Intermittent Net

What a week!

I've been struggling with an intermittent internet connection (and a cold) most of last week.

So let me do a quick summing-up.

First off, the robin and her nest. We had cold frosty weather much of last week, but by the weekend, she was feeding babies.

I tried and tried to catch her on the nest feeding them, but one baby craning its head up was the best I could get:

And then seconds after I got that picture, two more popped their wobbly little heads up:

It must be spring in Michigan, because while I was lurking at the window trying to take robin photos, a pair of mourning doves and their baby landed on the garden wall:I see mourning doves all the time, but I think this is the first time I've seen one so young.

Ruth in the bath looks like something you might find in a tide pool:

My first pinning attempt used a lot of pins, all my rustproof florist pins, and I still wasn't quite happy with it.This little doily reminds me so much of some of the Niebling designs, where he totally ignores the "increase by X per round per needle to create Y shape" and just blithely creates beautiful floral shapes. Your rigid one-at-the-end-of-each-needle, like Winde, you will not find in Ruth!

I tried a second time to pin out Ruth, this time stringing a nylon thread through the outer round, tying it, and pinning inside the cord.I still used almost all my pins, but I like the smoother sides of the square better.

I found two errors in the chart near the end, detailed in my Ravelry project notes.

Let's see, what else?

I don't have a new photo of the swirl doily, but I soaked it in water and washing soda, rinsed it multiple times, and dried it out in yesterday's sun. That stain lightened considerably, hooray!

Yesterday I went to a local estate sale, and came home with this haul:Several nice sets of dpns, a copy of Emma Brockstedt's 1916 Practical Tatting Book No. 1, a couple sets of straight needles, multiple nylon circular needles, and something new to me called a "condo needle", with a large end and a small end, all for six dollars.

All things taken together, a good week, especially as I shake this cold.

Now to see if I can get this to post!

Early Days

I have not always been a knitter of lace and socks and mind-stretching double knitting.

This might be the earliest knitting of mine that exists. When I was in the fifth grade, our teacher gave us a mimeographed pattern for something called Pixie Boot Baby Booties.

You knitted a garter stitch square, folded it into a triangle, sewed up the sole and the back, folded the top corner down, and voila! you had a baby booty.

That was the theory, anyway.

When I was trying to learn to tat, my fondness for DMC shaded pastels had not left me.

This is not quite the first tatting I ever did. I think it's the second. I just stranded the thread along behind and started a new clover leaf.

No, I think this might be the first tatting I ever did, complete with ring joined in the wrong spot so that it ended up accidentally three-dimensional.

After I threw it across the room, I fished it back out of the corner, got a little squinty-eyed, and did it again to take the curse off of it.

You can't let these fiber arts think they're the boss, you know, otherwise they will make you no end of miserable.

Plainly my fondness for shaded colors has not left me. I'm up to row 21 on chart A of "Lilac Time", a row where each repeat starts with a shift of the stitch marker and a slip 1, knit 2 together, pass the slipped stitch over.

Another couple of rounds and these will really start to look like leaves. Then it will be on into chart B and a swath of lace ground.
It's been raining on and off most of this week, but this afternoon it finally relented a little and the sun even came out.

I went outside to give the birdfeeders a shake and found one last tiny sunflower of the season, barely nine inches tall, under the edge of the yew bush where Truffles likes to dig herself a cool bed in the sand.

A sunny bright yellow flower to enjoy at the end of a chilly and damp day.

What I Did in Reality Land

Although knitting swam up and ate my brain several years ago, before that I tatted a lot for over a decade.This is a little motif that I've tatted more than once and given away. I like to have a sample hanging around, but I gave my last one away to Franklin back in January this year.

Before that, I gave one away to Sharon in South Africa.

Finishing that little motif didn't seem to have satisfied the tatting impulse, so I went back to another motif in this book Tatting Patterns, edited by Julia Sanders, still in print and available from Dover, a reprint of the Priscilla Tatting Book No. 2, published in 1915.This is a book that I both love and hate. There are a lot of great patterns in it, but sometimes the directions are just plain, flat wrong. I like the way the motif above looks (tiny illustration on page 15, at either end of the insertion).

