Tatting Fool

Our Dear Friend, the Tatting Goddess

2012-02-15T10:20:00.002-07:00

By now most people in the tatting blogosphere have learned of the death of Gina Brummett, the Tatting Goddess. She had been battling cancer for some time, although she only mentioned it once on her blog; that was in early January when she let us know that she was in remission. Less than two weeks ago, she was still stitching and taking watercolor classes. I just learned from Georgia Seitz that although Gina had been doing well, she caught pneumonia and died very quickly; her immune system was undoubtedly weakened from fighting the cancer. I am glad to know that it was quick.

Although Gina's blog posts lately have not been as frequent as they used to be, they were as cheerful and full of life as ever. Full of life-- that is how I will always remember Gina. She was always trying something new in her stitching and other creative pursuits. She breathed new life into old tatting patterns. She created her own patterns, too. I had the pleasure of tatting Gina's gingerbread boy pattern shortly after I started this blog. (I can't provide a link to the pattern right now because the bandwidth limit for the day has been exceeded. Apparently all the tatters are looking at Gina's patterns today.)

Gina was always so generous with her time as well. Other tatters have stories of how Gina encouraged them or helped them learn new techniques. When I, as a non-sewer, wanted a plain purse that I could embellish with tatting, Gina sent me one only a few days later, made with fabric from a skirt that had once been her mother's.

At the same time, Gina also sent me this lovely bookmark that she had made.

Although I never got to meet Gina in person, I considered her a good friend, having been readers of each other's blogs and exchanged many e-mails on tatting and other topics. She was an asset to the tatting world and will be greatly missed.

Georgia has the address if anyone would like to send a sympathy card; e-mail her at aktatter@aol.com.

Nice Ornament, Terrible Photo

2012-02-13T09:34:00.000-07:00

No matter what kind of lighting situations I tried, I simply could not take a photo without washing out the more delicate blues and greens in the Blue River Glades thread. To get a more accurate picture of the colors, scroll down to the previous post.

Pinned on a ball 3 inches in diameter, four of the Fandango motifs with four of the small connecting motifs fit just perfectly around the middle. I am very pleased with the result.

Oh, All Right

2012-02-10T08:34:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I mentioned I had a project that wasn't ready to show yet. Well, it's still not finished, but I've decided that since it won't be for several days, I might as well go ahead and show what I've got so far.

The larger diamonds are Jane Eborall's Fandango motif, which is a favorite of mine. The connecting motifs are just four rings the same size as the ones in the Fandango. The variegated thread is one of Lizbeth's new colorways, Blue River Glades; the solid is Wedgewood Dark.

As for what it's going to be, that's a surprise!

TIAS Day 12: Finished!

2012-02-09T10:22:00.001-07:00

And here is the little blue goat, complete with all four legs. Do be sure and visit the TIAS blog to see all the different colors of goats that have been tatted over the last few weeks!

There are a couple of other things I've been tatting this week, too. However, one of them is not ready yet, and I can't show the other, so you'll just have to be patient.

TIAS Day 11

2012-02-07T09:24:00.000-07:00

The front leg sticks out awkwardly at this point, but it should fall into place with the next join.

TIAS Day 10 and New Ornament

2012-02-05T10:49:00.001-07:00

Here's day 10 of the TIAS.

Just two legs left-- probably!

I've done some other tatting, too. Several people have been putting hearts together to form larger motifs lately. Jane did it, and so did Jon. Well, Nancy Tracy included one in the January Be-stitched newsletter; you can find the pattern on her website here. I immediately fell in love with the negative space in this design and knew I had to tat it soon.

I used LadyShuttleMaker's "Marina" HDT in size 80. For the first heart, I did it just like the instructions say, using two shuttles. Then I realized that you actually only need the second shuttle for that clover at the bottom point, and the chain leading to that clover needs to come to a point anyway. On the first heart, I did a lock stitch immediately before the clover in order to achieve that point before making the clover with the second shuttle. On all the other three, I just used ball and shuttle, and a shoelace trick before and after that clover.

The motif is pretty as it is, but I decided to bling it up a bit for a Christmas ornament.

I used a variety of beads as I pinned it onto the ball-- clear Swarovski bicones, light turquoise faceted Czech beads, purple beads off an old necklace I got for cheap at a yard sale last year, and some bronze-colored seed beads. The ball is an irridescent metallic one that I got from Handy Hands.

I absolutely adore this colorway, and I hardly have any left.

I am determined to use every last inch of it. What would you do with this much thread?

Changes to Blog

2012-02-03T15:42:00.005-07:00

I decided that the amount of stuff in my sidebar was getting way out of hand, so I figured out how to add tabs at the top of the page. You can now find the links to my tutorials and harp videos under those tabs.

While I was playing with that, I made the most wonderful discovery. You know how you used to be able to click on a picture, and it would take you to a separate page where you could enlarge it to full size? A while back, Blogger decided to inflict upon us that god-awful black page where you can scroll through all of the images in a post but can't enlarge them to see the detail-- and tatters want detail! Funny how they come up with ways to make things worse than they were before, and assume that everyone will want them. Well, it turns out that you can go back to the old way of displaying your pictures. Just go to Settings --> Formatting and scroll down to where it says "Showcase Images with Lightbox". Click the drop arrow, change it to "No", click "Save Settings" at the bottom, and you will rid yourself of that horrendous black screen and allow your readers to enlarge photos the way they want to. Not that I have strong opinions on this or anything.

TIAS Day 9

2012-02-03T10:11:00.000-07:00

Yep, definitely a goat. And there was me, assuming it couldn't possibly be an animal because it started out square.

TIAS Day 8

2012-01-31T09:19:00.000-07:00

Day 8 of the TIAS is out, and it seems that, given the extraordinary colors that some of us have chosen, there must be a lot of new and unusual breeds of goats around.

Mine will look a bit extotic in these shades of blue and pink (Lizbeth "Denim Whisper"), but I'm really looking forward to seeing the green and pink goat, aren't you? I did consider making the TIAS in brown or gray, on the theory that these colors would be neutral enough to work with whatever it turned out to be; but you know that if I had gone that route, Jane would have given us a parrot instead!

More Little Snowflakes

2012-01-30T12:50:00.000-07:00

Just a very quick post to show you two more mini snowflakes. They are again two flakes off this ornament.

This time I didn't have to adjust the stitch counts on either of them, as they both stand perfectly well on their own.

TIAS Day 7

2012-01-28T09:45:00.000-07:00

Well, now I'm starting to think it is an animal after all, if days 4-6 were the hind legs and today we made the tail. I have no idea what kind of animal, though.

Chains and Locks

2012-01-27T11:04:00.006-07:00

Don't worry, this post isn't nearly as unfriendly as the title makes it sound. I'm talking about zig zag chains and lock stitch chains.

In all of today's samples, I had red thread on the shuttle and blue on the ball. For simplicity, I started all of them by just tying the two threads together in a Big Ugly Knot. Obviously, you would normally use standard techniques to begin without a knot and hide the ends.

A zig zag chain is made by alternating sets of flipped and unflipped double stitches. As with the second half of a split ring, you have to switch the order of half stitches when making the unflipped DS. Mark Meyers has a video of it here. Mark uses two shuttles in the video, but you can also do it with ball and shuttle. When you alternate flipped with unflipped DS, you are also alternating which thread is the core thread. You are essentially making a series of short chains going in opposite directions; hence the zig zag or rick rack effect. Here is a sample using sets of 4 flipped, 4 unflipped.

As Mark demonstrates, you can also put picots at the places where you switch, but I didn't in this case.

This technique is not very common, but there are a few patterns that use it. Rozella Linden (Ruth Perry) makes use of it in her book Celtic Tatting: A Design Journey on an Ancient Theme, and Mark uses it as a header in this edging. I also used it in my "Crazy Daisy" snowflake.

If you make a zig zag chain with only 1 flipped and 1 unflipped DS, the zigs and zags are so short that you basically get a straight line, something that a normal tatted chain doesn't do very well.

This is a useful technique where you need a straight line, such as a bookmark tail or the stem of a flower. I did this for the flower that I made the other day.

(Note: regarding the flower itself, I came up with the design on my own, but it turns out that it is basically the same as a Mary Konior pattern that I wasn't familiar with, "Wild Rose". Thanks, Suzanne, for pointing this out.)

Then there is the lock stitch chain. You know what a lock stitch is, right? It's just like a regular DS, except that you don't flip one of the half stitches; it doesn't matter which one. It's common to do it after you use a split ring to climb from one round to the next; you need a picot at the top of the SR to match all the other rings in the round, so you make a mock picot and begin the following chain with a lock stitch so that the core thread doesn't pull through the MP. Well, for a different effect, you can make a whole chain of lock stitches. As with the 1/1 zig zag chain, it makes a straight line (although either of them can be forced into a curve), and when using two colors, they both show up.

Jane Eborall has a snowflake here that uses lock stitch chains. I often use them for bookmark tails as well.

At first glance, the lock stitch chain looks similar to the 1/1 zig zag chain, but on closer examination you can see the difference. In the zig zag chain you can see the double stitches; on the lock stitch chain you can't because there aren't really any. The two colors interlock more closely, and the surface of the chain is slightly bumpier. The lock stitch chain is also a little bit thinner than the 1/1 zig zag and is therefore more flexible as well. This scan shows the two of them together.

These two types of chain can often be used interchangeably. Just be aware that they do give slightly different effects and choose the one that best suits your needs. As always, I encourage experimentation!

The Bird Bag

2012-01-26T11:41:00.001-07:00

Here's the latest organza bag, complete with hummingbird, flower, and edging.

The flower didn't quite go on straight (this is why I don't sew), but that's OK; this is New Mexico, after all, I can always say it's blowing in the wind. Also, the purple Lizbeth thread I used for the flower is not as good a match as I thought for the purple in the hummingbird-- I should have looked at it in the morning when I have sunlight-- but again, that's OK. Colors wouldn't match like that in nature anyway, and it still goes pretty well. The green is a near-perfect match.

The edging I used is #34 from Anne Orr's Classic Tatting Patterns. It's such a simple pattern that it doesn't even matter about it being written "old style" because you don't have to read it again after the first repeat. Yet it is one of the first patterns ever to use split rings. Orr first published the book as Tatting, Book No. 35, Revised in 1940. In it, she gave instructions for "reverse stitch", which is exactly the technique that we now call split rings, and also for joining while making reverse stitch. Compared to most tatting instructions of that time, Orr's directions for both the reverse stitch and the join are remarkably clear and concise (although she does neglect to tell you that you have to switch the order of the half stitches). While this is one pattern where Orr did use what we now call split rings, there are several patterns where she has you cut and tie in places where today's tatters would use split rings to climb out of a round, so she obviously didn't realize the full potential of her invention. Still, to have thought of it at all was quite an achievement, and we owe her a great debt.

If you've been paying attention, you'll know that I always fill these bags with nice-smelling things to help freshen up my apartment. In this case, I went with dried jasmine flowers, lemon peel, and vanilla bean.

TIAS Day 6

2012-01-25T09:57:00.001-07:00

Here's day 6 of the TIAS.

It could still be a locomotive, if these are streamers of smoke we're making at the top. Or it could be a jellyfish (rotated the other way), a lady's fancy hat, or a deformed rabbit. I don't really think it's the latter, of course, because Jane's designs never look deformed.

New Flower

2012-01-23T09:48:00.000-07:00

I devised this flower yesterday to go with the recently made hummingbird (scroll down a couple of posts), because you can't have a hummingbird image without a flower, can you?

The leaves are obviously just big rings. The stem is a 1/1 zigzag chain; this is slightly different from a lock stitch chain-- I might do a post on this sometime soon. I ended the chain with a mock picot secured by a lock stitch, to give myself something to join the flower to. If I were going to do it again, though, I would make the flower first and join the stem to it to avoid that extra stitch of green after the join.

I was originally planning to make a simple 5 ring flower in the purple, using dimpled rings to make it more interesting. Then I decided it really needed a pale yellow center to counterbalance those intense plum and jade colors, so I did ordinary rings of yellow in the center with dimpled chains of purple. An added benefit was that I was able to make the petals larger than I would have the other way; also I didn't have to mess around with closing dimpled rings, which is sometimes not that much fun.

The threads are Lizbeth 688 Sea Green Dark, Lizbeth 643 Grape Medium, and DMC 579, the light yellow. The green and the purple are both amazingly close matches for LadyShuttleMaker's "Marina" HDT that I used on the hummingbird.

I have also put an edging on the bag that this is going onto. Now all I have to do is stitch the flower and the hummingbird to the bag. I'll show it again when it's all assembled.

TIAS Day 5

2012-01-22T10:02:00.000-07:00

Have you read the Golden Compass series? In the third book, The Amber Spyglass, there's a world where, instead of having a central spine like we do, all the large animals have a diamond-shaped body with a limb at each of three corners and a head at the fourth. I've decided that must be what the TIAS is.

I have been doing other tatting as well, but it's going a bit slowly.

TIAS Day 4

2012-01-19T10:16:00.000-07:00

Here's the progress thus far. No new guesses.

Pretending and Remembering

2012-01-17T09:02:00.000-07:00

I'm tired of winter-- hence the new background. As part of my effort to pretend it's summer, I tatted Karey Solomon's hummingbird, from her book Make Many Merrily.

