I've Got Photos!

Much better photos, too, with my new camera. Happy Birthday to me, and thanks, Mom and Dad!

Every September my parents volunteer at the Peach Cobbler Mennonite Relief Sale in Georgia. This year I've decided to send along some tatting for the sale-- nothing grandiose enough to be in the auction, just little things for the craft area. Everything you've seen in the last couple of weeks, and most of what you will see for the rest of the summer, is going to the sale. All this is by way of explaining why I keep doing several of the same pattern in different threads, and why I've been making more jewelry than I could possibly ever wear, and why I sometimes use colors that don't necessarily appeal to me-- because none of it is for me.

Today's pattern is "Lacy Treasure" by Marilee Rockley. Marilee calls it a pendant, but then she also calls for size 10 thread. I never go bigger than 20 because it's too hard on my hands, and I also don't find large threads attractive. In size 20, the piece turns out to be better sized for an earring.

Here it is in LadyShuttleMaker's "Swamp Flower" HDT, with brass focal beads. I found the pattern rather addictive, so I did it twice more.

The blue pair is LadyShuttleMaker's "Icicle" (one of my favorite HDT colorways), and the green is Lizbeth color 681.

Before I made all of the above, I made these.

These are "Elegance" from Marilee's book Boutique Tatting. The large beads on the side are a little bit too big, but I have a pretty limited selection of beads in these colors. Anyway, I found the "Swamp Flower" colorway interesting and decided to do something else with it. That was the first pair of "Lacy Treasure, and one thing just lead to another.

And since I now have a camera, I can show you photos of a couple of earlier pieces that I was only able to show blurry scans of before because the beads didn't allow them to lay flat on the scanner.

The first thing I notice about this camera is that it shows color much more acurately than the previous camera, or even the scanner. It's going to take me a bit to get used to the settings, but I think I'm going to be happy with it. And if I'm not, I know where the sales guy lives! Turns out the guy in the shop who sold it to me is the husband of one of my harp friends; I didn't even know he worked there, and it took us a few minutes to figure out where we knew each other from. Then we had a grand old chat, and he was able to home in on exactly the camera I needed.

After my wild and crazy birthday weekend (if only), I have to go back to work tomorrow night. That means tonight I need to try to stay up as late as I can. Let's see, what else can I tat?