But the directions on page 13 create a motif like the one shown below on page 18.If you compare the two (I've been doing a lot of comparing the two), the centers are completely different. The sizes of the rings and chains in one don't match the other. The center rings don't join to the next round's chains in the same spots. The bottom one ends up squarish instead of round.

If only the first illustration were bigger, I could count stitches and write the pattern up from that, but it isn't! It's only 5/8ths of an inch wide, about 16 mm. Tiny!
So what I've been doing is squinting at the tiny illustration I like and attempting to tat something that more closely matches it. I've made at least two attempts over the years before this one.

Although on the one hand, I'd like to tat from a pattern that actually works first time, on the other hand, it's great brain exercise.

When my brain wants to relax, I take bird photos. I have at least three hummingbirds this year, two males that chase each other frequently, and at least one female.One of the males perches on top of Mr. Stumpy, the big dead maple stub in our yard, to survey his domain and chase that usurper away.

More News I Wish I Hadn't Read

"Terry Pratchett says he has Alzheimer's"

Get BUSY, you brain-chemistry experts!

After that kick in the gut, we need something more cheerful.

Monday was the West Michigan Lace Group's winter potluck and ornament exchange, with 17 members participating in the exchange.

We use basically the same rule as the fiber arts group (if you bring one, you take one home), except that the ornament is also lace handmade by the member.

Many of us tatted ornaments this year, as you can see, but there was at least one crocheted snowflake and a bell in Romanian point lace up there, too.

This is the snowflake I tatted for the exchange using DMC silver embroidery thread and dark blue Venus tatting thread.

I had a Pelc two-bobbin tatting shuttle I had never used. I wound the two threads separately and tatted them together.

Both of these threads are quite thin, but tatted together were about the equivalent of a size 20 or 30. I'm not 100% pleased with how the dark thread looks more black than blue. I think if I combine threads again, I'll use a lighter blue with the silver, or maybe use the silver for the rings and another color for the chains on the outside.

This elegant little thing was my exchange ornament.

I'm not having good luck getting the true color of the dark green, but the tatting on this is about the green of the tatted ball I made for the fiber arts exchange.

Lucia said, "The tatted ball is beautiful. How do you make it round?"

Water balloon. So the balloon neck won't stretch out the space it goes through, I poke it through a piece of fountain-pen ink cartridge. I blow it up with a cheap balloon pump, which you can often find in with the balloons.

Pull the balloon neck through the cartridge with a crochet hook, poke it inside the ball, blow the balloon up and tie it, then stiffen it with whatever works best in your climate.

I used diluted tacky glue, then when I saw it was too strong, I sponged the outside with a damp paper towel until I no longer had glue in the picots and small spaces.

Let dry completely, then pop the balloon and pull it out. Voila!

One Ornament Exchange Down

I finished tatting the fourth motif and got my exchange ornament stretched and stiffened just in time for our Lakeshore Fiber Arts Guild meeting.

I guess I am still in the ball-making mode -- last year's exchange ornament was Eve Clemenger's knitted swirl ball.
I remember that I meant to knit one for our tree, but never got back to it.

We had some social time, a potluck with incredible food, show and tell (I brought the double-knitted mittens), and our ornament exchange.

Show and tell with this group is always a lot of fun! I can't believe I didn't think to bring my camera. We have doll artists, quilters, paper makers, embroiderers, needle felters, crocheters. I saw some fascinating art dolls, and crocheted finger puppets that were art dolls in their own right, Hardanger embroidery, a needle-felted Father Christmas, a sculptural art quilt. Lovely stuff. No camera!

Last of all we did our ornament exchange, and I brought this little guy home.
If you are going to participate in the ornament exchange, you bring a wrapped ornament with your name or card inside. All of the ornaments are put in a basket, and if you bring one, you get to choose one, no peeking!

I picked a beautiful shiny blue bag, and this cute little snowman was inside! Our son was asleep when I got home, so he has not seen him yet, but I know he's going to love putting Mr. Snowman on the tree when we decorate.

Mittens at Work

The temperature dropped into the 20's F. overnight and we woke up to snow. It's about 23 degrees F. right now (-5 C.). I finally remembered to check for school closings before actually driving there, but the child's school was open. Right now he is probably outdoors for recess, unless they've decided the windchill is too low. The school is even closer to Lake Michigan than our house, so they almost always have wind.

