Happy New Year!!

Wishing everyone a year that sparkles, shines, flips and doesn't tangle!

Swan

Swan on the water. Pretty, eh? This one is also from Dianna Stevens' Animal Bookmarks: A Tatted Zoo. I like the idea that the bookmark tail is water. I made this one from size 30 Cebelia, white and "Singing the Blues." I had some problem with the scanning, because the blue doesn't show up really well on black, but the swan didn't show up at all on white. All the other colors just looked weird, so black it is.

Tabby Cat

You know why this cat looks so grumpy? I cut the whiskers off one side of the scan. Oops. They really are all still there on the bookmark. This one is for a friend who owns a tabby cat, so I thought she might like it. Like the snail, it is made from Lizbeth size 20 medium Harvest Orange, and a size 20 Omega orange variegate. It has a really long tassel tail. It can tease the cat while it hangs out the bottom of a book, right?

This is another from Dianna Stevens' Animal Bookmarks: A Tatted Zoo. There's a lion in there too, but I don't think I'm going to make it. Too many picots! I think it would prob'ly shed.

Snail Trail

Look at that speedy little beast go! He's going to get away -- in about a month. This is the Snail bookmark from Dianna Stevens' Animal Bookmarks: A Tatted Zoo. This is the only kind of snail I like. The snail is made from Lizbeth size 20 medium Harvest Orange, and a size 20 Omega (which seemed larger) orange variegate I got from Aileen (Wickedtats) as a runner-up in her Halloween give away. It was perfect for this little snail. The tail is done in pearl tatting with encapsulated threads to simulate a snail trail on grass (with Lizbeth size 30 Christmas Green grass). The pattern didn't call for that weird ring cluster at the end. I was just getting...uh...fancy, yeah, fancy.

Happy Holidays!

Tatty Turtle

Isn't that just the sweetest little thing? This is my niece's favorite of all the bookmarks I've been making lately. Bet you thought it was from Dianna Stevens again. Nope, this one is Tatty Turtle from Mark Myers. This is such a clever pattern and it made a really nice little bookmark. I used a different color for the bookmark tail because I didn't want any one thinking I thought turtles had really long tails. The butterfly at the end is so there were no ends to hide when I finished (well, not in the tail, there were ends to hide in the turtle). The turtle is made of Lizbeth size 20 Christmas green. The tail is size 30 Cebelia "Day and Night Rainbow". I like that nice flat pearl tatted tail for bookmarks.

See Ya Later, Alligator!

You're ready to run out and get a copy of Dianna Stevens' Animal Bookmarks: A Tatted Zoo, aren't you? This little beastie is another from that book. The pattern is fairly easy, and the results are so much fun. I think I might have done a better job on the lower jaw, though. I just decided this is a mama alligator, and she's carrying baby ones in that puffy mouth. :) Yeah, that works -- I wonder if they'll grow up to be bookmarks too? I was going to make something creative like a pink and purple alligator, but decided on these more earthy colors. These are medium Harvest Orange and Christmas Green from Lizbeth in size 20. I was going to get all creative and put a bead in the eye, but decided not to chance that bead-bump-in-the-book problem.

I've got this and some other posts set up to pop in here automatically while I'm away for the Holidays. If you decide to share a really interesting, fascinating, well-written, insightful comment, be assured, I'm not ignoring you. I'm just going where I don't have an internet connection. :)

Ssssssnake!

Hey, you wanna practice all those thread spaces? This is the bookmark for you! Another from Dianna Stevens' Animal Bookmarks: A Tatted Zoo. I don't like thread spaces. I'm not very good at judging the distance, marking my finger didn't work, and I couldn't figure out how to use a picot gauge to make them. So...they're just eyeballed, then blocked to a fair-thee-well. It helps that the snake is supposed to squiggle like that!

This one is a ...hmmm... rainbow banded coral snake. I will say this is the most charming little snake ever, even though I think they are really, really poisonous -- extra poisonous. Squashed in a book might be the best place to keep one. It is made of size 30 Cebelia thread that my sister dyed "Day and Night Rainbow". Maybe that's too pretty for a snake. Nah.

Love that Butterfly

This is the Butterfly heart Bookmark from Dianna Stevens' Animal bookmarks: A Tatted Zoo. I've been to the butterfly zoo, once in Seattle, and once in Las Vegas (just between you, me and the gatepost, Seattle was better). This was a pretty simple bookmark to work, especially if you like split rings. There are lots of them.

I've been wondering since I finished if I should maybe try one with the butterfly a different color than the heart. It would stand out more. I like this one, though. It's made with Lizbeth size 20 Christmas Red (so apropriate to the season, eh?). I don't usually like tassels, but this just works so well at the end of the split ring tail -- no ends to weave in if they are made a part of the tassel. Nifty!

There was a challenge on InTatters in November to tat something from a book you owned but had never used. That's when I opened this little treasure chest from Dianna Stevens. Once I got started, it seemed like I ought to just get through the whole thing!

Butterflies

Jane Eborall, the ever creative and generous (yes, you are, don't be modest), has just shared this new pattern for butterfly bookmarks. It's got her wonderful long beaded picots, so I used silver ones on both of these.

She mentioned on her blog that the tail could be made with pearl tatting instead of lock chain. I tried that too, since she had a link to "the lazy way" (yeah, that's my speed!). Ooooo, I like it, it's fun to do! I did change the end of the bookmark tail. Instead of the pretty little five-ring beaded flower, I did a non-beaded four-ring butterfly. I did that for two reasons. First, I wasn't certain how long to make the tail -- what if someone was reading a bigger book than they had bookmark? I wouldn't want to have a bookmark with beads that would sit inside the book and make bumps in the pages. Second, so I could not mess with hiding ends. If I'd made the beaded end Jane shows, there would have been no ends to hide, but it would have needed the beads -- and I've already explained why I didn't want beads.

