Mostly Flowers

My friend in the craft shop had 2 bags of craft books left at her front door last week, one bag completely tatting!! I now possess Mary Konior's Tatting in Lace, Elgiva Nicolls' Tatting Technique & History, Tatting with Anne Orr and Tatting Designs J&P Coats Book No 380. There was also Rebecca Jones Complete Book of Tatting which was the book I learnt to tat out of, and the Macrame and Tatting book which has the pattern for the big doily I started my blog with and which I still can't find in my house.

Corsage of Flowers (mine on left)

While I was looking for the "book with the doily" I rediscovered my Lyn Morton book Tatting Patterns, which I have not done anything out of yet - I can't understand why, some of those patterns are sooo beautiful.

So, the weekend just finished I had fun working on different dimensional flower patterns, starting with Lyn's Corsage of Flowers - I made 2 6-petal flowers and 1 5-petal flower. I haven't joined them together yet.

Tudor Rose (mine on right)

Next I had a go at Lyn's Tudor Rose. But only the outside section as I didn't want to play with the beads.

Wrought Iron

Moving on to my new Mary Konior book, I had seen a Wrought Iron recently on Pinterest, so when I saw it in my new book got very excited and had to try. I made two noticeable mistakes which I didn't notice until it was too late to fix. As I haven't started working with two shuttles yet, the rings on the outside of the onions were worked with the one shuttle instead of a second shuttle.

Carnation

Going back to dimensional flowers, I am part way through Mary's Carnation from my new book. It says to make two, wire them separately, then join them together. Her picture looks good, we'll see about mine when it's finished.

Convulvulus

This last piece I have also seen regularly on Pinterest, but no-one had referenced it. As soon as I saw it in my new Konior book it had to get a try out. Unfortunately I was nearly out of shuttle when I started, and I didn't read the pattern properly, so there weren't any picots on my first flower to join the second flower on to. I will definitely be doing this one again.

Today I was expecting a 9am to 9pm working day - didn't know when I would get a chance to do my update.

My 'day' job I arrived half an hour late and left half an hour early, so I will have to work late on Friday to make it up.

The 4pm student arrived at 3:55 while I was still eating lunch. My 5pm student went home from school sick so didn't come. The 6pm has just arrived (at 6:10 - their first lesson).

(Back from tutoring at 7:10) The 7pm student had already cancelled due to a school meeting. 8pm should arrive at 8.

All in all, I'm having a much quieter day than expected.

Another Heart's Desire

A few weeks ago I found a link on Pinterest labelled 'hyperbolic tatting'  which led me to a flickr album of photos on the topic. I hadn't heard of it before, but I have done crotchet that twists like this before. Looking closely at the pictures, it seems to be done almost completely with chains and shuttle joins. I had a go with my icky green, then tried to re-create with my icky purple to see if I could remember what I had done.



I couldn't.
So I've ended up with two crysanthemummy-looking flowers that don't look alike.




I also had a go at Susan Fuller's Heart's Desire using a DMC #80 tatting thread. I haven't used the #80 for a while and didn't realise my eyes were getting so bad. I could barely see to do the picot joins. I'll have to find my magnifying light if I want to keep playing with the fine threads.

While I was still playing with the hyperbolic theme, I thought I would experiment with crochet and came up with this. I did a flat coil of treble, then started again from the centre and put 2 treble between each stitch. It has pulled the hole in the centre, but with some adjustment could be the start of a good brooch.

This afternoon I had a brother and sister come for Maths Tutoring at 4pm and 5pm consecutively (I don't cope with more than one student at a time, so I "guarentee" one-on-one tutoring).

My next student was due at 7pm so I spent an hour cleaning up my tutoring table and filling up my paper recycling bin.

When she still hadn't come by 20 past 7 I thought "let's get the blog update done!" I had started last night and had most of the first paragraph done. It's now 8pm, so I'm waiting for my last student to arrive.
Enjoy

Spinning Wheels and Hearts Desire

Seeing other people doing Mary Konior's 'Spinning Wheel Glass Mat' got me enthused to have a try at it. About 1/4 of my time was spent in undoing (and I haven't learnt how to sew in the ends yet) but I quite like the look of it: I can see how this pattern becomes addictive.

I have also had a go at Susan Fuller's 'Hearts Desire'. These were both done in a very cheap perle 8 that I bought about 20 balls of a few years ago (50c per ball as opposed to $3.50). I now know why they were so cheap - the thread thickness and twist is sooooo variable. While I'm working on my techniques I'll be using these threads, so expect to see a lot of purple/white and green/white.  

And then ... continued

So I went to my little tatting pattern book and on the first page of the pattern is the following comment: Coffee Table Mat. "Basic Book of Macrame and Tatting" p108. I'm not as silly as I thought.

And then ...

So now that I've got it all pretty, I need to do something with it.


I've spent the better part of my non-work time in the last week looking up blogs on tatting with the result that my list of blogs is longer than my list of posts (currently 1), labels (0) or friends (also 0).

This is the link to My sister Andrea's Blog, and this is the link to My sister Julie's Blog.

As far as I am aware the other members of the family don't blog, but I haven't told any of them that I have started yet either.

I re-started tatting in June 2012 when I had a week off work with no plans. I spent 3-4 hours most days in the back of my local thread shop finishing tatting a table centre I had put aside over a year previously. When it was finished the shop owner asked if I would make her one in purple/black (she would supply the thread - DMC perle 8 - and pay for the work).

 I took photos of each row as they were finished and published on facebook so she could see how it was going. Most of the photos I took in the same place with the same lighting to get the colours to match.

I had a few comments from my facebook friends along the lines of "that's beautiful, what is it" and "is that tatting" so the word is getting out that tatting is not just something that great-grandma used to do.
 L:  Rows 1-3.

  

R: Rows 4-6

 I was almost finished row 9 when I realised that it wasn't going to fit. I looked back around the row and discovered I had skipped a joining picot. I now have a collar length piece of row 9.

 

 

After cutting the mistake out I couldn't bring myself to look at it for 3 weeks but eventually came back 

The pattern finished at row 9 but I did a row 10 to stabilise it. Rows 7-9 are the same as 4-6 so, in theory, you could keep going and make a full table cloth out of it.

I have been through my collection of tatting books to try finding where I got the pattern: I had sketched it into my little tatting book which goes with me. I can't find it!! I remember that it was called a "coffee table mat" and that the instructions went over two pages, but I have no idea what book/magazine I got it from.

Why am I doing this?

If during your day you do a little bit of everything, it can end up feeling like you have accomplished a whole lot of nothing.

One reason I am joining the world of blogging is because I am a follower. I have recently started following a stack of tatting blogs and I can organise what I'm reading from here.

I am also following in the footsteps of my two sisters who both have blogs. When I know more about what I'm doing I'll put in links to them.

I also have a lot of craft pieces that I would like to share. As I don't live anywhere near my family, it is hard to show them what I have done, so this will help with that (once I learn how to put up photos anyway).