I was catching up on blogs in Bloglines, and found that Tinkingbell nominated me for the "Nice Matters" blog award. Thank you, Tinkingbell! (And certain husbands who have seen me with the worst PMS can just be quiet -- you have to sleep sometime, mister!)

I'll turn around and nominate Susan, Olivia, Sheepish Annie, Wendy, Amy, Marguerite, and Il Bruche, who just started his blog.

(I am just as much a lover of sharp things as any of my brothers, but my taste tends to run towards sharp and pointy, like your basic 5-0 knitting needle. I'll also admit to an impressive collection of "garden sharps", in the form of hand scythes, Florian ratchet pruners and loppers, an Austrian corn knife, a Korean ho-mi hand plow, and a stainless steel Wilcox garden trowel.)

Tonight is my fiber arts guild's Christmas meeting, potluck, and ornament exchange. I think I might be the only member who tats, so I started working up an ornament.

I made the original oval motif as a ponytail holder, the kind that is held with a hair stick through the ends, and it occurred to me that I could make four, join them together, and have a hollow ornament.

The thread is great big DMC Cebelia size 10 in 699 Christmas Green and 666 Bright Red. It's a lot bigger than the thread I most often tat with, and it's amazing how fast it gallops off the bobbin.

At the same time, after a couple of years doing a lot of knitting and not very much tatting, it's amazing how I tat and tat and after hours of work, I have this tiny little thing. I'd forgotten how labor-intensive it is.

When people see you tatting, sometimes they say, "I'll bet you could make a lot of money selling that." That's a laugh: if it takes me four hours to finish this, is anyone really going to pay $40 for it? (Even $40 in US dollars?)

It's the same kind of thing knitters get when they finish a lacy shawl or a pair of homemade socks. When you count up the hours, it would be hard to get paid back for your labor. Me, I charge it off to "entertainment" and "therapy".

---

I had an email from someone letting me know that the .PDF files of the 3x5 cards don't print out at three inches by five inches. Thanks for letting me know.

I spent quite a while tinkering in Microsoft Word to get 3x5 cells. I just test-printed my Word file and it's still 3x5, but the .PDF conversion program I used shrunk 'em to 2-13/16ths x 4-11/16ths!

I'll have to see if I can get them to stay the same size when they convert. Don't hold your breath until after Christmas.

Prizes! and Winners! and Chickens!

I'm giving away this little (~2-1/4" across) tatted motif. And the black netted bag I started earlier.

The motif pattern is in Tatting Patterns, edited by Julia Sanders and still in print from Dover. I've always found this little motif interesting in the way it starts with a five-ring center and ends up tri-cornered.

I must have tatted this quite a while ago, back in the days when I still ended with visible knots and thread ends, because these days that just isn't done, my dear.

The winners:

Tatted motif: Sharon in South Africa.

Black netted bag (which I'll be netting on frantically today!): psammeadred from the Knitty coffeeshop.

Sharon, I have a snail mail address for you if the one from your blogs is still good.

Psammeadred, you can send your snail address to the contact email in my blog profile.

And did I promise chickens?

Wednesday I posted about doing a drawing, and since then I've been quiet.

Thursday after school, my husband and I took our son and went to the county fair.

I didn't enter anything in the fair this year, mainly because the fairgrounds is a good half-hour drive away, and given the price of gasoline, if everything I had ready to enter took a blue ribbon, I would still have ended up in the red. Kind of a thin reason, I know.

But I did take my new camera and take pictures of what would have been my competition. Then I had my annual pecan pie and coffee at the 4-H booth before I went and took pictures in the animal barns.

I'm not allowed to give the title to this photo that it obviously deserves. But I think you can guess.

I have a fondness for the big draft horses, Percherons and Belgians and so on, but unfortunately I missed their events this year and could only take pictures of them in their stalls.

Another thing I like to try and get pictures of is the chickens. Chickens have a lot of personality, but it's a challenge to get a photo that reflects it.

I liked this guy's nice feathers, but I wasn't 100% satisfied that I'd captured his intent expression as I took the picture.

