Category: lace

A wandering mind tats no joins

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Lots going on at the moment. My brain feels like a ball of thread too tightly wound – but pull one end and the whole lot will unravel in a heap on the floor. Lazy analogy, but you know what I mean.

I was tatting around a plastic ring and screwed it up, so with a full shuttle and no ball attached I thought it might be nice to try Mary Konior’s Posy pattern. It’s just made of rings, so a total joy to tat on the train. Also – it’s really pretty! I’ve been meaning to make it for ages.

Only bad thing is that I wasn’t really concentrating on the last group of 5 petals. I missed the joins – and so now I have a quite neatly tatted (even if I do say so myself) crescent of tatted flowers.

Were I a human of pocket-sized proportions, I’d probably be quite pleased. Would look quite nice as a miniature collar.

There are several upsides though. The first – I’ve found out l like tatting this pattern. It’s nice n’ easy for the train and it’s a good one for those times you find yourself with a shuttle full of thread and nothing to do with it. (I have a habit of winding on too much thread). Also, I’ve made my mistake now on thread I’m not that bothered about – which means this is the perfect project for some HDT I’ve just ordered from Yarnplayer, as hopefully I wont make the same mistake again. We shall see…

WIPs: crochet and tatting

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Gah! I knew it. Yesterday the sun was shining and everything looked lovely. Today? Grey, overcast, everything looks a bit… Meh. When did I decide to take some photos? Today, of course.

Anyway. Just a quickie to say that I’m still going with the broomstick scarf:

Actually, I’m really enjoying it. Turns out it’s easy to do this when catching up with old series of 24 (for some reason we’ve seen everything but the first series, so a remedying that now). It’s the perfect pick up, put down project.

I’m on ball 3 of the baby bamboo yarn – and I imagine there will be a few more to come yet. I do like this yarn though. Very soft, and does have a really nice sheen to it – without looking cheap. I’d use it again for other things.

I guess the only bad thing is that I’ve made this scarf quite wide. On a bad day, I think too wide, on a good day, I think y’know, stylishly wide. There’s a lot of draped knitted fabrics out there at the moment, and a lot of capes and wraps… this is a… oh no…

It’s a scrap! A cross between a scarf and a wrap! What have I DONE?

Never mind. It does actually look really nice as a piece of fabric (even if I do say so myself). If it’s too wide to wear in public I’ll drape it artfully over the arm of the sofa and pretend we’re in Country Living.

I’m also continuing my commuter project of tatting the Primrose Path doily, by Mary Konior. I really couldn’t get a decent photo of it – I hate photography – and so I can only apologise. Here it is resting on my cammo tatting travel bag:

Doily and bag

I’m in two minds about this. On the one hand, I know what’s left of the pattern well enough by now to just get on with it and on the other…

Well, it looks a bit crap, and I’m not sure I actually *want* to finish it. There’s various things that look a bit odd – like the fact that some of the first row of chains are almost stright lines, rather than curves, I’ve pulled one chain completely out of shape (thank you Southern Railways)… and… I dunno. So I know I wont love it that much when it’s finished. Actually the more I think about it, the more I think I should scrap it and start something new.

We’ll see. I should actually be working right now, so we’ll see how the day goes. I might not have time to dig out another project before tomorrow, so maybe I’ll carry on. I’ll let you know.

Broomstick lace

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*****
EDIT

Hello, did you come here via a google search for Broomstick lace? If so, thanks for coming, it’s lovely to meet you. I have a feeling you might be looking for a tutorial video, in which case, I used this one, and found it very good. I must confess, I’ve only watched part one, as it was all I needed to get going. Few other things that are useful to know:

• Its very easy and looks complicated
• I find less ‘fluffy’ yarns are best, to make the most of the pattern. (Better stitch definition)
• After every row of broomstick lace I do a row of double crochet – you don’t have to, but I quite like the stripes it creates. Also it gives it a bit more structure, which is good for an ‘every day’ scarf.
• I also crochet around the edges of the whole thing at the end, because it stops me worrying about the edges snagging on something when its worn. I usually add a picot every 4 or 5 stitches too, just to liven it up a bit.
• I used a very fat knitting needle as my ‘broomstick’, but I’ve seen other people use a ruler.

And that’s it really. The rest of this page has my original post, but I thought the above might help you get the information you wanted a bit quicker. Enjoy your crochet!