The thread is LadyShuttleMaker's "Marina" in size 80. I'm not sure if she's still making this colorway-- I hope so, because I don't have much of it left.

This is a fun pattern to make, what with the floating chain beak and block tatted wing. As you're tatting it, that block tatting looks alarmingly straight, but it develops this nice graceful curve as you add the feathery chains at the back.

This is not the first time I've tatted this pattern. I first made it several years ago for my grandparents. Now that they have both died, it has been given back to me.

In this version, I used rayon machine embroidery threads in turquoise and green doubled with metallic threads in silver and gold, and let me tell you, that was NOT a fun combination to work with! The rayon by itself was no problem-- the flowers in this picture are the same type of thread, and they were easy-- but combine the rayon with another thread with completely different characteristics, and it becomes a nightmare.

Moreover, when I made this one, as you can see, I made alterations around the beak in order to change colors. I made the beak in advance, in plain black cotton, and set it aside. I started the bird using two shuttles in the turquoise/ silver threads, and when I got to the beak, tied it on-- sorry, I can't remember exactly how-- then cut off the second turquoise/ silver shuttle and replaced it with the green/ gold shuttle. In the block tatting section, you can see that one turquoise/ silver shuttle is still there. The bead used for the eye is sewn on later, when I sewed the bird to the fabric.

If I hadn't been so determined to make it in these colors, I probably would have given up; it was much easier making it the second time around, not only because I was using ordinary cotton thread, but also because I used the same thread throughout-- an advantage of tatting this particular pattern in a variegated thread.

And as an example of the difference thread size can make, here are the two birds together:

I'm planning to put the new bird on one of those little organza bags, but I need to tat a few other things to go with it, so it could be a while.

TIAS Day 3, and a Small Flurry

2012-01-16T12:10:00.001-07:00

First, day 3 of the TIAS.

Like most people, I am intrigued by the extra picot on the first corner. The obvious inference is that something will be joined there that's not joined to the other corners, but what? And of course, knowing Jane, we can't necessarily assume something just because it seems obvious. I still think a locomotive is a possibility, with this section representing the smokestack. Or, as I said to Jane, it could be the window of a house with someone looking out of it. Or a slice of Spam!

Remember this ornament? This weekend I altered a couple of the snowflake designs on it to make them sturdy enough to hang on their own. The ones that were on the ball are still on it; I've just made others as stand-alone ornaments.

The first flake I looked at was the first one I made:

The problem with this one is that it's really just the outline of a snowflake, with nothing to support it in the center. As snowflakes go, it's actually pretty boring, as well as not being stable.

Inspired by Jane and Wendy, both of whom enjoy joining their tatting to various metal filigree findings, I placed this link in the center. It's not exactly filigree, but it's got loops you can join to, and more importantly, there are six of them.

The tatting has the exact same stitch count as the original; I got lucky enough that the link fits perfectly. It really livens up the design, don't you think? As with the original, this is DMC size 80 thread.

Next, I took on this flake:

Here, the problem is that the outside is too big for the inside. First I tried it with another silver link. The loops of the link are considerably bigger than the inner tatted rings on the flake, so I omitted these rings and joined the chains to the metal loops instead. I also joined the clovers to each other for stability.

This worked out fine, but it doesn't really look like the original. The thing I really liked about the first one was the tighter curves on the chains. In order to achieve this, I had to go back to the small inner rings of the first one; in this case, I compensated by making the clovers a little bit smaller.

I like this one very much, and now that I have a workable design for it, I'll probably tat it again and write it down.

Spiced Ham

2012-01-14T08:57:00.001-07:00

Did you miss me? Did you even notice I was gone? It was, thankfully, for less than 24 hours. My blog was blocked because Blogger's automated detection system had flagged it as a possible purveyor of, well, Monty Python said it best...

What I had to do was request a real live actual human person to review my blog to verify that it's not spam, and then it was restored. They said that it could take up to two business days, so I was pleasantly surprised to find my blog back up and running this morning. I'm not even angry about it anymore, and won't say some of the nasty things I was planning to about Blogger and Google. They are doing the best they can, after all. The only thing I wish they would have done differently is that it would have been nice to get an auto-reply when I submitted my request for review, just to let me know that my request was not lost in cyberspace; that would have made yesterday a lot less anxiety-ridden for me.

I'm still not entirely clear on what a "spam blog" is, despite having read half a dozen articles on the topic yesterday. All these articles are full of words that look remarkably like English, yet convey little or no meaning to a person who is not already an expert on spam. I did manage to glean than it was something somebody else did, not anything I did; but then, I had already made that assumption based on the knowledge that I am not a spammer.

So, as far as I'm concerned, this is what a spam blog would look like:

I've got a story about Spam and Spam-like substances, too. When I was 16 my family took a road trip from Atlanta to the Grand Canyon. It was a lot of fun, and the only downside was that the brand-new tires on our car turned out to be defective. One of them fell apart on the way out, luckily very near my aunt and uncle's house where we were spending the night. Another fell apart on the way back, in the exact center of nowhere, on Sunday July 4. Amazingly, we actually managed to find a service station open that could sell us a tire, but there were people in line ahead of us and we had to hang out there for a couple of hours. Needless to say, there was absolutely no entertainment available except for browsing the convenience store. During that time, my sister came across three items side by side on a shelf. The most expensive was "Deviled Ham", and the middle one was "Deviled Spam". Yeah, of course we were familiar with these items even if we had never consumed them ourselves. But then, just in case the Deviled Spam was too hoity-toity for some people, the cheapest of the three was "Potted Meat Food Product". Yes, that was the actual name of it. Some real marketing genius went into that one.

This is actual Spam, not some cheap knock-off. Doesn't it look appetizing? Now that your appetite has been whetted with this image and the thought of "Potted Meat Food Product", it's time to think what you're going to have for lunch today. How about a flavorful pulled Spam with slaw sandwich, followed by a delectable apple and Spam turnover?

Or if you're in the mood for something more exotic, why not try the Hawaiian classic Spam musubi, incorporating Spam with elements of sushi? Here's one variation on it:

I did consider trying to tat some Spam, but I realized that no one has dyed any thread in just that color-- and let's pray they never do. So instead, I'll show you the tatting I did do, day 2 of the TIAS. If you're new to the online tatting community, TIAS stands for Tat It and See. Every January, Jane Eborall presents us with a new pattern but doesn't tell us what it is. She releases small bits of it every few days, and you just tat what the directions say, then take a photo and send it to Jane to post on the TIAS blog, along with any guess you might have as to what it is. Here's what we've got so far:

I still haven't ruled out a locomotive, and I see on the TIAS blog that someone else has the same idea. Part of the trouble, of course, is that you don't know which way is up; it could be oriented any way, and we won't know till later.

I hope the one or two weirdos out there who actually like Spam haven't been too offended by this post; you must be used to the mockery by now.

A Galaxy!

2012-01-12T16:33:00.000-07:00

Well, I guess five stars don't really make a galaxy, do they? Close enough.

Sorry about the grotty background color; it was the best I could find to show all of the threads equally well. The two on top are size 50, in "Pear Glace" by LadyShuttleMaker and "Sue's Blues" by Yarnplayer. The three on the bottom are size 40, in Yarnplayer's "Elf", Krystledawne's "Fairy Faint", and "Wine Berry", also by Krystle.

The pattern is Julie Patterson's Christmas ~~Snowflake~~ Star. It is a really fun pattern to make, challenging enough to make it interesting, but small enough to tat in an evening.

On the three tatted in "Sue's Blues", "Elf", and "Wine Berry", I shamelessly stole Fox's idea of using JK's instead of regular rings off the SCMR's. For the other two I stuck with regular rings. To be honest, it probably doesn't make that much difference to the untrained eye.

My regular readers will know that with larger pieces, I prefer to block properly using pins and water. With small pieces like this, I don't find blocking necessary; instead, I do like Fox does and just press them under a weight until they lie flat. Specifically, the weight I use is Squijum. For some reason, he likes to sit on the scanner lid; so after scanning the tatted items, I just leave them on the scanner with the lid closed (I do take out the colored background paper, just in case the color rubs off) and wait for the 11.7 pound tiger to do his job. After a couple of days of this, the tatting is perfectly flat.

TIAS Day 1

2012-01-10T09:19:00.003-07:00

Here is the e-mail I just sent to Jane:

Here's my day 1 tatting. I'm excited to finally be participating. In years past, I've always followed along and had some private guesses, but never actually did the tatting because I always had some large project going that I didn't want to be distracted from. This year, I deliberately avoided having anything big going in January.

It's really too soon to make a reasonable guess, but I'm going to have a go anyway. I can't think of any critter that would have that angle, so I won't guess an animal at this point. Following on last year's airplane, I wonder if this might be a locomotive? Although in that case, I'm not sure how the beads will be used.

Pretty simple so far, but we'll see. The thread I'm using is Lizbeth color 120 Denim Whisper.

New Blog Alert!

2012-01-08T20:18:00.000-07:00

Just in case you haven't seen it, Martha Ess has started a new blog called Tatting Origins, exploring tatting history and old techniques. This is fascinating stuff, and everyone should check it out!

Wreaths

2012-01-08T00:00:00.000-07:00

The thing is, I can't get into tatting Christmas things until it is properly winter, and around here that doesn't happen till mid-December-- a fact for which I am mostly grateful, because as previously mentioned, winter is not my favorite season. It does mean, though, that I then continue to want to tat Christmas things well into January. But hey, Christmas happens every year, so that's all right too.

This pattern is LaRae Mikulecky's Berry Wreath. The lock stitch chain hanger is my own addition; I couldn't decide whether I liked it better with the chain looped back to the starting point, or carried over to the next repeat, so I tried a couple each way.

The green variegated thread on the bottom is Yarnplayer's "Forest" colorway. All the other threads are Lizbeth: 685 Dark Evergreen, 638 Christmas Green, 601 White, and 671 Christmas Red. I made the white one because I needed a fourth one so that there could be two of each style of hanger-- otherwise when they're all on display together the one hanger that was different would have looked like a mistake-- and I wanted them all in different colors but didn't have another appropriate shade of green. That logic makes perfect sense, right? Right? Anyway, I think the white with red josephine knots makes an attractive ornament, even though by definition it no longer represents a wreath of greenery.

This could also be made as a spring wreath by using a lighter shade of green, and a variegated thread for the JK's to represent flower buds.

I have a couple of comments on this pattern, in case anyone feels like making it. It's not spelled out in the directions, but what you need to do is make the first round with green ball and shuttle CTM. After joining the last chain to the base of the first ring and before starting the second round, cut off the green shuttle thread and replace it with a red shuttle thread; keep the same green ball thread. Also, in round 2 the directions say to make the berry at the end of each chain before you join to round 1; however, I found that it lays better if you do the join first and then make the berry.

In size 40 thread, each wreath measures just over 1 1/2 inches, or about 4 cm, in diameter, so I'm adding them to the collection of mini-ornaments.

Christmas Angels

2011-12-30T18:50:00.000-07:00

Hey, there are 12 days of Christmas, right? Anyway, I'm going to save these for next fall's sale, so I'm actually well ahead of the game for once.

This is Anne Bruvold's SSSR Angel, although once again, I made them with regular split rings rather than wait till later to add the second thread. The top one is done in LadyShuttleMaker's "Holly Jolly Christmas" HDT, size 50. The other two threads are both by Yarnplayer: "Elf" and "Forest", both size 40.

I'm going to keep making these miniature ornaments because they're fun, so I hope there are a lot of people with small trees who want to buy them!

On a completely unrelated note, Squijum just discovered that he likes marinara sauce. Other foods he likes that he theoretically shouldn't include spanokopita, banana chips, and pumpkin bread. What weird foods do your feline masters enjoy?

The Scent of a Dragon

2011-12-29T16:50:00.002-07:00

I made Anne Bruvold's dragon again.

I used Tatskool's "Violet" for the body, tail, and head, and Yarnplayer's "Night Wind" for the wings. In size 80, it fits nicely on a little organza bag.

The edging is from Tatting with Anne Orr. It's the very last pattern in the book, used by Ms. Orr as a placemat edging.

Then I filled the bag with yummy-smelling things-- dried lemon peel, pieces of vanilla bean, and pieces of nutmeg-- and put it in my sweater drawer.

In case you're wondering, I joined the edging directly to the bag as I tatted by sticking a small crochet hook between the weave of the fabric. I stitched the dragon on with invisible thread.

That Night in Bethlehem

2011-12-24T09:23:00.001-07:00

My favorite Christmas pieces to play are the songs I like to call "so traditional that nobody has ever heard of them". By this I mean songs that may be popular and have a long history in their cultures of origin, but for some reason have not spread widely to other cultures. On the one hand, you have pieces like "Silent Night", which was originally German, but is now sung wherever Christmas is celebrated-- and with good reason, because it's so beautiful. On the other hand, there are many wonderful songs that are virtually unheard of outside the place where they came from, but that somebody somewhere will be touched to hear again.

And so for Christmas Eve, and the last in this series of holiday harp videos, I offer the Irish carol which I happen to think is one of the most beautiful melodies ever written: "An Oiche ud i mBeithil". I have it on good authority from Tatskool's authentic Irish son-in-law that this is pronounced "an EE-ha ood ee MAY-hill". In English, it's "I Sing of That Night in Bethlehem", arranged by Sunita Staneslow.

