I went to a great tatting weekend here, locally. I still haven’t finished the project that we did, Mark Myers’s Jacobean flower.
I haven’t been able to tat much these past couple weeks. I don’t want to go into the reasons why. It’s just depressing.
I’m sorry that it’s been so long. And I have a load of snowflakes that I made for Christmas. I still need to take pictures of a few but alas, I don’t know when I’ll get them posted.
Let’s have a moment of silence for my poor, dead laptop. The hard drive crashed & according to the shop where I had it looked at, it would cost as much to repair it as it would to buy a low-end new one. Needless to say, a low-end one would be leaps & bounds better than my poor, dead dear. On the other hand, one of my good friends from high school is a computer tech type and he says that he can probably fix it (ie replace the hard drive) for a lot less than the shop and he’s 90% confident that he can pull the data from the crashed hard drive.
Now for the bad news. He does not live close enough for me to ‘pop by after work’. It might be faster to ship it to him. The sad thing is, it might also be cheaper to ship it than the cost of the gas to go deliver it to him.
Until I have some access to a computer that can read my camera, alas, it’s no pictures.
Here’s a close up of the pendant to the necklace that I was going to enter at the state fair.
I have made another necklace but I’m having trouble uploading the photo.
I’ll just put the other photos on my blogger site.
This is actually an old piece. I post this as a note of hope & despair for new tatters. I’ve been tatting for 19 years. I still make mistakes. So, newcomers ‘don’t despair, everyone makes mistakes.’ And newcomers ‘despair, no matter how long you’ve been doing this, you’ll still make bonehead mistakes.’ 
I started this while in class with Jane Eborall. It went great. I went home & continued working on it. I got to ring 30 & noticed that something was wrong. So I checked. Re-checked & finally traced the problem to a mistake that I had made. On ring #11. *sigh* So I clipped it off & started over. And over. And over. After my, literally, sixth attempt, that never got farther than the wheel, I gave up. I decided that I had a mental hiccup and now (ie mid-September) was a bad time to work on the wheelbarrow. I did the small scallop heart from Martha Ess’s Tat’s Amore and broke the hiccup.
Of course, it was after this that it took me two tries to get Jane’s bookmark right. But hey, I’m only human & I was distracted.
Yes, I tatted while on vacation. I took a couple of my new books (Tat’s Amore & Tat’s Where I Stopped) plus a couple of patterns that I printed from the internet.
I did a bookmark that Jane published, twice. I did that because I was so unhappy with the first one. Apparently, I forgot how to read a pattern. The printout was a good idea because I could fold it up & slip it into a pocket, along with my tatting shuttles.
Apparently, I was really distracted while trying to tat this one. I made several mistakes along the way. Here are a couple close ups, see if you can spot them.
Now compare that to my second attempt.
Differences: 1) I used two different threads & 2) I didn’t make any obvious mistakes.
I finished my State Fair entry before leaving for vacation. And I took it to a friend who said that she’d actually take to be entered for me (since I’ll be out of state during the period - or what I thought was the entry period). Turns out, entries were due in mid-September. So a week before the State Fair is just too *(&%^$% late.
Anyway, here are the pictures that I took while the necklace was in progress. I forgot to take one of the finished produc
t. I’ll have to post that later.
Once I finished the cross that I gave Rosemary, I started another one. This one I started with a chain, using a paperclip to hold the loop open. It’s just been so hot & humid that I haven’t been able to tat on my commute. Nonetheless, I am almost ¾ done. I’ve gotten to the other arm; and turning the corner on it.
I took this picture when I was in the middle of the 3rd clover, before I left for work. However, the weather was so much cooler than I made real progress on the commute. It’s also size 80 ecru. The difficulty that I ran into is that I started with 2 shuttles continuously wound but I”m starting to run out of thread on one shuttle. I’ve resorted to the shoelace trick to use the shuttle with more thread for almost everything. I only use the lesser loaded shuttle for the core thread in the chains. So far, it’s working.
Okay, I got to the end & learned that I’d made one chain too many. At the very beginning. So my plan to end with a split ring won’t work. Alas. I put it away to try & solve later.
This cross was designed by Tatmom03 (etatter’s list). It’s a great pattern & I’ve done it before, in larger thread. This time I worked it in size 80 ecru. I gave it to Rosemary to give to her grandmother for her 90th birthday. It will give her something else to unwrap.
I was on the last turn, when I joined to the wrong ring. I had to cut it out & do it over. Luckily it’s not obvious.
I’ve started another one, but with a chain instead of a split ring. I’ll finish with a split ring so that the thread ends will form the core of a tassel.
It’s so humid though, that on the commute as soon as I get to one of the large rings, it won’t fully close. Today I managed to finish one whole arm of the cross. Next is the bottom staff.
I did it! I finished the edging. It’s even sewn onto the apron. I started sewing it Tuesday night & realized, when I got the gathered portion of the apron, that I should open the gathers, sew on the edging & gather it again.
That meant that I was about 6" short on the edging. So I tatted a bit more. Sewed the edging more. Measured how much I lacked & tatted more. Sewed some more; measured, tatted again, ran out of thread, joined, sewed and
tatted and sewed. Finally it was done.
And it matches the apron & shows up nicely against the dress.
After a week or so break, I’ve resumed work on my ecru edging (DMC perle 12). I have just short of 3 feet completed.
I need perhaps as much as 2 feet more, maybe. I’ll have to measure it again against the apron.
The picture above is of the edging as I started it. It’s a simple one-shuttle pattern from Rebecca Jones’ book: The Complete Book of Tatting.
I put little one-ring flowers on the cards to my aunts, great-aunts & niece. I put a butterfly with beads on the tail on the card to my namesake. The first 8 cards all had these pink flowers that the one-ring flowers fitted over very nicely (an accent on the larger flower), except the two last one got a white/silver flower off to the side instead. My namesake’s card had a large red poppy, so I glued a butterfly to one side. I used post-it style glue so they’ll come off.