But this last photo I think is the best chicken picture I've ever taken in my LIFE. Words fail me. I might have to get an 8 x 10 glossy of this one:

A Tatted Bookworm

I got the cutest tatted "bookworm" bookmark at last night's West Michigan Lace Group meeting! I'll have to scan him and print out a paper one so our son doesn't make off with him. Doesn't he look caterpillar-y?

I only managed to finish one knitted bookmark, this "Four Hearts" one.

Both my husband and our son had dentist appointments Monday, and our son had his first cavity filled. It was a traumatic afternoon, so we spent a little more time at the library afterwards -- the child said, "When I'm reading, I don't notice if something hurts."

So I got home without quite enough time to bind off and block the leaf bookmark I've been not working on since last March. I think I'd better finish it off so it doesn't sit until next year!

We are having too-warm weather, with a predicted high in the 60's (F.) today. Why is that too warm? If the temperature doesn't dip down to freezing at night, the maple sap flow will cut off, and that would mean no maple syrup this year, boo! I only have about a half a gallon, enough to make maybe an ounce of syrup. We like it too well on pancakes for that to be anywhere near enough. Tomorrow it is supposed to dip back down to 40 during the day, so I'll be watching the level in my sap jug.

The other disadvantage of such warm weather is as the "glaciers" retreat from the fenced yard, reminders emerge from under the snow of all the times I let the dogs out into a howling blizzard, and didn't follow after them with the shovel!

Photos I Uploaded Yesterday

I had the whole post typed out and these three photos uploaded. I imagine there are extra copies of each photo somewhere on Blogger, but since they aren't attached to a post, I can't delete them.

Anyway, this is the little piece of tatting I brought with me to the lace group meeting Monday night.

Yesterday the temperature went down from the high 40's into the low 30's (that's F, not C!), so for the first time in a long time I was burning a "warm the far reaches of the house" fire instead of a "keep the damp chill off" fire.

Ajax the Golden Dog stretched out luxuriantly on the hall runner in front of it, but when I tried to get a picture, he gave me a reproachful look and turned his head away. He is smart enough to recognize the camera, and he doesn't like the flash.

Truffles, on the other hand, lifted her head and looked straight into the camera.

One of the nice things about digital cameras is that I can play with the brightness and get a fairly decent picture of her. I have many bad film pictures of Truffles. It's hard to get a good photo of a black dog.

Another nice thing was that I was able to zoom in on the brilliant yellow reflections in her eyes and darken them a little, so they didn't shine so much.

Not Lost, Not Dying, and I Tat

(I need to get a t-shirt made up that says that.)

If you've always wanted to learn to tat, and you're reading this, you can do it. You're connected to the internet, and won't have to stand on your head and swear at the Coats & Clarks Learn How Book trying to figure out what the bejabbers they mean by the cryptic text directions. The internet has an absolute wealth of tatting instructions, patterns, and even live tatters who might actually live near you so you can see "the flip".

Sharon's website has a video of how she tats. This isn't exactly how I accomplish the flip, but since I don't have a tatting website, who am I to talk?

Carrie Carlson's site has both right and left-handed directions.

If you go to Google and put in "tatting directions" or "tatting instructions", you'll find dozens more. There are Yahoo groups on tatting. There are lace groups that include tatters, like the West Michigan Lace Group, which meets tomorrow night (and every second Monday of the month) at 7pm, in the Byron Township library, Byron Center, Michigan, USA.

And when it comes to supplies, like tatting shuttles, tatting thread, and tatting patterns, all I can say is thank goodness for the internet!

When I first started to tat, I think around 1992, Wal-Mart still sold that old workhorse shuttle, the metal Boye tatting shuttle with a bobbin. That was the very first shuttle I ever bought myself. Alas, $3.75 tatting shuttles didn't meet their profit-margin requirements, so you won't find Boyes amongst the crochet hooks and knitting needles any more.

(Some tatters would cheer, as they consider the Boye shuttle the absolute worst tatting shuttle in the world. And I can't deny that the quality has gone down down down. But I still do use my old Boye shuttles, and like all good tools, I don't notice them while I'm using them. A "bad" tool is one that constantly annoys you as you are struggling to use it.)

But online, there are all kinds of other shuttles available: plastic Clover shuttles. Wooden ones by David Reed Smith. Metal ones, plastic ones, wood, shell, bone, or horn ones from Lacis.

