I’ve been quiet on the blogging front recently as a few other odds and ends have taken over at the weekends. Mostly, but not always of the work variety. That said, I’ve also been getting in to baking (for some strange reason), and I’ve now made the no knead loaf, a couple of white cobbs, and an oat and linseed loaf. All of them have been edible, although I must admit to a slight panic at the first white cobb which needed a *lot* of flour adding as that was way too much water. If you try that recipe, add the water in bit by bit as you might not need all of it.

Anyway. I digress. Ive also been working on my own tatting ideas recently. I’ve managed to snatch a little bit of time here and there, and I’m really enjoying it.

I’ve been looking at layering the tatting as I’ve seen quite a lot of it about and I really like it. Mostly people use this technique for jewellery, but as I’ve mentioned before, while I love it to look at tatted jewellery it ends up being way bigger in size than anything I would normally wear.

I’m a fan of square designs so I ended up moving in that direction. These are all variations on a theme…

And this was the outcome of those ideas. They’re not sewn down or blocked so they’re a bit wonky, but you get the idea. As you can probably see, they’re made up of two sections, loosely threaded through. I did expand one out to secure the second section in, but it all got a bit unfocussed so I stopped. Looking at it now (not sure why I didn’t take a photo) it’s not as bad as I thought – I might go back to it. Either way I quite like these little squares. I think they’ll look nice when they’re sewn down.

These are based on the idea of a crown, as it suddenly occurred to me that each corner was quite crown like…

And this is the outcome of that.  I can’t seem to get a good photo of the black one but I really like it. It feels quite solid. The black thread is still size 80 but the dye really affects the thread and it’s a bit stiffer than the ecru. I think it would work well on black fabric, and possibly beaded, so that’s probably the plan.

But in the meantime I have a little pile of thread-and-bead jewels. I keep looking at them and wondering what to do next. 

Always amazes me that I can make something like this with a ball of thread and two shuttles.

I’ve also started tatting on my commute again. New journey and a different train means I can sometimes get a seat, which is really nice. First few times it felt a bit weird – I’ve not tatted that much in public for a while. Then you realise everyone’s so engrossed in their phones and Facebook you could be sitting there naked or on fire and no one would look at you – so there’s no real need to be self-conscious.