Tree bracelet

Months and months ago I purchased a bracelet pattern. I've finally settled on three colors of thread for it, and now I'm looking for the right beads. In the process I've found beads that go with a lot of my other threads. I'm waiting for another bead order to arrive, so my plan is to take this pattern, add some of my autumn-toned beads and have something to go with the season. I'm not sure what I'll wear it with, but it might look okay with my deep reddish purple shirts. (I don't wear fall colors.) Fingers crossed!

Teaching tatting

I don't know if she got the tatting bug, but I did my best. She did like the motifs enough to hang one at work. Seeing that sign, you can tell we share the same priorities. :-)

Too long

I've been away from my shuttles for too long! So many things have happened and I just haven't had the necessary focus for tatting. In August I went to Santa Fe for Indian Market. I'd been invited by friends but turned them down at first; I wasn't sure I could cope with the crowds that were sure to be at Market. Then a dear friend died and I realized that I needed to get away, even if only for a weekend. The drive to Santa Fe is about five hours, counting stops at Santa Rosa and the Turquoise Trail. Tatting seemed like a good thing to pass the time. I happened to mention it to our hostess and she said she'd like to learn tatting. I gave her a brief lesson, not enough to really help, but enough to show her that the flip is the key to success. When we got home I made a couple of motifs to send to her as a thank you. The initial motif is #30 from Minitats, and the second one is adapted from that. I followed the pattern but didn't get the same result as the sample in the book so I added a few stitches to the chains and subtracted a few from the rings. Here's the result:

The bottom one is the original; I didn't like the way the two rings were so close together so I made the chains a bit longer on the second one. I also made the four rings a bit smaller. I chose this pattern because it reminds me of the Zia symbol. I used Lizbeth 125, Sea Scape, in size 10.

Goodbye, Max.

For a long time I've been reluctant to tat at home, especially a piece intended for someone else. See, I had this cat. Max. Max was furry. His white fur was just as fine and clingy as any spider web. I'd be tatting along and not notice until I was done that Max's white fur was tatted into the piece. It probably didn't help matters that Max liked to sit in my lap in the evening, so his fur was on my clothes, on the fleece throw, on the chair, in my eyes.... Always in my eyes. Since Max was getting older, I didn't want to deprive him of a warm lap in the evenings, so tatting was relegated to break time at work.

A few weeks ago Max's diabetes started to get out of control. The vet advised upping the dosage, then lowering, then increasing, but we couldn't keep his glucose steady no matter what. Last Tuesday he was lying on the bed, rubbing his face against the blanket and moving his legs back and forth. It was the same behavior as when his blood sugar crashed a few weeks ago. I grabbed the bottle of Karo syrup and gave him three different "shots" but he stayed the same. I took him to the vet and asked that they keep him for observation even though his glucose was reading 75. I checked back on him at dinner and was allowed to take him home. I opened the crate for him and left the room; when I came back a couple of minutes later he was in full seizure. I took him back to the vet and they decided to keep him overnight. I visited him about 9:30 pm and he was still swinging his head back and forth, but not so much. He didn't seem like he knew I was there, though. The vet said he may have had some cerebral edema, but she wasn't ready to give up on him yet. I stayed about 20 minutes, until the office closed. I called the next morning and they told me to check back later that evening. When I stopped by to see him I had hopes of taking him home, but I could tell he was worse instead of better. I made an appointment with the vet for 8 pm, and went to my sister's house to talk it through, but I knew what needed to be done.


Goodbye, my friend.

Day 11 of the TIAS project is complete. I had to do some studying to make sure I was using the right shuttle and even took out the last lock chain and re-did it, but I think I have it right now. And look! Scissors! I'm in love. What a cute pattern, and a sweet little learning process to boot. I still have trouble with the very small picots, but I don't usually work in size 20 thread. (That's my excuse and I'm sticking with it.)

I didn't make as much progress on Sunday as I had hoped, and after working on it again today I'm really frustrated with the Sine Wave bookmark. I don't know if I have misread the pattern, or if my tension is too loose, but it's just not coming together right. I'm definitely going to redo that last chain, though. I've told myself that I need to finish it, if nothing else so I can figure out how to change it for next time. But honestly, this is a very frustrating project. It's a pretty simple design and should look a whole lot better than it does.

Sunday I wangled this heirloom from my sister. It's yards and yards of Grandma Deck's tatting. The colors didn't photograph quite right, but it's a lovely variegated yellow and purple thread. There are some places where she obviously ran out of thread, tied on a new piece and kept on tatting. I suspect this was something she did in the evenings and her fingers just tatted along without her brain having to be involved. I'm struck by the evenness of the picots, the consistent spacing between rings, and the sheer quantity of it. I really wish I could have seen her tatting, but she lived too far away and I hardly knew her.