More Minis

2011-12-22T10:08:00.000-07:00

Continuing with the mini-ornaments, here is another of Jane Eborall's bells.

I must have had better tension on this one, because the shape is more even than the first. Even so, I think I will need to wet both of them and shape them properly. The colors on this one are Yarnplayer's "Night Wind" and Lizbeth color 631 "Light Country Purple". It pretty much has to be tatted in size 20 thread because there are so many beads that any smaller thread would make it all out of proportion (unless you can get your hands on some ultra-tiny seed beads, of course.)

Actually, the bell may or may not be a mini-ornament. While it is only 1 1/2 inches (3.5 cm) tall, and 1 3/4 inches (4.5 cm) in diameter at the bottom, being 3D gives it enough substance that it could be put on a full-size tree without getting lost. However, it is definitely small enough to go on a table-top tree as well. Anne Bruvold's SSSR Angel, on the other hand, is definitely a mini. I got out my giant quarter again for this scan. (Thanks for that comment, StringyDogs, it gave me quite a chuckle.)

These are both tatted in size 50, but they would still be minute even in 20. The colorway on the left is "Icicle" by LadyShuttleMaker; on the right is "Snowflake" by Yarnplayer. As I do with Anne's dragon pattern, I decided to make these with regular split rings instead of SSSR's, and for the same reason. You do have to add a second thread eventually for the SCMR, so why give yourself extra ends to hide, when you could just start with two shuttles CTM and have all the threads you need? In any case, this was a fun little pattern to make, and very quick. I like the way the skirt is designed; I never in a million years would have thought of doing it that way. Two of them would make a nice pair of earrings, too, if you need a last-minute gift.

These mini-ornaments are fun, and I'm going to keep doing them-- partly because I'm in the mood for some instant gratification, and partly because I'm trying not to get caught up in a large project right now. In years past, I have always observed the TIAS with great interest, but I've never tatted it before because I was always in the middle of something else and didn't want to get distracted. This year I am determined to participate, so I'll save the big projects for February.

Happy Chanukah!

2011-12-20T20:26:00.000-07:00

It is Tuesday evening here, which means Chanukah has begun. If you're confused because your calendar says it starts on Wednesday, that's because the Jewish religious day runs from sundown to sundown; thus Jewish holidays begin at sundown the evening before the day they're marked on the "regular" calendar.

Tonight I offer two Chanukah songs, "Ma'oz Tsur (Rock of Ages)" and "Blessings Over the Candles (Blessings on the Menorah)", both arranged by Sylvia Woods.

Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silent

2011-12-18T16:00:00.000-07:00

This melody always gives me chills, and Stephanie Curcio's arrangement makes it even more haunting. Harpists can find the sheet music at her website, http://www.harpmusicpublisher.com/.

At one point in the video, you can hear my next door neighbor coming home; I hope it's not too distracting. I decided not to do another take because I wanted to be done before my downstairs neighbor started her regular nightly screaming and swearing fit... apartment life, gotta love it. I was doing these videos to help people calm down during the holiday season, remember?

A couple of people have asked me what I'm doing when I reach up to the top of the harp with my left hand. The short answer is I'm flipping sharping levers. Now I'll try to explain that as simply as I can, but I don't think I can do it without using at least a little bit of musical jargon.

The type of harp I play is most accurately called a lever harp; you may also hear it called a folk harp or Celtic harp. Near the top of each string is a lever that raises the pitch of that string by one half step. In other words, it takes a string that would be equivalent to a white key on a piano and makes it equivalent to a black key. Before you start playing, you set the levers for the key you will be playing in. Sometimes, though, there is a sharp that is not in the key (called an accidental). If the accidental is present throughout the piece, you can also set that lever before you start playing; if that note alternates between being sharp and being natural, you will have to change the lever with the left hand while you are playing. This is what you see me doing at a couple of points in this piece, "Carol of the Bells", and "The Cherry Tree".

Below is an illustration of my levers, which are known as "blades". Click on it to read the labels. You can see another type of lever here.

This should not be confused with tuning. Tuning, which has to be done before you play, is when you turn a peg to adjust the tension on a string in order to produce that string's particular pitch as accurately as possible. Raising a sharping lever changes the length of the string to produce a completely different pitch.

Just don't ask me about pedal harps-- way more complicated!

Star/ Flake Rant

2011-12-17T11:54:00.000-07:00

When I saw this on Fox's blog, I knew I had to tat it. I love the look of rings on rings, and this one has both SCMR's and rings on split rings! I literally bounced with excitement when I saw it. OK, so maybe I need to get out more. Anyway, here it is, tatted in size 50.

The colorway is "Holly Jolly Christmas" by LadyShuttleMaker. I love how she's added just a hint of blue to the Christmas mix. The pattern is by Julie Patterson.

The design is called "Christmas Snowflake". I can barely bring myself to type that. My frequent readers will know that one of my biggest pet peeves is calling something a snowflake that clearly isn't. It is a fact of nature that snowflakes always have six points. That is simply the way that water molecules crystallize. Google it if you don't believe me. You wouldn't call a triangular motif a butterfly, because it's not shaped like one; likewise, a motif with any number of repeats other than six is not a snowflake because it's not shaped like one. I am therefore choosing to call this a "Christmas Star" instead. There, I feel better.

The tiny little bell I tatted a few days ago and this pretty little star have inspired me to do a series of mini-ornaments for table-top trees. I probably won't do a huge number of them, but enough to have a good selection at next year's sale.

To Drive the Cold Winter Away

2011-12-16T12:51:00.002-07:00

This is what it looked like around here last week:

I much prefer to look at snow in pictures than to actually have to deal with it, so I'm happy to live in a place where it is infrequent and short-lived. Tatted snow I like, though. The flakes on this ball are all improvised and quite small. And by improvised, I mean that several of them really wouldn't work if they weren't pinned in place. I might work on the stitch counts on some of them to come up with designs that could actually stand on their own. These are all tatted in DMC size 80. EDIT: Just to be clear, these are four different views of the same ornament.

Not being a fan of winter, I love the title of the song "To Drive the Cold Winter Away", and I also enjoy the cheerful lyrics. This arrangement is by Ellen Tepper, from her book The Harper's Accomplice. Please visit Ellen's site, by the way, and click the "Reviews" link at the bottom-- all of the images on that page are Ellen's own embroidery, and you can click to enlarge them and see every detail-- WOW!!! Anyone in the Philadelphia area should also check out her schedule, as she has several concerts next week.

Carol of the Bells

2011-12-14T20:42:00.002-07:00

This is one of Jane Eborall's 3D bells. It is quite easy to tat; as long as you're comfortable with beads and split rings, it's a very simple pattern done all in one pass. I'm definitely going to make more of these. I have several ideas for different color schemes, and since I'm making them for next year's relief sale, I can make as many as I want, and they don't have to be done before Christmas.

I was a little surprised at how small it turned out. It's tatted in size 20 thread; here it is next to a shuttle for scale.

"Ukrainian Bell Carol" is probably the only tune in this holiday series of mine that you might conceivably hear on some store's Christmas soundtrack. However, the version you'll hear on Muzak will probably make you want to run screaming from the store, whereas this one, IMHO, is pretty and interesting to listen to. It is arranged by Darhon Rees-Rohrbacher.

Side note: Has anyone else been having trouble lately with Blogger putting the paragraph breaks in random places? I've been having to fight with the computer to put them where I want them.

Dona Nobis Pacem

2011-12-11T19:44:00.002-07:00

Today's musical interlude is not strictly a Christmas song, but is nonetheless completely in keeping with the spirit of the season, or at least what should be the spirit of the season. This version of "Dona Nobis Pacem" is arranged by Angi Bemiss.

I've added links in the sidebar to the previous harp videos so you can still find them when they drop off the front page.

Two Finished Projects

2011-12-10T17:19:00.000-07:00

In the last week there have been two things I've posted and said I was going to do more with them. I have now done so.

First up, Mary Konior's "Posy", which I showed four days ago. It is now attached to a small organza bag along with MK's "Leaf Braid" edging.

And the bag is filled with cinnamon sticks, cloves, and dried orange peel for a wonderful scented sachet.

I found out that Jo-Ann's sells the bags, so I'm going to do more of these.

Next up is the dragon I posted last Saturday, which now has a friend.

I joined them first by the middle ring of the clover at the end of the tail; I put tiny little joining picots on either side of the decorative picot/ bead. Then after every couple of split rings, I joined the second dragon to the first and brought the threads around to the other side so that the tails would wrap around each other. Then I joined the dimpled rings on the heads in the same way that I joined the ends of the tails. I didn't join the bodies or wings to each other at all. After the dragons were finished, I made a lock-stitch chain about six inches long and threaded it through the picots that form the dimples on the two dimpled rings at the head; this is the hanging cord.

This is really hard to photograph, so I hope I've been able to describe what I did adequately. Here are some close-ups of the heads and tails.

The Cherry Tree

2011-12-09T22:20:00.000-07:00

This is Nancy Tracy's cherry pattern, more or less. As I was making the second cherry, I noticed that I had made the first one too big by one repeat, so I made the second one to match it. And because I was making it in colors instead of all white, I obviously couldn't tat the leaf continuously with the cherries. Instead, I made a lock stitch and small picot at the end of the first stem and reversed work, then worked my way down the second stem to make the second cherry. I joined the green thread to that small picot between stems to start the leaf. I used balance double stitches for the stems to help them lay more nicely.

The legend of the cherry tree has its origins in the Apocrypha. The version that has come down to us in song is slightly different from the original, and there are many different Cherry Tree Carols. It's quite possible that none of these may be the one you know. First is a tricky (at least on the harp) Appalachian tune called "The Cherry-Tree", arranged by Thom Dutton. Next is an English version arranged by Sylvia Woods (if you like harp music, visit Sylvia's website-- she has has best selection of harp CD's of any place I know). Finally, another Appalachian tune called "As Joseph Was A-Walkin'", also arranged by Thom Dutton. This last one doesn't actually mention a cherry tree in the lyrics, but its lyrics were incorporated into later Cherry Tree Carols, so it is considered part of the "Cherry Tree Series".

(1)“The Cherry-Tree”: Traditional American, Arranged by Thom Dutton ©2001 Cape Side Music, Used by permission. (2)“The Cherry Tree Carol”: Traditional English, Arranged by Sylvia Woods©1984 Woods Music and Books, Used by permission. (3)“As Joseph Was A-Walkin’”: Traditional American, Arranged by Thom Dutton ©2001 Cape Side Music, Used by permission.

Purple Posy

2011-12-06T09:11:00.000-07:00

This is Mary Konior's "Posy" motif from Tatting with Visual Patterns. It's the same thread I used on the dragon.

This is not the first time I've tatted this, but I always have to be careful joining the last ring of each repeat to the last ring of the previous repeat. It usually takes me several tries to get it right. I either end up with the thread coming out on the top-- it needs to come out on the bottom in order to pass it behind the work to start the next repeat-- or else I somehow manage to get the ring wrapped around the whole piece so that I can't close it. Once I figure out how to hold the threads to make it work the first time, subsequent repeats are much easier, but I still have to go through this process every time I make this pattern.

I have plans for this posy. You'll see.

Taladh Chriosta

2011-12-05T10:30:00.004-07:00

This year I decided I would like to reduce the stress of the holiday season and counteract the nerve-jangling music inflicted on us by the malls (actually, I can't remember the last time I was in a mall, but I assume they still play nerve-jangling music) by making a series of videos of harp music. I'll be presenting these at random intervals throughout the month of December. The first one is the Scottish carol "Taladh Chriosta", or "The Christ Child's Lullaby", arranged by Sunita Staneslow. Sunita's own recording of this piece can be found on her CD Christmas Day. Lyrics can be found here.

Color!

2011-12-03T22:56:00.000-07:00

The second "Emily" doily is now finished, but not blocked yet. I haven't had a chance when I would be around to keep an eye on Squijum the pin-muncher for the entire time it takes to dry.

The doilies are pretty and elegant in all white, but I have to say, I'm really a fan of color.

This is, of course, Anne Bruvold's Flying Minor Norwegian Dragon, to which I added a lot of beads along the spine and tips of the wings. The thread is one of LadyShuttleMaker's; I think the colorway is "Royalty", but I could be wrong. Sherry? It's size 80.

This pattern calls for SSSR's for the tail and neck, but I always make it with regular split rings instead. You have to add a second thread anyway to make the chains on the body, and that gives you two extra ends to hide. If you start with two threads CTM from the beginning, then you already have what you need when you get to the body and don't have to hide any ends till you finish the head.

I have an idea to tat a second dragon and have their tails twined around each other. I think it will work, but of course I won't know until I try.

One Down...

2011-12-01T14:05:00.000-07:00

Here is the first "Emily" doily completed.

I'm 3/4 of the way done with the last round of the other one as well.

The pattern is by Janet Carroll, from the book Elegant Tatting Patterns. The book says the finished size is 7 1/2 inches (19 cm) in size 30 thread. I used size 20, so I expected it to come out slightly bigger; instead, mine measures 6 3/4 inches (17 cm). Either I tat WAY tighter than I thought, or else Ms. Carroll must tat very loosely. In any case, it's a nice size for putting under a candlestick, vase, or other small knick-knack.