Same thing with threads and patterns. While I can find black and white tatting thread at the local Hobby Lobby craft store, online I can find all the threads DMC hasn't quit making yet, Turkish thread, and Japanese Olympus thread.

And books -- when I had been tatting for a year or so, I was trying to decide which of the Dover books on tatting to buy. My husband said, "Well, how much is it for all of them?" I added it up, and I think it was about thirty dollars. "Why don't you get them all? You'll save half that on the shipping compared to buying them one by one," he said. (The guy is definitely a keeper!) So I did!

I bought Dover books because I thought that was all that was available, but soon I found there were more, such as Heidi Nakayama's beautiful book about tatting shuttles.

Tatting for Bells

Okay, Bells, here is some tatting.

Obligatory apology for my cheap camera, with no close-up capability. I'm afraid the flash really washes out the detail.

The red and white doily at the top was something I made up at a demo. It is made of size 10 crochet cotton, which I don't usually use to tat except at demos. At demos, I like to use a big enough thread so people can see what is happening.

Then we have a blue snowflake and a red-white-and-green star, both from Monica Hahn's Christmas Angels and Other Patterns. These two are beaded around the edge, although the beads don't show up in the picture.

On the white piece of paper, the tatted, beaded Christmas tree is also from Christmas Angels and Other Patterns. Both of the other two patterns are adaptations. The blue snowflake was derived from a pattern in Tatting Doilies and Edgings, edited by Rita Weiss. I started the pattern, realized I had messed it up by halving the stitch count in the very first ring, and ended up halving all the stitch counts.

The white snowflake below the paper is the same pattern, and this is the pattern I used to make the silver one I gave away at the exchange. (That would be the one I forgot to get a picture of.)

The purple and pale green medallion on the paper is adapted from a pattern in Sophie T. LaCroix's Old and New Desings in Tatting, which I scored on eBay after trying to win a copy for quite a while. I remember that I worked my first try at this medallion in shaded green and white tatting thread on an Amtrak train to Chicago. (Funny how memories get encoded in the thread that way.)

The square medallion is four joined motifs from Tatting Patterns, edited by Julia Sanders. The design is kind of hidden in the book, used as a pillowcase insertion.

Tatting Patterns is one of my favorite books, although it's a reprint and not always easy to follow. I like how a lot of the motifs are designed. They seem like they were thought out ahead of time, and maybe reworked after the idea was tried out so they would look good in tatting. (That's not true of all tatted designs, some of which seem more like my red and white doily: just made up as they went along and stretched or squeezed to fit.)

My copy has a loud pink cover with a tatted medallion on it in orange and brown 1970's earth tones, but I see at Dover that they have Photoshopped the background to light blue, and the medallion to purples.

Now I really better lug out the Christmas tree stand so I don't get yelled at when school gets out!

Catching Up

Saturday we went to Vineyard Raids III, and instead of netmaking, I taught basic fingerloop braiding, and did a discussion of knitting in the Society for Creative Anachronism. I am always very nervous when I volunteer to do something like this, but it went all right, and I didn't faint or anything. The apprehension before the class is worse than the class itself.

We had beautiful, cool, sunny October weather. And afterwards, I was surprised and delighted to become a member of the Order of the Salient Hart, the arts award of the barony of Andelcrag.

Sunday and Monday my son took over my computer. He and his dad both had Monday off for Columbus Day. I spent Monday quickly tatting a motif for the West Michigan Lace Group's medallion exchange, which I promptly forgot when I went out the door!

I apologize for this terrible picture. This is my fifth attempt, but this camera doesn't have a close-up mode -- at least not one that works to my satisfaction.

Fortunately I had put my proof-tatting attempt at this medallion in my little tatting box, so I put that one in the exchange.

We had a great show and tell session. One member brought things that had been made by her grandmother for her (the grandmother's hope chest), lacey things, embroidered things. And I got to see Tatt3r's lace pillow in person. Her Milanese sampler is so delicate "IRL", in real life, as my webhead brother might say.