In honor of tomorrow's "Let's Ignore the Superbowl and Tat" event, I'm looking for a fun pattern to work on. I'm leaning toward the Sine Wave bookmark, but also maybe the Arachne Acid Trip pattern that I got from the Palmetto Tat Days cd. It looks complicated, but it's really just a glorified zig zag.

Here's Day 9 of TIAS.

It's not a cowboy, that's for sure. Maybe a scorpion? The split rings at the end have a vsp (very small picot) on each one; I'm not used to working with size 20 thread so I'm having trouble judging how small is small. Either they disappear when I close the ring or they're too big and look funny. I'll have to work more on that. Pam's getting closer to the point where she wants to find her tatting stuff, or maybe even buy a new shuttle. I'm really looking forward to teaching her; it will be fun to have an actual person to talk tatting with. Online conversations are fun, but still impersonal.

Isn't he cute??

As part of the blog creation process, I went looking for other blogs to add to my links. I came across this one, and found an interesting pattern, the Sine Wave Bookmark. I've promised to make bookmarks for the Friends of the Library store, and this pattern gives permission to sell bookmarks made from it. I'm not sure it will be up to par for selling; it may turn out to be the practice piece to keep for myself. I'll keep at it and see how it ends up. I saw a bookmark on Facebook that had an owl charm and I think that's terribly appropriate for a bookmark. Some hours on Etsy later I found an adorable fellow with magnificent eyebrows. It came in a packet of six, so I can keep some and put some on the Friends store contribution. Contributions. :-)

Thread is Lizbeth 156, size 10.

Last Thursday was a "snow day" - 12 inches of snow fell, the schools closed, the City closed, I got to stay home. I had found an online tatting course that has a chat for beginners every Thursday, so I joined in. The lesson centered around reading tatting patterns. One of the samples looked rather interesting, so I printed it off and gave it a try tonight. The first thing I noticed was that the ring is so big that it was hard to hold onto the stitches when I got halfway done. The second thing was that closing the ring was very difficult; the stitches wanted to clump together and the core thread wouldn't slide. The third thing (after I finally got it closed) was that the ring was so big that it was floppy. No elegance at all. Now that I've taken a picture of it, I'm going to undo the ring and put the thread back onto the ball. It's all just a continuation of the class, and I did learn from it. That's the goal, right?

Lizbeth 129, size 10.

Day 8 of the TIAS is done. I'm still not sure what it's going to be, but for some reason it reminds me of a cowboy. Pam, one of the ladies at work, is just as curious as I am about the outcome. Actually, I think she's even more fascinated with the project than I am. I'm going to convince her to learn tatting one of these days. Her grandmother also tatted, so I think I can persuade her fairly easily. Here's the progress at this point:

Jane Eborall, tatting goddess, does a yearly event known as TIAS - Tat It And See. Every few days she adds to the pattern and invites everyone to tat along and offer guesses as to what the final product will be. I didn't finish last year's because I fell behind and found out that it would be a sailboat, which took all the fun out of it. 2013's TIAS turned out to be a baby carriage, and I learned some new things like split chains and split rings. We're up to Day 5 of the 2015 TIAS, and my current guess is a dragonfly. The only problem with that is the tiny ring that started it off isn't placed right to be his head. Anyway, this is my progress so far:

The thread is Lizbeth 136, Autumn Spice, in size 20.

When I was a kid, my mom made all of our clothes. I remember one dress in particular, it had a sort of gray/brown linen fabric with blue flowers. Mom added a variegated blue and white strip of tatting to the collar. She had a boxful of tatted lengths that her mother had made, and sometimes she'd add it to her sewing. That dress is the only one I remember; there may or may not have been more. I just know that I have very few pieces of Grandma's tatting left. I always thought it was neat stuff, and whenever I came across miniature tatted pieces I tried to buy a piece or two. A few years ago I decided that I wanted to learn to tat, too. Mom never learned because her mother couldn't teach her. I'm guessing that Grandma had done it by rote for so long that she couldn't do it and think about it at the same time. Anyway, I decided I needed to learn it for myself. Anyone who's ever done any tatting has struggled with "the flip", that crucial step that transfers the knot from one thread to another. Once I had that down, I was on the way. From reading other tatters' blogs and comments, I've found a common thread in our experiences. Our grandmothers tatted. Tat in public, and if someone recognizes what you're doing, they'll invariably say "my grandmother tatted." One tatter has gone so far as to describe us as the "secret knot society". Just for fun, I used Morse code to design a little motif for our secret society. SKS translates as ... -.- ... This is the result: