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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
Wish me luck! And if you have any tips on clearing security with small metal objects of the tatting trade, please let me know.
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.
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 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.
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.
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!