I brought the Pi shawl, which has really slowed down now that I am at the 366-stitch stage. I've finished a repeat and a half of the lace pattern, and I guess-timate that about nine repeats will probably be long enough. The cone of yarn I bought at the fiber festival back in 2005 had about 1300 yards on it, so I think (knock on wood) I'll have enough!

Bitten by the Dishcloth Bug

After many years of tatting, I find the speed of knitting refreshing. When people see me tatting in public, they say things like, "You could make a lot of money making those," not realizing that at top speed, I could probably net about 17 cents a day. (We won't talk about people who say, "You could buy that at Wal-Mart for $1.50 and say yourself the trouble.")

Knitting a dishcloth is particularly fast and gratifying, never mind the price at Wal-Mart. And I am using up a couple more balls of crochet cotton from my stash into the bargain.

This cloth is made of blue and yellow crochet cotton and yellow linen. I started putting in concentric diamonds of stockinette because I like to play with patterns. First I learn a pattern, then I play around with it. And the diamonds keep me awake, of course!

My brother is a graduate of the University of Michigan, so I will probably give this cloth to him. (I graduated from Michigan State University, myself.)

I don't know whether it will block out square or not. Another one I made with linen and a cotton-linen blend, with a wide stockinette diamond, was very diamond-shaped as I was knitting it, but blocked almost perfectly square. So I'll have to finish the point before I find out.

It is still raining today. Great knitting weather, with a forecast high of the mid-40's. I do wish I had mowed the grass a second time. With the rain, it looks like it will be knee high in some spots before we get dry weather again next week. But I would rather have rain than drought.

And the chilly damp air gives me a good excuse to keep a little fire going in the soapstone stove, the size I call a "day fire". A day fire keeps the chill off and forces me to get up every so often to check and see if I need to add another stick of wood.

My husband makes "night fires". A night fire is a stove fully loaded with wood and damped down, so we get slow heat all night, and have a nice bed of coals in the morning to rake up.

International Tatting Day!

Okay, it's April Fools Day, and you are probably thinking I jest! But no, it is indeed International Tatting Day, the day when tatters all over the world eat chocolate (gotta love a day that includes the eating of chocolate) and tat, preferably in public, and hear those famous words:

That's a lost art!
Two tins of estate-sale vintage thread, a few of my shuttles, and a tatted doily. (Even though it looks like those plastic ones you sometimes see at garage sales, I assure you it isn't!)

My theory on the whole "lost art" thing is this: tatters tend to be isolated, and before the internet they didn't know of each other. You could have two tatters living within a mile of each other and they might never know the other one existed. If the only person I know who tats is my mother or my great-aunt, and she tells me, "No one tats any more," then I figure when she is gone, tatting is indeed lost.

Take heart, tatting is by no means lost! There are hundreds, maybe thousands of us, all over the world. And the internet is where we have found each other!

The most active tatting list I know of is e-tatters on Yahoo, with about 1200 members.

We share sources of thread and shuttles, swap discontinued thread when someone runs out in the middle of a project, and share new techniques at the speed of email. When a manufacturer discontinues a thread size or color (DMC seems to do this with disappointing frequency), the news flashes around the world, and we snaffle up the remaining balls into our stashes before they are gone. If we find a new manufacturer from India or Turkey, we spread the word and before we know it a local-to-us supplier is buying from them and selling to us.

Even Michigan is home to at least three lace groups that I know of: the West Michigan Lace Group, the Great Lakes Lace Group, and the Capital Area Lacemakers.

I belong to the West Michigan Lace Group, and despite my current obsession with knitting, I enjoy seeing what other tatters or bobbin lacemakers are doing. We are an active, friendly group, and when we recently switched meeting places, I have to point out that none of us got lost!

Our May meeting will be a special one: we are welcoming lace goods vendor Kathy Kirchner for a trunk show. In the past, she has rented a hotel conference room, filled it with all sorts of lace goodies for sale, and we have had our meeting there and spent the time spending our money!

This special meeting will be held on Monday, May 8, at the Hampton Inn North, 500 N. Center Dr. NW off Alpine Avenue, behind Hobby Lobby and Cracker Barrel. The meeting itself is held from 7pm to 8:30pm, and interested lacemakers or wanna-be lacemakers are welcome to join us.

