In the meantime ...

Mary Konior's Spinning Wheel

When I started back tatting I had a week of holiday from my day job and I sat in a friend's shop in town and tatted each day in her workshop area for 3-5 hours.

She has been very supportive of me, including giving my some threads to try out - that she wants to get rid of, the threads that are selling I still have to pay for.


I mention this as the smaller of the motives in these two photos are each done in a Metallic Machine Embroidery thread that had been sitting in the shop when she bought it. We thought it might be fun to see what it tatted up like - it is horrible.

from p101 of Occhi Schiffchenspitze Frivolite
(THE Peacock Book)

It tats up with a wonderful metallic gleam, but as it is metal fibre wound around a very fine core thread it tends to kink easily making it hard to pull rings up.

At one point I managed to break the metal fibre and had to tat numerous double knots just using the core thread until it caught the fibre again - it doesn't show up at all.

The larger of the two motives are each done in a perle 8 from Madame Tricote Paris (Made in Turkey) colour number 187: this thread tats up a bit larger than my other perle 8 threads (DMC, Anchor and the cheap/nasty 50cent balls) but has a good feel to it.

I kept putting off using it as it is brown and I don't do brown: when tatted though the light colour comes through as golden.

These are  motives #6, #7,#8 and #9 of the 25 Motif Challenge

Mary Konior's Posy

MK's Posy is done in Lizbeth #40 thread, Autumn Spice. I did a bad join on my first go around so cut it off the shuttle and started again. I plan to use all the cut offs to decorate clothing (at some point in time).

Motive #10

A Rose

I have finally used some of the HDT I bought from Tat-ilicious - Whoopsie #40. The flower pattern is from Tatting Patterns, Julia E Saunders - also known as The Priscilla Tatting Book No2. There are a couple of different editions of the book having different figure numbers. In my book it is Figure 82 Collar - just the Rose section. It still needs something to finish the centre. The pattern has a flattened croched ball sewn in. I'm thinking more of a mother of pearl button.

from Rebecca Jones' book
Figure 197, p67

When I first started tatting (who knows how many years ago now) I taught myself from Rebecca Jones' book The Complete Book of Tatting. I had been looking for it in my house for months without success, when it turned up on the table next to my tutoring table - I had brought it out to show a student what tatting was.

from Rebecca Jones' book
Figure 199, p67

I needed it to get the patterns for these two bookmarks which I wanted to do with another of the HDT from Tat-ilicious - Dark Rainbow #20 this time.

I found half a ball of black DMC #20 thread in my stash and wanted to get the stained-glass effect  in the cross bookmarks.

Motives #11 and #12

I do have more, but I have to have something for the next post. I mentioned on someone else's blog that I would put up photo's of THE peacock as he is being done.

I have his head (and a comparison shot with the head of my last peacock) but you will just have to wait a little bit longer.

Hopefully not as long as last time.

I will return!

... how many weeks?

It can't be!

Round 17

I knew I hadn't posted in a while, but 10 weeks is ridiculous.

I have been in the grip of another long term headache (32 days so far) and a viral infection (only day 8 for that).

Here we have Round 17 (second last) of the Honey Napkin by Renulek.

I can't find a photo of rounds 14, 15 or 16 finished, but I do have two photos of round 15 in progress where I nearly gave up!

Round 15 with 5 joins left

Round 15 makes little triangles using two joins on the previous round.

THERE ARE ONLY 5 JOINS LEFT!!

After a LOT of searching I found the missed join in round 14.

Can you see the missed join?

I am not a perfectionist - if I can find a way to compensate rather than undo or cut, I will.

I did.

The last triangle ended up as just a single ring joined to the previous round with a single ring upwards and a slightly shortened chain from the previous triangle and to the initial triangle (no there is no picture - no there will not be a picture).

How big is this!

This is now measuring about 55cm across: there is only one more round to go.

I wonder how long I will procrastinate before the project is finished?

It has already been 3 weeks since I last touched it.