Category: tatting

Autumn tatting

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After writing the post on Friday, saying I was almost too nervous to start tatting with my new (HDT) thread, I shut down the mac and started loading up a fresh shuttle. By Friday night, I’d finished! I had to head into town, so tatted on every form of public transport, finishing the last few rings when I got home. It’s Mary Konior’s Posy pattern – but in this instance, it’s a little autumn wreath:

finished!

I’ve never guessed the amount of thread I needed so perfectly! I kept thinking ‘Argh! It’s never going to make it, you’ll need to add more in for the very last ring!’ – but it all worked out amazingly well. I had, perhaps, 6″ of thread left on the shuttle, if that.

yellow

After tatting with size 100 – just for one project – it was really odd to switch to size 80. It was like tatting with rope. I got used to the change pretty quickly, but was surprised how weird it felt. Anyone who gets annoyed with size 80 twisting in on itself should switch to 100, just for the joy of switching back! It tatted like a dream.

It’s such nice thread to use too. If I had to use one thread forever, I would use this thread, in this colourway. As you can see from the pictures (overdone, I know – I just got a bit over excited) it’s in perfect autumn colours. The yellow is spot on – that real mustardy yellow that looks so great in the sunshine. I actually don’t think I’ve ever tatted anything I’ve liked this much!

Oddly, I’m not a massive fan of variegated thread. Often it has white between the colours, or there’s quite a harsh line between each colour. This one feels like it blends in really well – and all the colours work properly together – there’s no jarring colour thrown in. I’m now wondering if I should buy more, just, y’know, incase. It’s from Yarnplayer’s etsy store.

I think the thread works well with this pattern as it’s not that complicated too. A complicated pattern with a complex bunch of colours can often be too much for me. I’m thinking I might use more of the thread to tatt around a ring though. And then I’ll hang them up maybe – two little autumn wreaths.

another one!

That aside, I went to the Knitting and Stitching Show with my mum yesterday, and it was great. Feet-achingly busy, but fun having a wander round. I bought some new yarn for crochet), which I’m itching to get started with – but am resisting. I have to make another elephant, for a friend’s daughter, and a monkey for their son. So far I’m two ears, two legs and half an elephant head down, so I guess I should get back to it.

Hope you’re having a nice weekend, and maybe even seeing some sunshine too.

A posy in white

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Or rather, ecru. I decided to remake the posy and get it right this time. It’s the Mary Konior pattern of just rings, and the thread is size 100, so it’s quite small:

Mary Konior's posy pattern

While I was finishing this off, some HDT I’d ordered arrived from Yarnplayer– and it’s gorgeous. I was torn between wanting to drop everything and use it immediately – and thinking it’s too nice to use incase I mess it up!

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.

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

Tatted Cluny links

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This is a little bit for me, and a little bit for you. Some links on cluny’s that might be handy (in no particular order)
• a good photo tutorial
• a nice post on using a stitch marker to help close the cluny
• the video that helped me finally ‘get it’
• a cluny pattern that I *will* one day start with (when I stop practising)

I just posted this as I spotted the link to use a stitch marker this morning, and didn’t want to forget where I’d seen it. As i often see people searching for cluny info, thought it could be handy.

Let me know if you’ve found any other links that could be good, and I’ll add them to the list.

Stitchin’ and Bitchin’? Tatting & chatting.

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I met up with some friends this week at the Royal Festival Hall, for a stitchy get together. There were two knitters, one embroiderer, a crocheter, and a trainee crocheter. I took my tatting, as I’ve recently finished the crochet elephant, and for some reason, taking crochet anywhere always requires too much planning… and to much pattern reading. I always end up missing an increase or decrease and confusing myself. With tatting, patterns are easier to memorise and so it’s a bit more sociable.

I’ve started the primrose path doily again. I made the middle section a few weeks back, and kept it as it was to give to someone. Since then I’ve been planning to remake it, but not quite had the chance. This time I thought I’d make life easy for myself, and make it in one colour.

Tatting and thread

This is a DMC thread, size 80, in ‘dark ecru’ and I really like it. It’s almost a muted gold colour. Looks nice.
doily

I must admit, I never thought I would be the doily making type, but I just fancied making something a bit bigger… A bit more involved, maybe. As it goes, this is quite an easy pattern – I made two of the middle sections with friends and the other two on the train, to and from work.

Tatted casualties

There were two casualties though. I did try again with the grey Venus thread – managed to make one section and realised I’d got my rings up the wrong way! I love the colour of this thread, but it’s just terrible to tat with. It breaks far too easily and makes it very difficult to close rings. The other one I forgot to join before I closed a ring, so just carried on anyway. I guess I’ll hide the ends and use them for… y’know. Something.

Elephant racing

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Things are still pretty busy on the work front, and so I’ve been getting into work earlier. This means standing with your head in someone’s armpit on the overground and the underground as they’re packed in the mornings – and this in turn means it’s not the ideal tatting scenario. (I can tatt like this – but look what happened last time!) Also I’m itching to make a few new things – and that means I need room to read a pattern, which is tricky. So, I’ve been reading where possible, or studying the finer points of other people’s ear hair. You know how it is. (Or if you’re lucky, maybe you don’t.)

An elephant's head

Ages ago I promised someone I’d make them an elephant for their birthday. They’re birthday is *next weekend* and so today I thought I really should get a move on. There’s a lot going on this week and I’ll never have time to finish it in the evenings. Why didn’t I start it ages ago? Silly me.

Anyway, I’ve made a head, arms and legs. I actually started with the arms and legs first as they’re the least exciting bit and it’s good to get them done. Also, as I’m so bad at sewing, I like to do as much as I can as I go along, to tuck the ends inside. I made the ears before I started the head too, so I could sew them as I went.

Deflated elephant

Poor wee thing. I’ll start on her body next – I might just get this done – if not sewn up – tonight. I think I’m using a different hook to last time. I have a feeling last time I used a 2.5mm and this is a 3mm – its a bit odd, as the stitches look completely different. Anyway. It’s all neat and tidy, which is a good thing, as I really worry that I’ll give things to people and they’ll be really embarrassed about how rubbish it is.

I think if i make another one, I might modify the pattern ever so slightly. I think I made a mistake on the first one – which resulted in the trunk having the tiniest upturn at the end, and it looks really nice. It would be easy to do, just need to add in maybe one decrease a couple of rows in. Having said that, I need to finish this one first, which I shall go and do now…

Occasionally scrapbooky

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But not that kind of scrapbook. I’ve recently started a Tumblr account: www.occasionalcrafter.tumblr.com

At the moment, this blog feels more like a place to talk about these stuff I make now and again, and so the tumblr account is more of a scrapbook full of things I love from other people. If you don’t use tumblr, it’s worth a look. It’s a super-easy little blogging platform, that lets you just post a photo or a link, a quote or whatever. The interface is dead simple. I  love it, actually.

There’s not much on there right now, but rest assured, it will get a bit fuller as the weeks wear on.

In other news, I really have to do some crochet. A friend of mine asked for an elephant for her birthday and I’ve just realised it’s really soon. don’t let me forget.

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).