Lost Arts

This morning I went straight from dropping my son off at school to the muffler shop. The tailpipe on my Honda Odyssey had come loose just behind the muffler. I can't stand a loud car, not to mention I was in imminent danger of the whole length of tailpipe coming loose and falling right off.

This led to the following conversation.

I sat in the muffler shop waiting area, working on the brown leaf bookmark. The guy at the counter said, "What is that you're crocheting?" I refrained from stabbing him with my size 1's, and said politely, "I'm knitting, actually, and it's a lace pattern for a bookmark." He said that he crocheted, and I said, "Oh, that's cool!" and silently wondered how it was he couldn't tell knitting needles from a crochet hook.

Then the muffler tech came out of the shop, and asked what I was tatting. I said again that I was knitting, but I did know how to tat, and he said, "That's a lost art, tatting."

Argh. Well, he said his mother, who was from New Zealand, used to tat. If she was still alive, I'd invite her to our lace group meetings.

It's funny the things people say and the way they open up when you carry hand work around with you!

Bookmarks from the Lace Group Exchange

Some days I have to stretch to find a post topic, but today's is easy. Last night I went to the West Michigan Lace Group meeting at the Byron Township Library, and we had our bookmark exchange.

Here are all three I took: "White Diamonds," "Rainbow Wave," and "Brown Leaves". The knitted bookmarks were both made of linen, and the tatted one is made of Coats machine quilting thread I bought at (yes) Wal-Mart.

We did our exchange in a different way, and I admit I was a bit uncomfortable with it. First all the bookmarks were numbered and pinned up on a board, and then we were supposed to pick our first and second favorites. Oof. I can be a competitive person, but I hadn't been making exchange bookmarks with any kind of competition in mind. And I felt a bit embarrassed when "Rainbow Wave" got the most "votes".

However, since the "prize" was the opportunity to be the first to pick from the bookmarks that everyone brought, I didn't kick too much.


Here are the three I brought home in exchange. At the top is a bookmark with two butterflies facing a flower tatted by S., who is fairly new to tatting. I like the tail of this bookmark. Then a tatted lavendar bookmark by P., and at the bottom, a needle-tatted heart bookmark made by J.

One of my favorites was the knitted bookmark made by my friend tatt3r. But since I knew where to find the pattern for that one, I chose the heart bookmark instead.

It's an interesting pattern. Each heart is an individual motif. And the thread is size 70 or 80 tatting thread. Very often needle tatting is immediately obvious to me. If the thread size is not matched to the needle, the stitches look different than shuttle tatting. This one I would not have picked out as made on the needle, except that I know the maker only needle-tats!

Rant, Hopefully Brief, but Probably Not!

One of my pet peeves is when manufacturers don't understand how their product really works, and make changes that mess up the function.

Prime example: the metal Boye (now Wright) tatting shuttle. This is my cheap, workhorse shuttle. When I first started tatting, they even sold them at Wal-Mart. (Not anymore, at least not at my local one.)

When this shuttle was first patented, it had three holes in a row on the side of the shuttle. The idea was that the tatter would run the tatting thread out through that hole to help control the thread tension. It didn't work, but that was the idea. These days, if you contact Boye and ask, they have no idea what the holes were supposed to be for. Tatters know, because it was on the patent application. But the manufacturer has no idea.

You can see the continuation of this "no idea" problem in other features of the shuttle. It has a metal hook at one end. This is supposed to be for pulling the thread through picots, to make joins. So the hook needs to be small and smooth. Over the years, the hooks have gotten bigger and rougher. Sometimes they are so rough they cut the thread. Probably it was hard to make the small hook in the factory. So with no idea why it had to be small, they made it bigger. And now it's pretty much useless. It has a hook shape. But it doesn't do what a tatter wants it to do.

Another feature of this shuttle originally was that you could fit the hole in the metal bobbin onto the other end of the shuttle, as an aid to winding the bobbin. Are you surprised to read that the end of the shuttle is now too wide and fat to fit into the hole of the "#3 bobbin"?

Here's another: at the base of the hook, the shuttle has two metal tabs that fold down to hold it together. These tabs need to be smooth and flattened tight so they don't catch the thread. I have never bought a shuttle that came this way. I have flattened all of mine with a pliers.