******

So, I’ve been seeing odd pieces of broomstick lace cropping up for a while now. It’s not really lace as such, but crochet, made over a ‘broomstick’:

broomstick lace

I spotted a lovely scarf over on Ravelry (you’ll need to be logged in) recently, and thought I’d have a go. Can’t be impossible, right? Actually it’s not. It’s a bit fiddly, but easy to pick up – although I might take that back when I’ve finished it and it all turns out to be a disaster!

broomstick needle

Look! My first knitting needles! I had to get them yesterday, as I didn’t have anything else appropriate. From what I’ve seen, these scarves look better in a yarn with a slight sheen – you know, less wooly. Being pretty limited by the local shop, and the urge to start NOW I went with the best option I could find which is Sidar ‘Baby Bamboo’. It splits a bit, but it’s really soft actually. The softness of it makes it quite nice to work with.

loopy

At the end of each row, you slide all the loops off the broomstick. The you work double stitches over groups of 4, and it magically just all works out. It’s pretty clever, really. If you’d like to try, but don’t have a book to hand, there’s a bunch of tutorials on YouTube. I just went with the first one I could find, which is a… well, it’s a three parter, but I haven’t got past the beginning of the second one, as I don’t need to increase or decrease for this. If you *do*, I’d suggest watching the rest!

If I never mention this again, it’s because I’ve messed it up, or got bored! Hopefully neither though. We’ll see.

Edit: part 2  |  scarf 2

Tatting with rings

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So, I get it now – not just how to do it, but why people love it! It’s kind of addictive… I had tried before, but I’ve realised a couple of things. First, I think I was only doing half the stitch each time – it took a wee while to work that one out. Second, I was using horrible thread, and the only plastic rings I could find really needed something thinner.

Tatted ring

So this is one of Jon Yusoff’s patterns, in size 80. I made two alterations – on the middle flower I had to leave a few stitches out to make it small enough to fit, and on the outer ring I used picots instead of Josephine knots as I didn’t have a spare shuttle to hand and I wanted to get started *right then*!

How big is the final thing? Well, it’s about this big:

Ring to scale

It’s about the size of a minifig lego Stormtrooper. I had a feeling that as soon as I called Death Star for help there’d be trouble. And there is. Despite being a little short for a Strormtrooper, he’s taken the tatting and is now holding it to ransom. SEND HELP.

ransom

How does your tatting grow?

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As I mentioned in my last post, the garden has been going nuts recently. We’ve had a ton of hot weather in the UK – and the occasional heavy rain shower – so everything has been growing like crazy. A few months ago I potted up some cheap bedding plants, kept my fingers crossed I’d find someone to water them when I was working away, and tried to ignore the fact that the rest of the garden looks terrible. Well, the rest of the garden still does look terrible, but the bedding plants looks amazing. They make me smile every day. I nipped out there just a minute ago to take a picture, and look what I found…

Tatted flower

If I’d known tatting was that easy to grow, I’d’ve done it earlier!

Tatted flowers 2

It is, of course, the centre of a Primrose Path doily, by Mary Konior. It’s the only bit of tatting I managed to do on my days off, which is a bit of a shame, but couldn’t be helped. It’s really pretty though, even if I do say so myself. I used the Shoe Lace Trick (SLT) on this a lot, because I wanted the centre rings to be the darker colour, and it worked really well. One of those things I’d read about before but wasn’t 100% sure I could see a use for.

I’ve earmarked this for someone as it is, because I think they might be able to make something quite nice out of it, and the full doily really is best left as a doily rather than a starting point for something else. (If that makes any sense?) I still intend to make the full thing though.

venus thread

I mentioned before I’d bought the Venus Thread in size 70 to try it out… and umm, I really don’t like it! I love the soft greys, but the thread produces rings that are really difficult to close – does anyone else find this? I abandoned the intended 2 colours, shown above, and thought I’d make my life (and my commute, which is where I tatt most) easier, by just using one ball and one shuttle. We’ll see if I make it through!

I also bought Jon’s Tatting with Rings book a little while ago. I purchased the PDF version (which arrived very promptly via email) and printed it all out asap. It looks wonderful – now I just need the time to start! Since having a few days off everything has become 10 times busier, which means… I’d better get back to it actually.

No rest for the wicked. (And clearly, I’ve been very wicked).

Clunys! (Tatted, not George’s)

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It’s a busy (and rather long) week. I flew to the USA from the UK last weekend for a conference, and it was a long flight. Eight hours or so to Chicago, with no in-flight entertainment. Luckily, I’d already thought to take my own:


This is actually my second go at this pattern, by Mary Konior. It’s oddly hard to get into the rhythm of it, but it’s really pretty. I only made one visible mistake this time around, but I’m letting myself off the hook, as it’s not that noticeable, really – and the reason I made the mistake was because a very sweet lady started talking to me.

She spotted me tatting in the departure lounge as we were waiting for a connecting flight. I could see her looking out of the corner of my eye, and I knew she wanted to talk. Eventually she came over and said ‘Is that tatting?! My husband’s grandmother used to do it and I haven’t seen anyone do it since.’ She was so thrilled, it was really cute.

