit Phelps.

These hearts are from an unnamed pattern by Maimai Kaito, who is on YouTube and Instagram. I was not aware of her before finding this heart but she has some really good patterns. She presents them in video format, and I don't usually like getting info from videos. It doesn't work for my brain. However, I was able to take a screenshot when she showed the diagram, and I tatted it that way. It's a great little heart and I made several.

Forty-Eight

 Snowflake #48 from Four Dozen Tatted Snowflakes! Also the number of snowflakes currently hanging on my wall. I want to tidy them up and get a good background before I show you all, but I will be doing it soon! A few of the snowflakes I will probably not tat again, but overall there are so many of them that I loved, not only the final product but the process of tatting them. I've been waiting for this book since I first saw Robin Peretti posting prototypes of the snowflakes on her blog, and it was very much worth the wait. I promise someday I will be making blog posts that are not about Four Dozen Tatted Snowflakes, and it may in fact be soon, but... it might not be soon either.

Almost There!

 I'm getting so close to the end of Four Dozen Tatted Snowflakes! Here are #37-47 all laid out: 

And a close-up on #45 (top), #46 (bottom left), and #47 (middle right):

#45 and #47 are some of my top favorites from the whole book. It might be the Josephine knots. I just really like the overall effect of both of these designs. 

So close to tatting the whole book! 

38 and 39

 

Still working my way through Four Dozen Tatted Snowflakes. Here's #38 at the top and #39 at the bottom, with a little doodle to use up the rest of my thread. I'm planning a display for all 48 of them once I finish so I can admire them for the winter. 

Some Distractions

 

Continuing to tat through Robin Peretti's Four Dozen Tatted Snowflakes, and here are snowflakes #34 and #35. Unfortunately I got distracted during each of these and if you want to amuse yourself by spotting the mistakes, you can. There is one major one, which I had to be creative about to make the snowflake work with, and one minor one which just affects the symmetry. Hopefully I'll tat them properly next time, but for now they are good enough, and you can still see the beauty of the patterns. 

Snowflake Time

 I've been tatting snowflakes at top speed for the past month or so. Here is a sampling:

Most of these are from Robin Perfetti's new Four Dozen Tatted Snowflakes. I was so excited for this book and it did not disappoint. So many lovely designs and so satisfying to tat. I've made it up through Snowflake #33 and I'm probably going to start again as soon as I finish #48. 

This picture also has some other Robin Perfetti designs and a lot of Frivole designs as well. There's also Muskaan's Frost Flower and some designs by Harohlahlala of Shade Tree Designer Tatting which I found on Facebook.

There are so many fantastic snowflake designs out there that I am having serious trouble making enough time to tat every one that I like. Not an onerous problem to have! 

A Bit of Color

 I felt like a bit of color after tatting so many snowflakes, so I pulled out my Lizbeth Sky Blue thread and tatted up a shuttle's worth.

The first one is Mary Konior's Queen of Hearts, which I haven't tatted in a long time. I thought I was done tatting hearts but I recently found an old one in my box of tatted bits and pieces and remembered how beautiful it is. Second here is A Star For Marguerite from Jennifer Williams. Just found this pattern and I really like it. Quick and pretty.

BUT I'm definitely addicted to snowflakes and I couldn't resist turning that star into a snowflake. The original is a little cleaner and better but overall I thought it looked pretty good modified. I'd tat either version again. 

Posies of Snow

 

I just discovered Nicola Bowersox's Posy Ice Drop pattern and I love it as a snowflake. Astute minds will notice that this is not an Ice Drop. I wanted a plain snowflake, so I left out the ice drop part and it works well without it. There is also an optional outer round that I opted not to do. The outer round version is quite pretty also and I might tat it in the future. But this look is the one I'm slightly obsessed with at the moment. I tatted two in quick succession and I'm not sure that I'm done tatting this version yet either. It's very quick and satisfying to work up.

Still Here, Still Tatting

 Despite how long it's been since I posted anything here, I've been tatting along. Here's a couple of snowflakes from last week: 

Yes, it's so hot that I've been living in tank tops and shorts for two months. No, apparently that doesn't keep me from wanting to tat snowflakes. Snowflakes are definitely my favorite type of tatting design. There's something about their symmetry that is very satisfying. The fact that I can complete a whole piece in a few days and get the endorphins from a finished piece without even having to sew the ends in doesn't hurt either.

The big snowflake is Frivole's Astrila, whose pattern I got for a birthday present last year. The little snowflake is Muskaan's Frost Flower. It's very simple and so cute. I'm definitely whipping up a few more of these soon. 

Spot the Slip

Here's my first snowflake of the season! Unfortunately I slipped-up at the very beginning of the pattern and didn't notice till I was a full spike past the error. See if you can find the mistake! The nice thing about tatting is usually only the tatter can find the imperfections....