And one more: also at the base of the hook, the hook flares wider as it joins the shuttle. This "shoulder" part needs to flare out smoothly, with no rough spot to catch the thread. Hands up, anyone who thinks they come this way.

And all of these flaws because the manufacturer doesn't really know what the shuttle does or how it functions. They could send me a test-shuttle and I'd be happy to tell them!

Snow Again

Saturday evening and Saturday night we had fine snow and plenty of wind. We didn't really get a lot of snow, but the wind sculpted it into interesting shapes.

Here is the snowdrift hanging off our porch roof I tried to post this morning.

I drove up to Grand Rapids to visit my friend Beth and so our sons could play. She took a picture of the bookmark I am tatting with machine quilting thread and emailed it to me.

Our sons' front teeth match: they have both already lost both bottom incisors, lost one top incisor "a while ago" and the other "recently". So they look like little toothless vampires.

The highway driving was fine, but my road, which has some stretches of open fields and shallow ditches, was a slick of white ice. When we came home, I saw a red car off in the ditch. Since the ditch that goes through the culvert under the end of my driveway is very deep, I slowed down turning into the driveway. If my Honda Odyssey went in there, it would end up vertical, nose-down. No thanks!

Although the road was much worse (white ice and spots where snow had drifted across a good foot high) than the last couple of times when we have had two-hour school delays, today school was open. So along with the regular round of Monday chores, I'm hoping to get some knitting done and maybe finish the two-at-once sock heels.

The gales of November are upon us

[queue up Gordon Lightfoot and "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald"!]

We've lost power twice in three days so far, due to high winds. So if this space doesn't get updated, I'm probably sitting in front of the soapsone stove tatting or knitting!

Boy, do I have a lot of projects in the "ongoing" state!

Weaving on both of my looms, the floor loom (a LeClerc Artisat) and the tapestry loom (a Schacht Spindle loom).

Knitting on two frames (the "endless" belt, as in "this project is endless!", and the small rug out of t-shirt rags).

Knitting on needles:
Purple lace-experiment scarf (flat on two needles)
Socks (two pairs, both in the round on two needles, "double knitting" a la Beverly Royce)
A miser's purse (in the round on needles, sewing needles I bought from Havel's Sewing and made into knitting needles)

Tatting, still the purple/blue variegated star, which I could probably finish today.

And with all that, I still need to make two ornaments for exchanges!

Meanwhile, if you'd like to watch waves on the Great Lakes while remaining warm, cozy, and dry, I recommend the Great Lakes Environmental Research lab's webcams:
GLERL

When I Have Deadlines, I Add More Projects

I'm supposed to be working on my Shetland Lace workshop knitting, so naturally I have sidetracked off into a number of other projects.

Here is one of them, the tatting I attempted to start at Saturday's Kalamazoo Valley Museum demo.

The pattern is "Pointed Medallion" on page 20 of Ann Orr's Classic Tatting Patterns, still in print from Dover.

The thread is Coats & Clark Machine Quilting thread, 100% cotton, that I bought at Wal-Mart. I went to the Coats website to see what other colors they had, and this product doesn't even appear (Article AV33, 225 yard spool, color 818). I don't know if it's discontinued, or if Coats only sells it to Wal-Mart. The Star Quilting thread on the 1200 yard spool appears to be the same product. Anyway, I got nervous and went back to Wal-Mart and bought some more in a different color!

The shuttle is one of my "neutered" Clover tatting shuttles. I don't like that pick they come with, so I whittled it off and smoothed it with a nail-buffing kit. I love the nail-buffing kit for jobs like this: it even restores the shine to the plastic.

So how is the thread to tat with? While it tats up beautifully, it is a challenge for me to work with. My fingers sweat enough that they sometimes dampen this fine thread, and then I can't close my rings. That's what I was struggling with at the demo. If I put the tatting down and let it dry, the ring still closes. I have to use a lighter touch than my normal tight tatting, and use care to close the rings so the ring thread doesn't kink. But I love this colorway -- I think it's called Plumberry.

So many variegated threads look yucky when you tat them up. The colors pop out and fade in strange ways, and you end up with rings that look like they are hanging in space, or chains that don't look all there. But I like this one. It doesn't change drastically in color or darkness, so all the pattern elements show up nicely.