She also congratulated me for keeping a dying art alive. I pointed out that it was far from dying, she just needs to spend some time on google! As she was a knitter, I suggested tatting might be good to try for in-flight craft, as I know knitters are number 1 terrorists these days, with their oh-so-pointy, devilish needles. Tatting shuttles are less fiendish, at least according to airport security.

Poor little Ele, I’ve been using her to hang my smaller bits of tatting on. She had this on her nose for a while, but recently she’s been wearing three different coloured ones on her head. I’m trying not to lose them (my desk is a real mess). She’s doing a very good job of looking after everything.  These were also experiments in tatting with two colours – and joining the thread into a different coloured ring. I’ve kind of got it – it sort of depends on the day, how I’m feeling and whether or not the tatting gods are smiling on me 🙂

cluny

I’m back in the UK now, and jet-laggy. I’ve been thinking about tacking clunys since I spotted them again recently on Fox’s site. She’s been making a few different things with clunys and linked to a video by the Mistress of them all, Elisadusud. So last night, at around 12.45am I thought it might be a good time to start learning. Believe it or not, it wasn’t bad.

Tatting videos are so good, mainly because you can watch them frame… by…. frame… until…. you get what on earth is going on. I’ve got some size 20 Lizbeth thread, which is what I’m learning on – and at the moment, I cannot imagine how you’d do it on anything thinner – but I guess I’ll get there eventually? It’s the thread that makes the above photo look so nice – I can’t take credit for the colours. Also, it’s photographed surprisingly well – not sure it looks quite that good in real life!

So I’ll keep on practising for a bit, and if I ever manage to make a cluny in size 80 – which is my favourite thread – I’ll let you know!

Comfy craft

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I admit it. I am the *queen* of comfort clothing. Even though I don’t have to dress up for work, I still have to get changed the second I walk home through the door. Most of the time I grab a hoodie because they’re comfiest of all. It’s kind of funny that it happens to be covered in ram’s skulls. There’s 5 down each arm and one big one on the back. I’ve kind of adopted it really, t’wasn’t actually mine to begin with.

I thought it would be kind of funny to photograph it with the most recent thing I tatted, which is this heart, in size 20 Lizbeth thread. My parents recently went to the USA, and asked if there was anything I wanted. I said if they could find any, I’d love to try some Lizbeth thread, preferably in size 40 or smaller. Unfortunately, they could only get size 20, and in variegated thread, which is a bit thick for me I think – and the colours are a wee bit candy pop, but it was really sweet of them to hunt it down. It’s also great to be able to try it out and work out that yes, 20 IS thicker than 40, and perhaps too thick for me. It’s a nice thread though – feels really different to the DMC thread I’ve been using – it really does feel more like cord.

I’ve also made some slow progress on this:

Its the Mary Konior pattern I kept getting wrong. This is actually the 4th iteration – and you can see it’s still not really right – but actually, I don’t mind. I’ve really loved making it, and knowing that if I decided to make it again, (which I already think I might) I’ll make it much better. Actually, i think my first instinct of onion rings might’ve been right afterall – made the bottoms of the rings a bit neater. I’ve actually really messed up the ring I’m on, and I need to add some new thread in too, but rather than give up, I’m persevering.

I should also add that it’s taking so long because I’ve only been tatting it on the train. I take 4 different modes of transport to work – train is the easiest to tatt on. The journey is between 15-20 mins, but that includes getting on, finding a seat, getting stuff out, tatting, packing it all away again and fighting to get off. So really, it’s not a lot of time each session. This thread is also a thickness of 100 – which makes it very thin. Sometimes it feels like you take your life in your hands every time you close a ring, because it doubles back on itself so much. I did something quickly last night and snapped it by accident.

The thread I like best is, I think, size 80. I lost the paper bit they put in the centre, and there’s no real shop near me to go and check, but through process of elimination, I reckon that’s it. I’ve just ordered a few balls of size in different colours, so hopefully I’ll know for real any day now.

Third time lucky?

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We shall see.

While I was tatting the motif in the previous post, I decided I should really finish stuff off properly; block it and tidy up the ends. There’s two reasons really – 1) it would give me a proper sense of achievement when I’d finished and 2) I wouldn’t end up with a pile of tatting sitting on my desk with the threads all waiting to be dealt with:

Tatting pile

There’s all sorts in the pile. Mostly Mary Konior patterns, but also…

  • a nice, basic star, which was an experiment in floating rings
  • a triangle, which I’d seen others do, forgot to write the pattern down, but  successfully guessed while on the train
  • two spare middles for the stars I made at Christmas
  • A doodle I made up on the plane to Savannah, Georgia. (I’m based in the UK, it was a long flight).