I've been thinking lately, a lot of people don't like doilies because they consider them fussy and unnecessary. But they actually serve the very practical purpose of protecting your furniture from being scratched by whatever you set on top of the doily. People do still put decorative objects on their tables and shelves, so it seems like it shouldn't be that hard to make them see the value of doilies. The problem is with the word "doily" itself, which reminds people of some spinster great-aunt. So maybe we should start calling them "anti-scratch mats" instead and people might start getting interested again. And while we're at it, maybe we should bring back hair oil for men to revive interest in antimacassars... nah, that's going too far!

Yes, I Still Remember How to Tat!

2011-11-30T21:45:00.000-07:00

OK, I've finished tatting the first Emily doily, and it's on the blocking board now.

Once again, I have to thank LadyShuttleMaker for her blocking templates. The doily definitely would not have come out as well without this. Some of you are having heart palpitations at the thought of sticking in all these pins, but I say if I've spent this much time tatting it, why would I not take the time to make sure everything is properly aligned? (Hint: Since this round template is divided into 6ths, it also works for snowflakes. Use the square template to block anything with four or eight repeats.)

I should be able to show this all nice and pretty tomorrow. I've also made a good start on tatting the last round of the other doily, so soon I'll be able to show the pair.

Since I got back from San Francisco, Squijum has taken to lying on my feet. It may simply be that he likes the fleece lap blanket I'm using, but I suspect he's also trying to prevent me from leaving again.

The City by the Bay

2011-11-28T18:38:00.000-07:00

My parents and I went to San Francisco, where my sister recently moved, for Thanksgiving. I didn't get any tatting done, except for a little bit during the 2-hour flight delay in Phoenix, but we had a great time.

Sea lions on Pier 39. There was a much larger group, but I forgot my camera that day, and they were too far away to get a good photo with the phone.

There was also a sea lion off by itself which was clearly sick. I called the posted number for the Marine Mammal Rescue Service, but I couldn't believe the number of people who were standing there saying, "Oh, look at the poor sick sea lion" and NOT CALLING THE NUMBER!!! I mention this because it is an excellent example of the well-documented phenomenon of human psychology where we all tend to assume that if there is a problem that many people are aware of, I don't need to do anything because someone else will take care of it. This is a perfectly easy tendency to overcome, but only if you are aware of it.

When we went by on an evening cruise around the bay the following evening, the sick sea lion was gone, so I hope that means there was a successful rescue. They can't always rescue an animal if it still have enough energy to fight back, but I don't think this one did. (They can't use tranquilizer darts because when the animal feels the dart, its instinct is to enter the water, where, being tranquilized, it will drown.)

For the rest of the trip I remembered the camera, so here's the Bay Bridge during said evening cruise...

...and the Golden Gate Bridge at sunset.

There Will Be Tatting Soon...

2011-11-19T21:30:00.002-07:00

I promise! I have finished the book and am once again working on the "Emily" doilies. I'm not that much farther on than I was the last time, though, so no new pictures. I know you need eye candy, so here's Squijum helping me sort socks.

Amazingly, the sock is still intact.

The Dragons Won't Let Me Tat

2011-11-17T13:36:00.002-07:00

I have not tatted a stitch all week. Here's why:

I've been waiting for three years for this book-- the last in the series-- to come out. I'm about halfway through it. The blog will resume when I finish.

My favorite line so far is this. When the werecats are negotiating joining the rebel army, they have only a few requests, the main one being food: "Each of us will be promised a single duck, grouse, chicken, or similar bird per day, and every second day, a bowl of freshly chopped liver. Even if we do not choose to eat it, the food will be set aside for us." Doesn't that second sentence just sum up the feline spirit?

Squijum says that is as it should be.

Vintage Tatting

2011-11-13T10:05:00.000-07:00

Browsing an antique store yesterday, I found a couple of nice hankies.

I also saw but did not buy this purse.

It's not the greatest photo, taken with my phone through a glass case, but the whole thing is tatted.

There were a few other hankies and pillowcases with tatted edgings, but not very interesting patterns so I didn't buy any others. However, as I was digging through the piles of textiles, I did make sure to leave anything with tatting on it on top.

Nearing the Finish Line

2011-11-11T10:01:00.000-07:00

First I need to ask if anyone has heard from Tatskool lately. I talked to her a bit over the summer when I ordered some of her threads, and she sounded like she was going through a rough time. Then I e-mailed her last week just to ask how she was doing and haven't heard back from her. Tatskool, if you're reading this, could you let us all know if you're OK?

Here's my progress on "Emily".

The one on top shows round 6. On the bottom one I have just started round 5. I decided to tat rounds 5 and 6 together because you can climb into round 6 without cutting the threads. Of course, this does mean you have to put a massive amount of thread on shuttle 2, whereas if you cut between rounds you wouldn't need a second shuttle for round 6 at all. On the upside, I learned with the first one just how much thread it takes, so hopefully I won't need to add any more on the second one.

If you look closely at the top one, you'll see little gaps at the base of the 3-ring clusters in round 4. Those definitely weren't there when I tatted it. They appeared when I blocked it, and I really didn't feel like I was stretching it that much. At least it happened evenly all the way around, so a non-tatter might think it was supposed to be that way. Now I'll have to try to make it happen the same when I block the other one.

There are seven rounds in all, so I am fairly close to being done.

A Find!

2011-11-08T09:48:00.000-07:00

Searching Barnes & Noble's website for "tatting" will mostly yield a bunch of books on tattoos. However, I did manage to find this little gem.

It's a reprint of a vintage tatting booklet; the original cover looked like this.

I do wish some of those vintage designers hadn't been so modest about publishing their names. Unfortunately no publication date is given, either. If anyone has the original and/ or knows when it was published, I'd love to know. I suppose we'll never know the author.

The booklet includes a variety of edgings and corners, tableware, medallions, and cord pulls. The cord pulls have the tatting attached to a bone ring (and back then it was real bone), only instead of making double stitches over the ring as we do today, the directions call for covering the ring in single crochet.

Here are a few interesting pictures.

I think this is a book I will have lots of fun looking at, even if I never tat anything from it.

Emily and Josephine

2011-11-05T19:38:00.001-06:00

Here's the progress on the "Emily" doilies. I've completed round 4, and started round 5 on the bottom one. After I finish round 5 on both, I won't be able to fit them both on the scanner anymore.

A bit of blocking after round 4 might have been in order, but it's not too bad. It will be easy to straighten out, anyway.

I like all the little Josephine knots on these two rounds. They have much more character than picots would.

Better

2011-11-03T10:59:00.001-06:00

Here is an improved photo of the mobile, taken in morning light.

The colors are much more accurate here. It makes a very interesting shadow on the wall, too, don't you think?

And here is what I started on during all the hours I spent waiting for the stiffener to dry on the mobile.

This is the beginning of a pair of doilies for next year's relief sale. My mom says doilies don't usually do too well at the sale, so I won't make very many of them. But I figure there are always a few people who still like traditional doilies. Or maybe I could take a page from Isdihara's book and call them candle mats. The finished size should be about eight inches, so they will sit nicely under a pair of candlesticks or vases.

The pattern is "Emily" from the book Elegant Tatting Patterns by Janet Carroll. I've always been drawn to this pattern, although I've never tatted it before. As the book title says, it looks elegant. I also think it's a very timeless design. You know how some patterns look dated a couple of decades later? I don't think this ever will.

I still have four rounds left to tat on these. I decided to work on both doilies at the same time because I knew that if I finished one I wouldn't want to do the second. I'm finding that they do need to be blocked every couple of rounds, so doing it this way I can work on one while the other is blocking.

I decided, after considerable debate, to make these in all white, which is something I hardly ever do. I still keep thinking, oh, I could just do one round in blue... but no, I will stick with the white to let the design shine through. I'm using Flora size 20 (and it feels like rope after using size 80 for so long on the mobile).

During the several weeks that I didn't post, I also got behind in reading other people's blogs. I'm getting caught up now. It's nice to see what other people are working on.

Done!

2011-11-02T19:55:00.000-06:00

None of these photos is really outstanding. I'll try again tomorrow with what passes for daylight in my apartment.

It took me longer than I expected to be able to put it together because so many coats of stiffener were required to make it hold its shape. And then a couple of the pieces bent slightly as I pulled them off the waxed paper I had set them on for stiffening and wouldn't bend back, so now they are stuck looking slightly off-kilter. I'm OK with that, though. Overall, I'm very happy with the way it looks.

Each star is attached to the one outside it by two jump rings, so they are able to swing freely and all end up at different angles. The mobile hangs from the ceiling by a length of invisible nylon thread.

The pattern is from Ineke Kuiperij's book Kerstallerhande 2. Between the diagram, the photos, and the glossary at the front of the book, I had no trouble figuring out the Dutch instructions. It helped that I also know a few words of German, and Dutch is so closely related to both German and English that I was able, as my dad put it, to just head-butt my way through.

This is the first piece of tatting I've done just for me in several months.

Happy and Sad

2011-10-30T10:51:00.000-06:00

The happy news is that I finished tatting Ineke's star mobile. Here is the final section of tatting, done in LadyShuttleMaker's "Undersea Garden" HDT, and joined to the previous section.

And here are all the sections set together.

I haven't actually attached them together yet. Since each section has nothing in the center to give support, they don't hang very well...

...so they need to be stiffened first. I should be able to show the really completed mobile by tomorrow.

Now for the sad news. My Grandma died last night. I'm not ready to write about it yet. Other than a photo of the finished mobile, I'm not sure when I'll be able to post again.

I'm Alive!

2011-10-18T09:16:00.000-06:00

Sorry it's been so long since I posted. I guess I just needed a break from tatting for a while. I'm back into it now, with the next section of Ineke's star.

This is done in Lizbeth color 632, Medium Purple. It is just like the second and third sections, except that each one gets progressively larger. Also, if you look closely, you will see that this one has a few picots on the outer edge where the next section will be joined. (I hesitate to call these sections rounds, because each of these concentric stars actually consists of two rounds; and the next thing will not be a round in any sense, but rather a fill-in at each of the inner corners of this star.)

The next section will complete the piece, and then I will show it all assembled.

How the Sale Went

2011-09-18T12:22:00.003-06:00

My mom just e-mailed me to let me know how the sale went. Not everything sold, of course; I didn't expect that it would, considering how much I made. But she estimates that the tatting brought in about $200-250, which I think is pretty good. It also brought attention to some of the other jewelry and increased jewelry sales overall. The small earrings-- hummingbirds, dragonflies, treble clefs-- did really well, as did bookmarks. My ornaments also did well, but I'm not sure if that really counts, since my mom bought most of them!

Here's the story of how one of the pendants sold, in my mom's words:

My very favorite, the pale lavender with silver and purple beads, was purchased by a woman with a young daughter---probably around 4-ish---who is going to be receiving the necklace as a Christmas present. The mother did a lot of whispering over the kid's head while she distracted her with a cheap felt ornament, and I had to sneak the necklace out of the display, then in to the mother's purse!

Correction: This pendant, not the one made from Jane's pattern, is the one she was talking about.

It is Marilee Rockley's "Belle" pattern, from the book Up and Tat 'Em. Although it looks a bit pinkish in the photo, it is really shades of lavender.

Several tatted items were purchased by people I have known all my life, including a couple of women whose fiber arts skills are really top-notch, so it's nice to think that they like my work.

As you've probably noticed, I've been taking a bit of a break from tatting the last couple of weeks. However, I am already making plans for next year's sale. I'll make some more of the small earrings since they did so well, some ornaments that I wanted to make for this year but didn't have time for, plus, since I have a whole year, some doilies.

Look What I Found on Etsy!

2011-09-11T11:46:00.000-06:00

Browsing Etsy this morning, I came across this unique butter dish made by madhatterceramics:

The individual listing is here. The same potter also has a small tray and a soap dish made from the same piece of tatting. I didn't buy any of these pieces, as they don't go with any of my other stuff, but I thought I should let the tatting world know about them!

A Brief Diversion

2011-09-06T10:10:00.000-06:00

I needed a retirement gift for my boss; due to a combination of politics within the organization and her health, this was a very sudden retirement, so I only had a couple of days' notice before the retirement party. I therefore took a break from Ineke's pattern to whip up a pair of earrings.

The pattern is Marilee Rockley's "Lacy Treasure", which works up very quickly; and the thread is Krystledawne's "Sea Glass". The seed beads are Miyuki delicas in "Bronze Luster" and "Green Iris." The larger brass beads are off an old choker I got for cheap at a yard sale, and the findings are also brass plated to match.

I'll be able to get back to Ineke's pattern soon. For the moment, however, I need to go to bed, as I am literally falling asleep as I write this.

Just Briefly...

2011-09-02T09:31:00.000-06:00

I know it's been a few days, so I just wanted to give a quick update. I'm about halfway through the next bit of Ineke's pattern. It's taking a while because I couldn't tat at all for a couple of days due to work. I don't understand why nobody will pay me to just sit at home and tat! I'll post again when it's done.

The Next Bit

2011-08-28T20:16:00.001-06:00

Here is the next piece of Ineke's star pattern, done in "Undersea Garden" and Lizbeth color 633. I forgot to mention I'm doing this in my favorite, size 80.

