I’ve been working from home a lot recently, which has meant getting three hours of my day back. It turns out the commute from upstairs to downstairs is a lot quicker than the 3 hour round trip to the office. In the first few weeks I picked up a good habit, which I’ve swiftly lost — taking that time for myself. Starting the day with a cup of tea and some tatting instead of standing in the queue for a bus. Must try and pick that up again this week.

I was working on a pattern for earrings. It’s still not right really — but trust me they look much nicer in real life! The grey thread makes the silver-lined beads look like water droplets; it’s a really pretty combination. That said, I had shuttles full of ecru thread so carried on experimenting with that.

I’d really rather tat with size 80 thread, so I ended up adding lots of beads to see if that made the earring feel more substantial. It does make it a bit stronger, but I think more experimentation is needed. I do love the patterns of some of the bigger tatted earrings out there, but the finished size is just too big for me!

This is what it looks like on – horrendously wonky, but I’m guessing changing the stitch count will help. I’d like to play around more with layered tatting too, as that will make it more sturdy. Trick at the moment is not to go up a thread size and see what I can do with what I’ve got.

We shall see.