Literally all-bar-one (a Mary Konior square design, which might be my favourite pattern of all time) need their ends weaving in. Ah – actually, there’s the one I posted the other day in there too – I take that back!

Anyway. I need to weave my ends in. And so the next challenge will be learning how to hide ends as I go. I’ve been putting it off for ages, but I should really learn. I might be an occasional crafter, but there’s occasional, and there’s just being a bit lazy!

In the mean time, I’m on my third attempt at this:

Third time lucky

Another Mary Konior pattern, I really only started it because I’d learnt onion rings and thought it would be a good place to use them.
It wasn’t really.

I think it’s better the way Mary suggested – a ring in the centre and chains and floating rings on the outside. The  green one I screwed up because I added an extra ring and couldn’t find a nice way to get rid of it. The  white one, you can just about see on the left I screwed up because I should’ve switched shuttles for the middle rings, and if you don’t it looks all pointy and weird. So now, well, third time lucky? We shall see.

I’m trying to ignore the fact the second ring is smaller than the first. The thread is size 100 (or so they say – it doesn’t actually feel that thin to me) and it has a habit of twisting back on itself. This means that to close the second ring I had to give it a bit of a tug, and it shrank a bit. Oh well. I wont tell anyone if you don’t and we’ll see if we can get away with it.

Pub and train tatting

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I was hoping to get home in daylight to photograph these, but no such luck! So a speedy shot for now of two versions of a Mary Konior pattern – one blocked of course, and the other not.

The blocked one was started in a pub and finished on a train. The unblocked one was train journeys all the way.
It has to be said this pattern is ideal for a commuter – one shuttle, no ball – it’s just rings on repeat. You can tatt this sitting on a train, or as I ended up doing for a while, standing on a platform waiting for a train. (You have to do a bit of magic with the hook, if you’re not a built-in hooker, so to speak.)
It’s also the ideal ‘end-of-shuttle buster’. I emptied three shuttles making just the first one!*
Amusingly, each motif has a mistake caused by its surroundings. The one tatted in a pub has one ring too small – a friend arrived and I lost count of my stitches. The one on the train has seven rings where there should be six. The train was dividing, and I wasn’t 100% sure I was in the right bit. (You know that feeling?) In the end I decided to make two sections with seven rings and pretend it’s a feature. (I work with web developers, there’s a nice little saying: ‘That’s not a bug, it’s a feature!’ Works for them, it can work for me).
They might not be perfect, but I’m rather pleased with them, really. They were so enjoyable to make.

blocked and unblocked

*why do I have three shuttles of the same thread? Well… it’s the only thread I have of this size, and I’ve decided it’s my favourite. But I’ve refused to buy any more nice thread until I get through some of what I have, and more to the point – finally decide on a bigger project. Also, I’m not sure what size it is… so I thought I should figure that out too. More of that soon.

I tat for process

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I read a piece on Make and Meaning a little while ago, talking about crafters making things because they enjoy the process, or making things because they want the product. It’s popped into my head quite a bit since I read it, and I have to say, with crochet it’s probably 50/50 – I like the process, but I like having the finished product so I can give it to people.

With tatting, I think it’s all about the process. It’s so great learning something new – I taught myself split rings last year on the train on the way to work and was so excited I almost had to tell the stranger sitting next to me. Last weekend I finally took a look at ‘onion rings‘ (really easy – as it goes) but it’s such a joy when you get it all to work. I love the action of tatting, and the size of it. I love that you can chuck it in your bag and take it anywhere, you can tat at the busstop or fill a shuttle even when you don’t get a seat on a commuter train.

The thing with being all process is that once you understand the process you don’t mind if you don’t finish the product. I’ve got a pile of small tatted things (bad light at the moment – will take a photo at some point) that could be made into a bigger more finished ‘thing’ but it’s feels done now, I know it did or didn’t work so I’ve moved on to the next thing.

tatting

This is a Mary Konior pattern I tried at the weekend, after I’d been looking into ‘onion rings’. It doesn’t actually call for them, but you can use rings for the first two in each motif and finish it off with a chain around the outside. Because I’m an idiot I messed up the third motif, in all kinds of ways. I kind of tatted it backwards, which gave me a twisted picot when i joined two rings and then in a fit of madness I created a whole other ring I didn’t even need. I’ve managed to open closed rings in the past but i couldn’t open this one and decided to quit while I was ahead. But what now? Should i remake, or move on to something new. For once, I’m torn with this. I kind of feel like I should remake it actually. It’s really fun to tat, partly because it’s such a pain in the bum. Process, see. I didn’t even like the pattern that much when I started.