The pattern is Frivole's excellent Snowdrop, and it was very fun to tat, as well as looking beautifully snowflake-like when finished. I've already started a second one.

First Fair - Sort of.

When I was little I made a salt clay on plywood map of Egypt during homeschool and entered it in my state fair. I remember winning a few blue ribbons and one Champion ribbon for similar projects, though I don't remember which ones I won them for. Despite these early positive memories of fairs, I hadn't entered anything in one since I was about 8. This year I finally changed that!

I wanted to enter the doily I am currently working on but was only about 2/3rds done by the time the entry deadline came around. So, deciding to save that for next year, I went through my overflowing tin of small motifs and tried to determine which ones I had completed in the past year and which fair categories they fit. Here's what I came up with, on display during the fair:

As you can see they both won blues. It was nice to hear that the ribbons are awarded based on objective quality of the work, not just on comparative quality. I'm pretty sure that there were no other pieces entered in these two categories, which were both specifically for tatting, so comparative quality wouldn't have told me much about my work. 

Here's the bookmark up close. This comes from an antique edging design that I love. I figured out how to turn it into a cross, coming up with adaptions to turn the corners both on the ends of each arm and in the center. This is one of my few forays into design and I was ridiculously proud of myself afterwards.

And for the Holiday category I tatted one of Frivole's beautiful snowflakes. This is Regal, with one small adaption -- I substituted small rings for the beads. 

Finally, here's a shot of what I spent most of my time at the fair doing: 

My square dance club has a great deal with the fair organizers. We square dance every night of the fair and square dancers wearing their badges and square dance attire can get in free to the fair! So I go every day of the fair. Check out the floor we are dancing on. That is about 20 eight foot square wooden pieces, cunningly fitted together by slots. It all comes apart and stores on a trailer. We set it up and take it down every year, and boy is it an operation. It takes ropes, sledgehammers, and a lot of muscle. But it's worth it.

Next year at the fair: Square dancing and a Jan Stawasz doily!

Tatters

For once what I have to say is not about me and my tatting, but about other tatters. This weekend I went to a square dance festival. Square dances are organized in 'tips' with breaks in between. Usually during the breaks there is round dancing, which is somewhat related to square dancing but not the same. I don't round dance, so I pulled out my tatting during these breaks, which sparked several conversations with interested observers. One of these was a gentleman who had learned to tat himself a year or two ago. He told me about the projects he had completed, including the WIP that did him in. Unfortunately he hasn't tatted for months because he is stuck on a confusing diagram. It was great to meet someone else interested enough in the craft to have taught himself, and I can only hope he gets unstuck soon.

The other tatter I want to talk about is not someone I met but someone I read about in this article. She has been tatting for NINETY-THREE YEARS. Ninety-three years. Ninety-three years. Can you imagine? It's amazing.

Bright and Cheery

I tatted four or five hearts this Valentine's Day, but they are all as yet unphotographed. They were enjoyable, but as the cloudy skies cleared up to bright sun and crisp winds this week, my mood turned to BRIGHT BOLD SPRING. I couldn't wait to get the heart thread off my shuttles so I could put this cheery crazy color combination on. It's not at all something I would normally choose, but it's making me happy right now.

A Small Flurry

Well, I stopped tatting a snowflake a day after Christmas, because I had something else to focus on. But that doesn't mean I stopped tatting snowflakes! Here are a few more that fell from my shuttle at a slower pace in the last two weeks:

The top left is a Vida Sunderman flake, called Jingle Bell Snowflake; the top right is the trusty Minaret (also VS); and the bottom is a lovely vintage design which Gina the Tatting Goddess rewrote in modern terms. I love this pattern so much that I can only find one problem with it: it has no name. Since I'm tired of describing its origin every single time I refer to it, I have decided henceforth to call it "Gina's Snowflake".

TIAS Days 1 and 2

I decided to do Jane's TIAS in a bright and cheery yellow. Here's the first two days:

I flipped them upside down to show you my guess at what it is: A bicycle! See the first wheel, and the bar for the seat going along the top? On to the handlebars or the second wheel next!

A Very Merry Christmas

And for the 25th snowflake, Mirabelle! A pattern by Frivole will do nicely to round out the snowflake-a-day-until-Christmas posting.

I hope you all are having (or have had) a very Merry Christmas!

"Joy to the world, the Lord is come! Let earth receive her King."

Celeste, Finally

I bought the Celeste pattern nearly as soon as Frivole put it out. But from then on there's always been a reason to delay tatting it. However I have finally finished it today! I eyeballed these picots so they are a little wonky. But it turns out my mother loves the pattern so I shall tat another one for her and I will probably use a gauge for that one.

Twenty-Three

Snowflake number 23: one of my favorite patterns.

The 22nd

This is a different Ribbon Floss Snowflake from last time, I promise! That makes what, 4 in the last 4 days? Don't worry, I'm sick of them too. Something else is in store for tomorrow.