As you can see, this bit is just like the last bit except the points are longer.

Because these parts are not attached to anything in the center, they don't really achieve this shape on their own. Here's what it looked like after I tatted the first round.

The second round of chains gives it some stability, but still doesn't force it into shape. Here's what it looked like with the second round, after I tugged it into shape as much as I could.

Blocking, using Sherry's square template, was really the only way to make this piece and the one from the previous post do what they are supposed to. It only took a few pins, and look at the difference it made.

Incidentally, yes I did cut and tie between rounds here, only because I was using two colors on round 1. On round 2, I didn't want the lock joins to show, and I felt that slope and roll joins so close together would have made it look less smooth, so my only option was to change the shuttle thread.

And speaking of those joins in round 2, the space at the base of each ring was of course way too small to get the point of my shuttle in, so I had to use a 0.5 mm crochet hook. You see where I'm going with this, don't you? Yep, I pulled a Fox.

The hook sort of slid under the callus I have on that finger and was very difficult to extricate without doing further damage. Luckily, I did not bleed any more than this, so once I washed it off I was able to continue tatting.

Continuation

2011-08-25T20:24:00.000-06:00

Here is the next round of Ineke's star pattern.

No, I didn't forget to attach it! The assembly comes later. This is Lizbeth color 663 Bright Turquoise Dark. This bit is not that visually interesting on its own, perhaps, but when it's all put together....

Georgia has just let me know that the quilt for the Tat Days scholarship fundraiser is done. You can see it at http://www.tatdaysscholarship.info/index.shtml.

Beginning

2011-08-24T18:50:00.000-06:00

Now that the sale stuff is all sent off, I am ready to tat something for myself, and to make use of my new Ineke Kuiperij books. I'm starting off with the very first pattern in Kerstallerhande 2, a star mobile. I have completed the center already.

This is an attractive motif by itself, but it's going to be really spectacular when the whole thing is done. It's working up faster than I expected, too.

This is LadyShuttleMaker's "Undersea Garden" HDT, with Mill Hill seed beads. The beads look black in the scan, but they're really a dark teal. I love the way this thread works up!

So, I tatted a little bit this summer...

2011-08-24T10:31:00.000-06:00

I didn't realize how much until I saw it all together, packaged up for the sale.

It's going in the mail to my mom today, but not like this. I sorted it into envelopes of similar items with suggested prices to make her life easier. Here it is thus tamed, and in a smaller box:

I had a helper, too, but he wore himself out.

So if there's any chance it could be feasible for you to get to central Georgia the third weekend of September, there will be tatting there! Lots of other great stuff, too, and all for a good cause. Here's the sale info again, just in case anybody can make it.

Final Ornament

2011-08-22T09:58:00.000-06:00

Another one from The Tatted Artistry of Teiko Fujito. This is motif number 50.

The threads are Yarnplayer's "Snowflake" and DMC color 794, both size 80.

I had to break out the picot guage for this one. I eyeballed the normal picots like I always do (although I would have had an easier time making the thing lie flat if I had made them a little smaller), but for those long picots on the sides of the rings in the center, and the even longer ones on the chains in round 2 that are joined in two places, making them all exactly the right size was of the utmost importance for proportion and overall appearance.

If I were to do it again, I might also lengthen some of the chains by just a couple of stitches. I have not previously had any trouble with patterns in this book not wanting to lie flat, but this one was a real bear for me. The tatting itself was no trouble, but after it was done I had to stretch the outer round with my fingers, press it under a book, block and lightly stiffen it, and then, while the stiffener was still a little damp, put it back under the book (with waxed paper to keep the stiffener off the book). It does lie flat now, although some of the rings look kind of stretched.

That's it. I'm done tatting for the sale. I have just a few earrings left to label, and it should all be ready for the mail by Wednesday. After that, I'm going to start a piece for myself from one of Ineke's books and get my threads and beads back in order.

"Glass" Ornament

2011-08-20T13:38:00.000-06:00

This is Motif 24 from The Tatted Artistry of Teiko Fujito. I thought that, turned vertically like this, it resembles certain types of glass ornaments, like these. I tatted this in blessed size 80. The first round is Majestic color 850, and the third round is Lizbeth color 632. The second round is LadyShuttleMaker's "Undersea Garden". Alas, this was a limited edition colorway and is no longer available, although she does have a couple of other colorways that are very similar. Who says Christmas ornaments have to be in Christmas colors?

As I was blocking this one, I realized that if you turn it sideways it looks like an eye; you would tat the first round in black, the second in whatever color you want the iris to be, and the third in white.

I have just one more ornament I'm going to tat this afternoon, and then I need to get everything for the sale packaged and labelled. Fortunately, this task is already about half done. I should have it all in the mail to my mom by the middle of next week so that she'll have time to sort and price it all.

With each item, I am including one of these:

Spread the word any way you can, right?

Ornaments

2011-08-18T21:47:00.000-06:00

These two ornaments are both from the book Christmas Angels and Other Tatting Patterns by Monica Hahn.

My posts from the last couple of days notwithstanding, I seldom use this book. One of the reasons why is that I always have to change something to make the pattern work. On the star, I actually did not change anything, but only because I couldn't tell what the problem was going to be until I made the final join and got a massive cupping effect. At that point, I wasn't going to re-do it; I just blocked the living daylights out of it and stiffened it a bit, so now it lays flat. If I were to do it again, though, I would make the center smaller by a couple of stitches per ring and chain. The threads on this are Lizbeth 613 Golden Yellow Medium in the center and LadyShuttleMaker's "Old Saint Nick" on the outside.

The other ornament is called "Knobby Snowflake". Of course, if you've been reading my blog for a while, you will know that it is not actually a snowflake at all, as a snowflake by definition must have 6 repeats. It's still an attractive design, though. The directions for the second (red) round of this one were just plain weird. This round is done with one shuttle; at the top of the chain where you start the clover, she tells you to reverse work even though the clover is on top of the chain. Then you come back down with the stitch caps of the chain facing the stitch caps of the previous chain. In other words, you are basically forcing the chains to curve in the opposite direction from what is natural for them, which would result in an awkward-looking line. Instead, I simply did a shoelace trick before and after each clover and allowed the chains to face away from each other as they normally would. (Using a second shuttle for the clover would not be the best option in this case, because then the chain would be one continuous curve instead of coming to a nice point like it does.)

This will be the last size 20 I use for a little while. I'm going to give my hands a break.

Three Crosses

2011-08-17T21:10:00.000-06:00

Considering the sale is being run by a church group, I figure crosses should go over pretty well.

On the left is Mary Konior's "Small Cross" from Tatting with Visual Patterns. I made it in Lizbeth color 651 Medium Blue and LadyShuttleMaker's "Diablo". Yeah, that's right, I made a cross out of a thread named after the devil, and I live in an area where lightning is common in the summer. My inspiration for this color combination? Well, you know, in MK's diagrams the rings are red and the chains are blue.

In the middle is Mary Konior's "Large Cross" from the same book. If I had used the same size threads, the "large" cross would indeed have been bigger than the "small" one; however, I used size 20 for the first one and size 80 for the second one, so the relative sizes of the two crosses are reversed. The threads for this one are Tatskool's "Antique Bronze" on the shuttle and "Cloves" on the ball. It was nice to use size 80 thread after all the size 20 I've been using lately. I find that size 20 puts a strain on my hands and I have to take breaks more often, whereas I can tat with size 80 all day long. This pattern gave me a bit of grief, though; I got 3/4 of the way through it before I realized that the reason it wasn't lying flat was because I was joining the clovers on the long arm in the wrong place. At that point, the easiest thing to do was to trash it and start all over, painful though it was to discard hand-dyed thread.

On the right is a design that has been published in various forms by many different people; you could say it's one of those "traditional" tatting patterns, like Hen and Chicks, except that I don't know if this one has ever been given a name. I got the pattern from the book Christmas Angels and other Tatting Patterns by Monica Hahn. I did have to make a change to the pattern. Hahn had the chains in the corners the same length as all the others, which resulted in their being all smooshed on top of each other. I shortened these chains by several stitches and put just 2 picots on them instead of 3. I should have just put one picot on these chains, as they still overlap just a little, but it's OK as it is; in any case, it's way better than it looks in the book. I used Lizbeth white and Krystledawne's "Twilight Grape". I love the colors, but I must say it was a sore trial going back to size 20.

New Challenges

2011-08-16T10:08:00.000-06:00

I recently acquired a second harp student. This is nice, as it gives me a bit of extra money each month. Next month I'm planning to get a smartphone; this month, however, I blew the wad on tatting books.

That's right, I got six of Ineke Kuiperij's books. And yes, they are written in Dutch, and no, I don't read Dutch. Between the diagrams and online translators, I should be able to manage. I do like a challenge.

August Snow

2011-08-12T20:24:00.000-06:00

I just made three snowflakes for the sale; I just need to add hangers to them.

I've tried to stick with reasonable colors for snow on these. I figure most of the customers at the sale (other than the people running it) probably won't understand the concept of tatting for its own sake; they will want it to "be" something. And if it's going to be a snowflake, then it probably shouldn't be bright purple.

This is "Angels in the Snow", done in LadyShuttleMaker's "Icicle" HDT. This is a terrific colorway if you don't feel like tatting in plain white but still want to convey the idea of winter. It may not be totally realistic, but it gives the snowflake some depth while sticking with the colors that people associate with snow and winter.

Another way of adding a little depth to your snowflake is to pair the white with a very pale solid.

This is my "Crazy Daisy" pattern, done in white and Krystledawne's "Fairy Faint". I've mentioned before that this colorway does not scan or photograph well; it is so light that it's hard to get it not to look white. I think you can see it a little bit, but you'll have to take my word for it that this flake looks way better in person.

On a tangent, I hope that when Dr. Vonthreadmore returns from her travels, she will dye a few solids, because "Fairy Faint" is one of my all-time favorite colorways, and I'm almost out of it.

Finally, there's really nothing wrong with a plain white snowflake, is there?

Cat and Bird

2011-08-10T13:13:00.000-06:00

You are a carnivore. Tigers do not eat cereal.

Or maybe the eating of the cereal was just a detour on your quest to find the magical treats that you are certain can be found in the bottom of the box. Note that the bag containing the actual cereal has now been discarded. And yes, I live in an apartment, so I don't get to choose the linoleum.

As long as the little carnivore doesn't eat any tatted birds, I'll be happy.

This is, of course, my own cardinal that I designed last December. When I made it then, I did it in size 80 to fit on the satin ball; this time I did it in size 20 to hang on its own. Lizbeth 613 Golden Yellow Medium, 604 Black, and 671 Christmas Red.

This is the only one I've made since the original, although several other people have tatted it. What I don't understand is how, in typing up the pattern, I failed to mark all of the ring to ring joins in the oval that makes up the body, AND nobody told me about it! Obviously everyone figured it out, but if anybody wants an updated, accurate version of the pattern, you can drop me an e-mail.

Just Like the White Winged Dove

2011-08-06T19:51:00.001-06:00

From now on, I will only tat abstract motifs with meaningless names, using thread colors that also have very boring names.

Not really, of course, but I am getting kind of sick of getting songs stuck in my head based on what I'm tatting. Does this happen to anyone else?

The white winged dove in question is Jane Eborall's.

I think this is one of Jane's prettiest patterns, and they were fun to make. If you look closely, you will see that I have stuck with my policy of not making two identical items for the sale, although it is harder to do this when realism limits the color choices. The top dove uses Miyuki Delica seed beads with a "silk luster" finish, in linen color, and Lizbeth Dark Evergreen for the olive branch. The bottom one uses Miyuki Delica "Ceylon" seed beads in pearl white, and Lizbeth Christmas Green for the branch. Both use Lizbeth White as the main thread, with 3mm round black beads for the eyes.

I made up my own thing for the olive branches. For each dove, I made the branch first, and as I was tatting the dove's beak, I made an alligator join over the stem of the branch. The branches are thus directly attached to the doves and have no risk of becoming separated.

There is one thing to note if you decide to make this pattern. I don't know about anyone else, but I never read a pattern all the way through before I start it. Therefore, I didn't realize when I started the first one that, except where Jane specifies "vsp", all picots will carry a bead when joined-- not just the long beaded picots, but the normal picots too. Until I figured this out, I made my first few picots a bit small, so getting the beads on them with enough room for the join was a little tricky. After breaking a few beads, I started making the picots longer.

I have to send everything for the sale to my mom by the end of this month, and there are so many more things I want to make!

Fandango Revisited

2011-08-05T16:59:00.000-06:00

Jane Eborall's Fandango Bookmark:

I used Lizbeth colors 142 Turquoise Twist and 632 Medium Purple. I like the way it came out, although I was a little disappointed in the Turquoise Twist; I would have preferred a more gradual change from dark to light and back.

As usual, I made up a tail; this one includes all the same stitches as the last one, with the addition of a couple of small single-shuttle split rings; on these, I carried the other shuttle through as a second core thread in the first half of the SSSR. Naturally, I finished it off with a Fandango Motif.

Amazingly, this time I managed to do the Fandango without getting that god-awful Queen song stuck in my head again. However, what I am tatting now has got me stuck on yet another song...

Black Magic

2011-08-03T22:56:00.000-06:00

I've got to stop tatting things that will get songs stuck in my head. This time it was "Black Magic Woman" by Santana.

The pattern, of course, is Mary Konior's "Black Magic" from Tatting with Visual Patterns. Thanks to Jeff for illustrating how fabulous it can look in a variegated thread; I might never have done this if I hadn't seen his posts. I used Lizbeth color 644 Boysenberry Dark on the shuttle and Lizbeth 137 Berry Burst on the ball. It was sheer luck that the colors worked out so symmetrically, but I do love it when that happens.

For the tail, I wound a second shuttle and tatted a combination of zig zag chain, split rings, and Victorian sets, ending in a motif that matches the bookmark. To make this motif, I transitioned out of the tail at a point where the variegated thread on shuttle 2 matched the solid on shuttle 1. This allowed me to unobtrusively turn the center ring of the motif into a split ring, making the split at the last set of stitches. I then climbed out of it with a mock picot and continued tatting around the center ring as if it were the one of the ends of the bookmark. Wasn't that clever of me? (She said very modestly.)

I actually finished this bookmark several days ago, but couldn't get it blocked until today. I can no longer block anything on days that I have to work, owing to Squijum's pin-munching habit and the fact that there is no longer anyplace in the apartment that he doesn't know how to get to.

When I switched to this new background, I had to go back to a 2-column layout. Does anyone know a way to get a 3-column layout in Minima template? Also, does anyone have any idea why my Google Translate gadget has disappeared? It's still there, right under the Search This Blog gadget, but you can't see it (or at least I can't). Any help would be appreciated!

A Bookmark for Frodo

2011-07-29T08:30:00.000-06:00

LadyShuttleMaker must be as enamored with Middle Earth as I am; she's got threads named "Treebeard" and "Helm's Deep".

So if you happen to be reading the Red Book of Westmarch and have to take a break for second breakfast, this would be the bookmark for you.

The pattern is Jane Eborall's "Flowery SCMR Bookmark". This is not a pattern for the faint of heart, but once you get the hang of it, it actually goes fairly quickly.

So Maybe I'm Weird...

2011-07-26T10:06:00.000-06:00

Does anyone else go through their shuttle collection when starting a project and select the shuttles that will look best with the colors of thread they have chosen?

At the back left are two shuttles that are in every respect the equals of the other three, but have been rejected for this particular project solely because they didn't look quite as attractive with the threads. Should I get help for this, do you think?

Fire and Water

2011-07-24T16:41:00.000-06:00

We've certainly had plenty of fire in New Mexico this year. We're starting to get a little water in the form of rain, but not enough yet. It's been especially hard on the farmers. The largest apple grower in the state, for example, lost their house and barn to fire, so if you see an apple grown in NM, please buy it!

I actually didn't have any of this in mind when I chose the colors of today's bookmarks. I just thought they looked good with the pattern, and also that they might appeal to male customers, especially the "water" colorway.

This is Jon Yusoff's "Chinese Coin" bookmark. I really love this pattern and can do it from memory by now. Jon puts a tassel on it. I'm not good at making tassels and don't enjoy it, so instead I always add a tail finished with a final coin motif. No matter how many times I make this, I invariably forget how much thread it takes. For a bookmark 5 motifs long plus a tail and 6th motif, it takes about 15 yards on shuttle 1 and 8 yards on shuttle 2.

The "fire" colorway is Tatskool's "Flame Lantana". I never expected to find myself enjoying this colorway so much. I'm really not a fan of orange and yellow. I bought it because I figured I should try to make some things for people with tastes different from my own. But these colors are so bright and happy looking that I really love working with them. A certain Bear of Very Little Brain (although he was actually very wise) once said, "Nobody can be uncheered with a balloon." Likewise, nobody can be uncheered with Tatskool's threads.

The "water" colorway is "Sea Glass" by Krystledawne. This colorway never ceases to amaze me. The way Krystle blends the colors makes it look like it's really shimmering, even though it's just ordinary cotton thread. Scans and photos never do this colorway justice.

I still need to block these bookmarks, but only slightly. The pattern is well-designed, so any little wrinkles are entirely due to my own variations in tension.

Bookmarks

2011-07-20T18:55:00.002-06:00

I've started making some bookmarks, also for the sale. First up are two of Nancy Tracy's bookmarks.

The bookmark on the left is done in LadyShuttleMaker's "Hosta Leaves" HDT and Lizbeth color 685, Evergreen Dark. I think the dark green looks nice with the lighter greens in the HDT. The one on the right is Lizbeth colors 632, Purple Medium, and 633, Purple Dark. I like how you can make this pattern look different by using colors in different places.

Both bookmarks are the same size; they just came out different on the scanner.

This is a nice pattern that a beginner could do easily. I always add a tail to it, because I think a bookmark should have one. For both of these, I just used a lock stitch chain ending with a simple motif based on the stitch count of the bookmark. The motif is R 3-3-3-3-3-3, C 3-3-3-3-3-3; repeat for a total of 7 rings and chains, joining each ring at the 2nd and 4th picots.

Nancy says that she was trying to design a bookmark that would resemble a small doily, and I think she succeeded.

Finishing with SSSR

2011-07-17T11:21:00.000-06:00

A lot of the earrings I've recently made have been finished with single shuttle split rings so as not to have any ends to sew in. Here's how you do it.

First, learn how to make SSSR's. It's easy! I recommend Anne's video, or if you have a slow connection, Jane's instructions.

To end with a SSSR, first cut off the other thread.

In this case, the second thread was last used on the second half of a regular split ring. Therefore, it is already knotted and there is no need to tie an additional knot. If I'm cutting off the core thread of a chain, as in Sherry's Treble Clef, which I also end with a SSSR, then I do tie the threads in a square knot before starting the SSSR.

Begin the final ring, tatting over the tail that you just cut off.

When you reach the last stitch of the first half of the ring, continue tatting over the tail for the first half of that stitch (did you get that?) Then bring the tail through to the back of the ring and make the second half of the stitch without tatting over the tail.

Now tat the rest of the ring as you would any other SSSR.

Bring the shuttle through the ring to the back.

Pull the loop to close the ring.

Wrap the loop around and pull the shuttle to tighten the loop.

You can see that (a) this earring needs blocking, and (b) by making a SSSR, you have automatically tatted over the tail of the shuttle thread as you were working. This is the only technique I know of whereby you can tat over the tail of the same shuttle you are working with, while you are working. Cut the threads off and you're done.

Voila, no sewing, no magic threads, it's easy!

The only downside is that this technique can't be used if the final ring is joined to anything else. The join would prevent you from wrapping the loop around the base of the ring. So if the pattern ends with a chain or with a joined ring, you still have to sew in your ends (or use magic threads if you're one of those people who can make that trick work). A lot of Marilee's jewelry patterns end with a ring to attach findings to that is not joined to other elements of the tatting, so these are perfect to finish with a SSSR.

This was one half of one of the pairs of earrings I showed yesterday.

Just a Few More Earrings

2011-07-16T13:08:00.000-06:00

I have just three more sets of earrings to show, and then I'm done with jewelry for a while. I did Marilee Rockley's "Elegance" pattern from her book Boutique Tatting.

The thread is LadyShuttleMaker's "Helm's Deep" (not only do I love blue, but I'm also a sucker for anything with a Tolkein reference), with brass focal beads, Czech faceted beads, and an assortment of seed beads. I really like this pattern; some day I might make a pair for myself.

Then I made two pairs of Marilee's "Grand Aura" earrings from her other book, Up and Tat 'Em. And by the way, congratulations to Marilee on getting her upcoming book published by a "real" publisher!

The top pair is in Krystledawne's "Whisper in the Garden", and the bottom is in Marilee's "Night Wind".

You may have to enlarge the photos to see the different colors of seed beads that I used in these two pairs, although it's quite noticeable in person. This pattern is a bit convoluted, so the order that you string the seed beads on the thread doesn't quite reflect the order in which they appear in the pattern. This is no problem if you are using all one color of bead, but if you use more than one color you have to read the pattern through and count out which beads end up where. The three beads on the left side of the top split ring are the first three you string on, the one on the core thread of that chain behind the big ring is the fourth, then all the ones on the big ring, then the three on the second thread of that same chain behind the ring, then the three on the right side of the top split ring. Whew. Rather than count this out every time I make the pattern before I can even wind the shuttles, I wrote on the picture in the book, numbering the beads in the order that they are strung on the thread. This gives me a handy reference so that I can make the beads show up in whatever pattern I want them to.

I haven't put findings on any of these yet because I'm waiting for a new order to arrive.

My next phase is going to be bookmarks.

My Pet Tiger

2011-07-15T17:47:00.000-06:00

I may have to remove this post soon if someone notices how many photos I've "borrowed". But you must admit, the tigers are almost as awesome as Squijum.

QLT's

2011-07-14T14:01:00.000-06:00

That's Quick Little Tats. I want to have a few things available at the sale for people who don't want to spend a lot of money, just little things that are quick and easy to make.

First up are Heather Johnston's "Chandelier" earrings from her book Tatted Earrings and Things.

This is a nice little design that takes only a few minutes to tat, and you can do all kinds of different things with beads. On the top row, the threads are size 20, "Flame Lantana" and "Coral Reef", both by Tatskool. On the bottom row, the threads are size 40; on the left is "Twilight Zone" by Yarnplayer, and on the right is "Of Berries and Fairies" by Krystledawne.

Next is Jon Yusoff's dragonfly pattern.

In the past when I have done this pattern, I've always done the second version, where you end with the head as a split ring, leaving the ends long for antennae. Why hide ends if you don't have to? But for these, since I needed to join the head to a jump ring to make earrings, the split ring didn't work; so I had to do them the other way, ending with the bottom right wing.

These are all done in size 20. The threads on the top row are "Coral Reef" and Krystledawne's "Sea Glass". On the bottom row are Krystle's "Vineyard at Dusk" and Tatskool's "Berry Burst".

Finally, a large bunch of earrings made from Sherry Pence's Treble Clef pattern.

This pattern is so quick that I can make a pair of earrings in 45 minutes. And if you start CTM and make the final ring as a single shuttle split ring, tatting over the tail of the other thread in the first half of the SSSR-- voila, no ends to hide! I should probably give a few of these the damp iron treatment, though.

The threads here are also all size 20. Top row, left to right: "Berry Burst"; "Raspberry Ripple with Real Vanilla" by Tatskool; "Harvest Moon" and "Wild Flowers", both by LadyShuttleMaker. Bottom row: "Night Wind" by Yarnplayer; "Icicle" by LadyShuttleMaker; "Coral Reef"', "Vineyard at Dusk", and "Hosta Leaves" by LadyShuttleMaker.

There are just a few more pairs of earrings I want to make, and then I'll start concentrating on other things, like bookmarks and Christmas ornaments.

Quick note to jewelry makers: Artbeads is having a nice sale on earring findings right now.

Having Trouble with Blogger?

2011-07-13T02:14:00.000-06:00

It seems that a lot of people are still having trouble with Blogger, both in posting to their own blogs and leaving comments on other people's. Here's the solution I've found. Sign out of your Google/ Blogger account. When you sign back in, UNcheck the box that says "Stay signed in". This is what I've been doing for the last several weeks, and I'm not having any more problems. It just means that I have to sign in again every time I start a new browsing session, but that takes, like, 2 seconds, and at least I can do what I need to do on my blog.

Well Great, Now What?

2011-07-09T14:21:00.000-06:00

It has happened.

Mr. Don't-Mind-Me-I'm-Just-Sleeping here has finally found his way to the top of the one tall bookshelf that he heretofore could not get to. This means that I no longer have a safe place to leave my tatting while it blocks. It's not the tatting I'm worried about, it's the fact that Squijum likes to pick up the pins in his mouth, and one day one of them is going to go down his gullet. He is a fairly intelligent cat. One would think that he could figure out the difference between Food and Not Food, but no, anything that fits in his mouth goes in his mouth. This means that from now on, I can't leave any tatting to dry while I sleep or run errands; if pins are out, I must be home and awake.

Despite the fact that half the pins got pulled out of it overnight, this blocked up very nicely.

This is Marilee's "Wondrous Window" set again, from Up and Tat 'Em, this time in Krystle's "Of Berries and Fairies" thread. Since I did the pendant with all the decorative picots, I added picots to match on the earrings. All the picots do make it look less like stained glass, but that's OK, it's still pretty.

A Test Tat

2011-07-07T22:15:00.000-06:00

Wanda recently asked for test tatters for her new bookmark pattern "Heart's Honor". I was looking for a new bookmark, so I volunteered. Wanda has given me permission to share, and I am eager to do so even though I haven't blocked it yet.

This was a very interesting piece to tat. I particularly like the design of the long part, the way the chains outline the rings. Wanda has done a terrific job of writing the instructions and making clear diagrams, and I know that this must have been a complex design to diagram. I highly recommend this pattern when she makes the final version available.

For the heart, I used Lizbeth colors 192 Western Sunset and 670 Victorian Red. For the body I used Victorian Red and color 642 Lilac Medium. The matching colors are my favorite thing about Lizbeth. And yes, we actually do get sunsets in these colors, which is one of my favorite things about living out here.

Window Dressing

2011-07-06T17:39:00.001-06:00

More from Marilee Rockley's wonderful book Up and Tat 'Em, the "Wondrous Window" pendant and earrings. You may remember I made this set for myself a few months back; now I've made it again for the sale, this time using some of Tatskool's HDT's. Tatskool's clear, bright colors are perfect for the stained glass look. I used "Flame Lantana" and "Coral Reef".

Hmm, looking at the picture, I may need to block the "Flame Lantana" pendant a bit more.

This is yet another motif that shows an equal-armed cross in the middle, even more noticeable in the beaded version. It's not that I'm obsessed with this symbol, it's just that it seems to show up everywhere.

I am planning to make one more set using the variation with lots of picots.

Les Belles

2011-07-03T02:02:00.000-06:00

Today's pattern is "Belle" by Marilee Rockley. I swear she's not paying me to advertise her books; I just really like them, especially Up and Tat 'Em.

The top thread is Marilee's "Forest" HDT. Next is "Raspberry Ripple with Real Vanilla" by Tatskool. Finally, despite what I said in my last post, a commercially dyed thread, Olympus color M12 (I think); this thread may not have quite the character of hand-dyed, but it is still very pretty and delicate looking.

My goal for these items that I'm making for the sale is to make no two pieces alike, and not too many in either the same pattern or the same thread. So for any given pattern I'll make a few in different colors to try to cover a variety of tastes, but I won't make the same pattern twice in the same thread. Basically, I want people not to think they can "think about it and come back later", because they might not. I want them to realize that if they think they might want something, they'd better buy it right away because there's not another one. Besides, part of what you want when you buy something handmade is that it is completely unique.

The Same but Different

2011-07-01T13:29:00.000-06:00

This time the thread is "Weeping Cherry" by LadyShuttleMaker. I wish the blue hadn't ended up all concentrated to one side, but it's still pretty. I like the sudden bursts of more intense color in this thread.

The more I work Marilee's patterns, the more I realize that her designs really need to be done in hand-dyed threads. Commercially dyed threads will never have the subtlety or the personality that these pieces require.

I did a couple more pendants from Jane's "Small Motif" as well.

The threads are "Fairy Faint" by Krystledawne and "Twilight Zone" by Yarnplayer. I find the "Fairy Faint" to be a very difficult thread to photograph. It is so light that it looks washed out on almost any background other than purple, and on purple it looks blue. It's actually a very pale lavender.

I sure hope these flower pendants will sell well, because I do seem to be making a lot of them!

Pretty Posy Pendants

2011-06-30T18:59:00.001-06:00

The first is another of Marilee Rockley's "5-Petal" pendants, in another of LadyShuttleMaker's HDT's, "Old St. Nick".

Given how difficult it can be to match reds, I was rather surprised to find that I had the perfect match in my stash.

Next up is a pendant made from Jane Eborall's "Small Motif" with beads added.

This time time I used Krystledawne's "Wine Berry" HDT. I couldn't match the burgundy, so I went for total contrast instead with dark and light blue beads. I put the dark blue seed beads on shuttle 2, and joined the light ones during the tatting. In order to put the large bead in the center, I changed the center ring to a mock ring because I find it easier to tat around a bead this way than with a true ring.

To make this into a pendant, I had to join a jump ring using this method. (If you're going to do this, please be sure and use a closed jump ring.) But I still wanted a seed bead there so this petal would match the others, so I slid the bead up after making the first half stitch and before the second join. Unfortunately, this made the bead sit crooked, and after several tries I couldn't find a way to straighten it within the tatting. The solution I found was that when I was sewing in the ends, I ran the thread through the bead in such a way as to pull it in the opposite direction, thus straightening it.

Note the difference in style between these two HDT makers: Sherry has very carefully made sure that the entire skein of thread was equally saturated with dye for her solid, while Krystle has equally carefully made sure that some parts of the skein received more dye than others for a shaded look. This is what I love about HDT's, no two maker's threads will ever be the same.

On This Harvest Moon

2011-06-27T10:12:00.002-06:00

Once again, tatting has gotten a song stuck in my head. This time it's all Sherry's fault, with her HDT called "Harvest Moon". At least I like Neil Young, so I'm more or less OK with being stuck with this song; when it was "Bohemian Rhapsody" stuck in my head, I was about ready to strangle myself with my own hair.

Here are two patterns by Marilee Rockley. First is the aptly named "5-Petal Pendant". Next is a pair of "Vision" earrngs. Does anyone else see a clown face in this pair of earrings?

Do the Fandango

2011-06-25T16:11:00.001-06:00

Really, Jane, did you have to name it the Fandango motif? Because now I've had "Bohemian Rhapsody" stuck in my head for days, thank you very much.

This is another motif that inadvertently forms an equal-armed cross when worked in two colors. It works up very quickly, the pattern is easy to learn, and it's just the right size for a pendant.

The threads are all Lizbeth. Left to right, the colors are 656 Wedgewood Dark and 621 Dusty Rose Light with gray rainbow-finish seed beads; 681 Pistachio Green Light and 633 Purple Dark with the vintage pink seed beads I picked up at a yard sale; and 644 and 657 Ocean Turquoise Dark with gold seed beads.

The major problem right now is that I have way more ideas than I have time to tat. Hopefully I'll be able to get to a bit more this evening.

I've Got Photos!

2011-06-21T22:59:00.003-06:00

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?

More Hosta Leaves

2011-06-20T14:26:00.000-06:00

I said yesterday I felt the need to make a bookmark in LadyShuttleMaker's "Hosta Leaves" HDT. As I was contemplating which pattern would best show off the thread, my glance happened to fall on Mary Konior's Tatting with Visual Patterns. Eureka! The "Anniversary" edging, of course!

This is a great pattern for a variegated thread. You can watch the flow of the color changes, and the colors don't detract from the design. It's also a good pattern for beginning tatters; it just uses ball and shuttle, with regular and lock joins.

To make it a bookmark, I used a split chain at the end and went directly into the tail, which is a lock stitch chain ending in a motif that matches the bookmark. (If you didn't want to do a split chain, you could keep it as a regular chain, cut and tie, and start the tail by joining in the picot.) When I posted a whole series of bookmarks last year, a couple of people asked me about lock stitch chains, so I'll explain it here for anybody else who hasn't used them. A lock stitch, in shuttle tatting, is just like a double stitch except you don't flip one of the halves. It doesn't matter which one. By not flipping, you "lock" the core thread so it can't slide. The most common use for a lock stitch is when you use a mock picot to climb out of a ring; a lock stitch is used so the mp doesn't disappear. Another use for a single lock stitch is if you want to create a sharp angle in the middle of a chain; in this case, locking the core thread breaks up the curve of the chain. I did this in my cardinal to make his crest nice and pointy.

A lock stitch chain, then, is a whole chain made of lock stitches. A normal tatted chain, as you know, is curved and stiff. A lock stitch chain is straight and flexible, which makes it ideal for a bookmark tail. If you are using two colors, they will both show in the lock stitch chain, which makes for a very interesting look. I was a little disappointed that the ball and shuttle both happened to be showing the same color when I did this LS chain. For some reason, making a LS chain tends to twist the thread, so you will have to let your shuttle dangle periodically.

I'm not quite done exploring the "Hosta Leaves" colorway yet, but now I do feel like I can move on to something else. I had time for another quick tat last night, so I made another pendant.

This is Marilee Rockley's "5-Petal Pendant" from Up and Tat 'Em, in LadyShuttleMaker's "Icicle" thread, with these amazing blue and silver beads I recently bought.

I just got my birthday money today (have you noticed how many tatters are born in June?), so I should have a new camera pretty soon. Then I'll be able to show you a clearer picture of this one.

Summer Hummers

2011-06-19T12:46:00.002-06:00

One of my favorite things about summer is the huge number of hummingbirds around. I haven't even gotten around to putting out my feeder yet this year (shame on me!), and I still see at least a couple of them a day.

These are from Heather Johnston's book Tatted Earrings and Things. Once again, the earring findings had to wait till after the scan to be added. From top to bottom, the threads are "Sea Glass" by Krystledawne, "Forest" by Yarnplayer, and "Hosta Leaves" by LadyShuttleMaker.

Edit: There were a couple of things I meant to say about these hummingbirds and totally forgot about before I posted this. First is that I absolutely love this pattern, because you can tat a pair of earrings in an hour. Second, I should mention that I used a tiny dab of Elmer's glue on each one to stiffen the beaks so they won't untwist. Otherwise, they are unstiffened. End of Edit.

I have to admit that when I saw the picture of "Hosta Leaves" I was not entirely convinced I would like it. I went ahead and ordered it because I wanted to add some colorways to my stash that were different from anything else I had. When I saw it in person, I was really glad I had bought it, and as I started winding the skein onto a floss bobbin, I decided I really really liked it. I think I feel a bookmark coming on.

Visions of Butterflies

2011-06-18T18:44:00.000-06:00

These are Marilee Rockley's "Vision" earrings, done in her "Snowflake" HDT, with these cute little butterfly beads added. This took a couple of tries. At first I thought I should omit a few seed beads due to the width of the butterflies, but it turned out they didn't hang well that way, so I ended up adding the butterflies to the beads in the pattern.

I'll add the earring wires now. I didn't want to scan them with the wires attached. Sure miss my camera....

Wild Flowers

2011-06-17T20:14:00.000-06:00

I've started on another jewelry-making kick.

This is "Belle", from Marilee Rockley's book Up and Tat 'Em. I've made it before, but it was easier this time because I now have a better selection of focal beads, including teardrops, so I didn't have to fiddle. The thread is "Wild Flowers" by LadyShuttleMaker. I still need to add a satin cord for wearing; what do you think, white or light blue?

Next up, "Grand Aura" earrings, from the same book, in the same thread, but not made to match.

The pink seed beads came from a vintage necklace I picked up with some other beaded jewelry for a few cents at a yard sale. The bicones are Swarovski; anyone who has worked with these will know that a photo can never do justice to the way they catch the light.

Incidentally, "Wild Flowers" is the second HDT name that I know of where Lizbeth now has a thread with the same name, that looks completely different. (The other is "Berry Burst" by Tatskool.) I know Lizbeth is not intentionally stealing anybody's names, and their colors are also perfectly well described by these names. But it goes to show that when we're talking about a color name, we've got to be careful to clarify who made it.

I realize I haven't shown a picture of Squijum lately. He's all grown up now, over a year old, and still as cute as ever.

Well, this is it. My camera has died. And no, it's not the battery; immediately before it shut off for good, the computer stopped recognizing it, so it's definitely a problem with the camera itself. Luckily, today's photos were saved to the removable memory card, which I was able to plug directly into the computer. But I can't take any more pics till I get a new camera, so anything with large beads or other 3D components will look a bit blurry on the scanner till then.

Sweet Success

2011-06-16T07:13:00.000-06:00

Do you ever want to throw your shuttles across the room when you're working a perfectly lovely and well-written pattern, because you can't seem to follow the directions? That's how I felt while working Jon Yusoff's Sweetheart Snowflake. Jon's directions are perfectly clear, but I still kept trying to join the long chain in round 2 in the wrong place. I would work a whole point and then have to undo it because I realized I had nothing to join to as I was coming out of the point, having made a join that I wasn't supposed to going into it. I finally got it right, though.

Then, thanks to the influence of Fox, I decided to add beads.

You would think that it would go better the second time around, but it didn't. I still had the same problem, which was all about me not paying attention, nothing to do with Jon's directions.

Since the beaded version is all white, I decided to finish it a little differently. Instead of starting between points, I started on the side of one point. This allowed me to finish by making a split chain at the top of that point, and then a split ring. After the split ring, I just left the ends long to make a hanger. You can only do this if you're using a single color; in two colors, the SC and SR will both end up showing both colors.

If I had been paying attention, I would have joined the first point of round 2 in the right spot to make the center bead stand upright when the whole thing was finished. I didn't think about that till it was too late, but I still think it's OK.

Sweetheart Medallion Again

2011-06-09T10:53:00.001-06:00

I did Jon's Sweetheart Medallion again.

I really love the other one I did because of the colors in Krystle's threads and the sparkle of the beads, but I think that from an actual tatting perspective, this one is better. The two solid colors make the equal-armed cross stand out more, and even if you're not looking for the cross itself, the whole design just "pops" in solids. Also, the beads I added to the other one, while pretty, made me have to stretch it just a tad excessively when I blocked it so the beads in the middle wouldn't crowd each other; not having beads allows the piece to lie naturally.

I'm very happy with this result. Now I can keep the pretty sparkly one and give this one away instead!

A Tatted Rose

2011-06-08T12:07:00.000-06:00

Connectivity problem solved. It was, as I suspected, a loose connection outdoors that kept getting jiggled in the wind. Usually it would pop back into place when the wind died down, but this time it didn't. It's supposedly good and tight now, so hopefully no more problems. And the tech even showed up within the expected time frame!

So, a tatted Rose. No, not the flower, my friend's daughter. In a few months, they will be moving to New York so that Rose can go to dance school, having already learned pretty much everything the schools here have to teach her. It was my friend's birthday this weekend, so I made Jane Eborall's ballerina.

Jane makes it all in one thread for a more impressionistic look. I decided to go for more detail to make it look as much like the real girl as possible; this meant I had to make a few changes to the construction, with a few more cuts and ties. All the stitch counts end up the same as Jane's, but a couple of things are done in a different way.

Jane has you do the head, body and skirt all in one pass, with the head as an SCMR and the body as a split ring. I had to make the head separately; in order to make the face and hair different colors, I made it as a split ring, making the JK bun with the second shuttle. Then I cut and tied and started fresh with the body; the body is a normal ring, and the skirt is as written. I added beads to the skirt. I found that using three beads per picot is too many beads for the space-- which in this case turns out to be perfect, giving it a nice bit of ruffle. I made the first and last rings of the legs separately to be the slippers, and the arms are as written.

The face, arms, and legs are in Lizbeth color 626, Shell Pink Light. For the hair, I blended DMC size 80 color 579, a pale yellow, with Tatskool's "Ginger" HDT, also in size 80. When I wind two threads on the shuttle, I make my stitches a bit looser, so two size 80's together work up about the same as a size 20. The tutu and slippers are Yarnplayer's "Night Wind" HDT. The beads are Miyuki delicas in a medium blue for the eyes and a light blue for the skirt.

What do I expect anyone to do with a loose ballerina? Well, you know any tatting can be turned into jewelry!

Good News/ Bad News

2011-06-06T21:27:00.000-06:00

Good news: I have tatting to share. Bad news: My internet connection at home is down, and they can't get a tech out till Wednesday. Till then...

Equal-Armed Cross

2011-06-04T13:24:00.001-06:00

I've gotten a few new shuttles recently.

On top, of course, is one of LadyShuttleMaker's ceramic shuttles with a hand-painted scene. Here's a closer look at it.

The truth is that ceramic shuttles as a working tool are not going to be to everyone's taste. But even if you never use it, I think that anyone interested in collecting shuttles should have one or two of Sherry's, purely for their artistic value.

The two wooden shuttles are by David Reed Smith, my all-time favorite shuttle maker. The darker one is pommele bubinga, and the lighter one is birdseye maple. I love the swirly patterns in these woods.

The first thing I made with my new shuttles is the medallion from Jon Yusoff's Sweetheart Set. I used Krystledawn's "Of Berries and Fairies" and "Fairy Faint" HDT's in size 40 and added a few beads.

By tatting it in two colors, this medallion forms an equal-armed cross (it's even more striking when you use two highly contrasting solids, as in Jon's sample). The equal-armed cross is a highly symbolic motif in cultures throughout the world; you can read about it here if you're interested.

Jon really just made this medallion as part of the set of patterns based on a simple motif she had created. As far as I know, she wasn't setting out to design something so deeply symbolic. But isn't it cool that it worked out that way?

I was planning to give this one away, but I'm not sure I can part with it. I may have to make it again.

Hey, Tatting!

2011-06-03T12:54:00.000-06:00

On a tatting blog! What a concept!

In case you hadn't heard yet, the theme for this year's Tat Days is "Tatting in a Winter Wonderland". Once again, a quilt and other items are being put together to raise money for scholarships. Tatters are asked to contribute snowflakes to help other tatters who would like to go to the event but can't afford it-- and despite what the date on the website says, it's not too late! Erin is still receiving snowflakes and stitching them down.

At the top left, of course, is "Angels in the Snow", which I can pretty much do in my sleep by now. I went with Lizbeth thread for a nice crisp feel, in size 80.

Next is another design of mine, "Crazy Daisy", so named because it uses daisy picots and the first several times I tried to make it, it just about drove me crazy! In fact, I gave up on making it for several years because I was so intimidated by my own design. This time it seemed easier, maybe because my manual skill is catching up with my ideas. It's really just a matter of paying attention to what you're doing, isn't it?

This is done in size 80 "Snowflake" HDT by Yarnplayer with DMC white. Marilee uses DMC for her base thread, so Lizbeth didn't feel like a good match for it. Besides, aside from the crispness of the Lizbeth, which I like, the DMC really is the better quality thread.

I love these colors! The pinks and lavenders are not snowflake colors at all, yet combined with the pale blue, this colorway makes me think of shimmering snowflakes more than anything else.

Finally, my "Ice Crystal" flake done in LadyShuttleMaker's "Vicki's Lilacs" colorway, again in size 80. They are mostly asking for the donated snowflakes to be in appropriate snowflake colors, go figure, but there is a runner being made in purples, so I am hoping that this one will work with that.

Wouldn't you know, I'm out of stamps, so these will have to wait till tomorrow to go in the mail.

Lace!

2011-05-22T12:31:00.000-06:00

While we were in Boston, my aunt gave me a lovely gift. When she was a teenager (late 60's or early 70's), she cleaned house for an older lady whom my aunt describes as "very Victorian". When the lady died, her granddaughter gave my aunt a box of lace that she had collected over the years. Eventually my aunt realized that she was never going to use it, so she gave it to her daughter (the cousin who got married). My cousin realized that she wasn't going to use it either, so she suggested passing it on to me. I'm not sure what I'll do with it either, but I have a few ideas. Before anything, it all needs to be cleaned up and pressed. I think most of it will be OK to just throw in the wash; the pressing will be more of a pain.

I photographed it in the hotel room in Boston, because I knew that if I tried to do it at home, a certain feline would attempt to take over the process. Sorry some of the pictures are so blurry. My camera's screen is not that great, so I can't always tell when a shot is really awful. I didn't transfer the photos to the computer till I got home, and at that point I didn't feel like dragging everything out again to re-shoot. You can get the idea, though.

As you can see, the box is crammed pretty full. There are edgings, corners, and things to wear. Some are handmade and some are not. I don't really know anything about them, so I'll mostly just show the pictures without much commentary.

As you can see, several of the laces have been cut for one purpose or another, and others have been torn. Mostly they're in pretty good condition, though.

All of the black laces are machine-made, but I really like all of them.

And yes, there is some tatting.

The one at the top is hen and chicks. All of the tatted pieces are rather crumpled, but they are in good condition. I wish it were possible to trace who the tatter was.

Here is a wider fabric, followed by a close-up of the same piece.

Here are a few more wide panels, corners, and fragments.

Someone started to make this one into a collar.

A wide edging and a jabot:

This is a cap made by gathering the wide edging above and sewing the ends together.

There are several more collars and yokes in varying states of disrepair.

Some of these collars are really beautiful and could still be worn if they were cleaned. I especially like this bottom one.

The last one is very large and elaborate and has snaps in various places to hold it in its proper shape. I could only photograph it in small sections at a time, so it's hard to give you a clear idea of how it looks.

This is the front.

This is the back. I don't know about that thing hanging down. It is quite long and seems like it would be pretty annoying, as well as looking, IMHO, very silly.

I honestly don't understand how this bit fits in with the rest of the collar, even having laid the whole thing out and fastened all the snaps. Maybe someday I'll try it on just to see if I can figure it out.

That's it. I didn't photograph every piece, because there are a lot of duplicates. Even in these photos you can see a few duplicates, as well as a couple of pieces that are the same pattern but different sizes. Maybe sometime when Squijum is feeling very sleepy I might take these out again and try to get better photos.

I haven't felt much like tatting lately. I'm starting to get the urge again, so I will hopefully have a tatting post for you sometime soon.

Vacation Part 3: Gardens and History

2011-05-15T13:44:00.000-06:00

Evidently, by "tomorrow" I really meant "next week". Sorry, I got distracted. Here's the rest of my vacation. It's long.

Tuesday morning, I drove out to Framingham, about half an hour from the northwestern suburb where my cousin lives. There I visited the beautiful Garden in the Woods. This is a lovely place run by the New England Wildflower Society, and is exactly what the name says it is. The plants are cultivated to appear wild; if it weren't for the information signs, you would think you were in a natural wood. Parts of it actually are completely natural, too. The primary goal is to preserve native species of plants that are in danger from habitat loss, over-harvesting, and invasive species. I got there just in time for a guided tour, which I hadn't been planning on but I'm glad I did.

As you can see, the terrain is quite hilly. This is partly due to glacial activity, and partly due to the railroads mining the gravel created by the glaciers. Having such a varied topography allows for a lot of different habitats in a relatively small space.

This place was interesting to me partly because I've never lived in that part of the country (or at least not since age 3), so a lot of the plants that are common in New England are unusual to me. Things as simple as anemones, trilliums, and bleeding hearts, for instance.

Then there were things I was familiar with having grown up in Georgia, but the growing season is of course very different.

At my parents' house the week before, the azaleas and dogwoods were already over, while here they were barely getting started. Not surprising, of course. But the thing that really made me do a double take was the magnolia.

In Georgia, the magnolias are evergreens. I grew up believing that they all were, but it turns out in northern latitudes they shed their leaves like other trees. It was actually a bit of a shock to me to see a perfectly healthy magnolia with no leaves.

In the lower parts of the garden are wetlands, some natural, some created.

A created lily pond...

... complete with fiddlehead ferns and frogs. There are several other wetlands as well, but I don't have room to show all the pictures.

This tiny little flower is called a trailing arbutus.

It's the state flower of Massachussetts, and is also known as the mayflower. They told me the boat was named after a similar flower back in Europe, and when the pilgrims got to Massachussetts and found this flower, they called it a mayflower as well.

A few more pictures from the garden, and then on to then next thing.

Much as I would have liked to stay and play in the woods all day, there was one other thing I wanted to do. So I drove back to Boston, realized I had left my camera at the gift shop at Garden in the Woods, drove all the way back out to Framingham to get it, and back to Boston again. By this time I had to skip lunch, but at least it was a pretty drive.

Back in Boston, I took a tour of the major historical sites, complete with a guide in 18th century costume. The guide was highly entertaining as well as being very knowledgeable. He kept saying things like, "The British Army's encampment was right about where that Bank of America building is. As you should have gathered by now, the British Army was seen as a hated and oppressive force-- much like the Bank of America today, come to think of it." I don't have time or space to tell you everything, but I'll try to hit the highlights.

The Granary Burying Ground contains the graves of several revolutionaries.

Here lies all of John Hancock except his right hand. You would think that John Hancock, of all people, ought to have managed to sign his will, but somehow he didn't and his widow got nothing. A widow wouldn't have automatically inherited back then unless her husband actually made a will in her favor; I guess he had to vouch for the fact that she was capable of handling money on her own or something. Well, she was so furious that she got her revenge by spreading the word that Hancock had been buried in all of his finest clothes; in short order the grave robbers broke in and stole everything. But (I hope you're not eating), he was so bloated in death that the thieves couldn't get the ring off his right hand, so they cut the whole hand off and carried it away. Presumably they did manage to get the ring off eventually, but the hand was never recovered.

Robert Treat Paine, another signer of the Declaration of Independence and grandfather of the man who owned the house where my cousin got married, is also buried here. Paine was such a gifted lawyer that he rarely ever lost a case. One of the few cases he did lose was when he was prosecuting the soldiers who committed the Boston Massacre. The defense lawyers (one of whom was John Adams) were inexperienced and unknown, and there was really no reason why Paine should have lost this case. Since all the lawyers involved were members of the Sons of Liberty, there is some speculation that they might have conspired to throw the case. If the soldiers had been convicted, the people of Boston would likely have been satisfied; but with an acquittal, they became furious enough to spark the Revolution sooner than it might otherwise have happened. Some people think that this was Paine's plan, though of course this can never be proven one way or the other.

In addition to being the Old City Hall, this is also the original site of the Boston Latin School, the first public school in North America. It was free and anyone could go there; by "anyone", of course, they meant white males whose fathers were landowners. Seems to me that at that time landowners would have been well-to-do enough that they could have sent their sons to private school, so I don't really know what the point was if they weren't really going to educate everybody. Different times. The statue in front is the school's most famous drop-out, Benjamin Franklin. The Latin School still exists, in a new location; today of course it really is open to anybody.

This building was the home of religious leader Ann Hutchinson, who got herself in trouble with the Puritans for thinking independently and encouraging others to do the same. Later it became the site of the Corner Bookstore, which was also a publishing house, publishing the works of Longfellow, Hawthorne, and the American editions of Dickens, among others. It's empty now, but hey, who needs a unique historical bookshop when you have this place right across the street?

Here's the Old North Church, where many pre-Revolution meetings were held, including the one that led to the Boston Tea Party.

This is the first Massachussetts State House building. The balcony is the site of the first reading of the Declaration in Independence in Massachussetts.

The Declaration is still read from the balcony every July 4th. One year, Queen Elizabeth II was in the audience. The state of Massachussetts presented her with a check to cover the cost of the tea that was dumped into the harbor; that check is now in the British Museum. Our guide said, "And I hope they never try to cash it, because we don't have the money now."

Finally, if you're ever in Boston and they ask you, "What flies over Faneuil Hall?" you'd better know the answer, or you could get arrested as a spy and a traitor. It's not a flag.

Grasshopper. Of course.

I would have loved to stay a couple more days, but Wednesday I had to fly home. As soon as I got home, I called to Squijum. After a minute or two, he came out from under the bed, yowled at me, ran over to be petted, yowled, rubbed against my legs and face, yowled some more, and licked my hand while still yowling. When I went to bed that night, he planted himself firmly on top of me to make sure that I would not leave again.

Whew. Thanks for sticking with me this far. The next post will be lacy.