The purple one, done in Lizbeth size 20 "Country Grape Swirl", was the first one I did. the butterfly at the bottom had to be blocked (just sprayed with water and pinned flat), because it wanted to fold up. The blue one is in size 30 Cebelia "Singing the Blues". The butterfly at the bottom of the tail is fastened to the tail at the small rings. It stays flat without all that blocking bother. Nifty -- another new favorite (partly because I really like that pearl-tatted tail, so nice and flat for books!).

Thanks, Jane!

More Chickens!

Isn't that just the cutest little chicken? I think the Cockerel bookmark from Dianna Stevens' Animal bookmarks: A Tatted Zoo is my new favorite -- or one of them, anyway.

The one on the left was made from real size 20 thread. It's "Springtime" from Lizbeth, but I got it from Dorcas. :) Lucky me, eh? We're right in the middle of a thread exchange. I've sent mine off, and I received this lovely sample from Dorcas. I don't own any of this, but now I think I might have to get some, because this is a really pretty variegate. Funny, because I keep telling my sister I don't like purple and green together. I guess I do, after all! See, there? Aren't thread exchanges just the most useful thing ever?

I've got another one of these done, too -- it's the one on the right. I've used the size 30 Day and Night Rainbow again, and it's come out just as nifty as the first one. Of course, I was lazy and thought I could put the tail on without breaking the thread, so there's an extra little chain. I think it looks okay, though, right? Say "yes" -- that's what I wanna hear!

Beady Ornament

Two views of the same ornament. The pattern is my first original ornament pattern, without the top and bottom caps. The thread is my sister's Dark Rainbow on a size 80 DMC tatting cotton base. Finally, the beads are pale green seed beads, but there are lots and lots of them. They are crowded together on picots separated by only one ds, and clustered in threes on other picots. It clacked and clicked while I was working on it and felt heavy when I was trying to pin it to the ornament.
I was informed when I was making this that the beads were too large for my thread. Well, okay. That would depend on what "look" I was going for, right? I was going for the beady look; the really beady look. This thing succeeds in that. It's beady, and it's going on our Christmas tree this year. It's not traditional Christmas colors, but we've got lots of other non-traditionaly-colored ornaments, so it works -- even with too-large beads.

Icy Ornament

I had to wait until this one reached it's destination before posting it. It was part of the package I sent off for an InTatters Secret Santa Exchange. It seems that people have stopped taking pleasure in anticipation! Packages are being opened as they arrive (I can hardly wait -- until Christmas. I like to have things to open that morning!). Anyway, this ornament is not a secret anymore. :)

This one is adapted from "Ice Crystal" in Tatting Patterns and Designs by Blomqvist and Persson. It's made from my sister's Desert Green thread dyed on a DMC size 80 tatting cotton, and has red seed beads at the picot joins.

I think if I do this one again, I might make the bottom piece a bit differently so it would fit higher up in to the empty spaces left by the top piece. Still I do like this one.

I wonder how well the other patterns in the Blomqvist and Persson will adapt to ornaments? There's a thought.

LadyShuttleMaker Monday Mondo Giveaway

Get over there! She's got silk HDT!!

Festival of Trees

As I had created a few decorations for the tree the Bonneville Tatters Guild donated to the Festival of Trees, we went out to see the Festival. Fanciful trees, traditional trees, cheerful trees, mournful trees, big trees, little trees -- wow -- there were a LOT of trees, and wreaths and tabletop decorations. All of these things were being sold for charity. Many of them were sold at auction before the Festival began, and others still had "for sale" tags on them. The Bonneville Tatters tree was one that was sold at the auction to a local pediatric clinic. I got some pictures of the tree and ornaments, but not much that was very good of the rest of the display because in addition to all the trees and decorations there were people -- lots and lots of people! I took the liberty of cleaning up a bit of the background -- which was more trees and people -- so the tree could be seen. Isn't that pretty? The group from the Guild who did the decorating did themselves proud, did they not? There was also a group of teddy bears having tea, a treasure chest with tatting in it, and a beautiful doll with tatting edging her dress.

My other pictures have been severely doctored or cropped because, really, who wants to look at an odd body part or two, or a dozen stuck in with the ornaments? There are two of mine, one on a satin ball and one in a ring that I showed on this blog before I turned them in. There is also the one on a satin ball that is the adaptation of Cornelia that I showed in my December 3 post. If you look closely there's another burgundy ornament in a ring that I caught at an angle. I didn't even get a scan or picture of that or its two fellows before I turned those in (at the last minute!). The last two ornaments pictures are of some of the other tree ornaments made by the talented members of the Guild.


There's a bit of the tea table decor -- and I have to find out who did the lovely plate doily! And last, but not least, all the pretty laces that were displayed in the trunk. There are a couple of other photographs of items used at the Festival on the Bonneville Tatters website (under Christmas Share Potluck Party) if you're interested in seeing one of the teddy bears, the front of the trunk, and some more ornaments!


Finally, for anyone who stumbled on this by mistake -- looking for tattoos or something equally outré -- here ya go (my niece's favorite tree -- teenagers are beyond me):

Adaptable Cornelia

There! See how adaptable "Cornelia" is! It's just the most amazing pattern. I was playing around with the size 40 red thread after I made the size 20 ornament strap adaptation. It came out as a really nice little heart, so I put it in a ring. I dropped it on the table and it landed upside down. Oh -- wow! A tree, I could see a tree.

The green size 40 and some silver beads made a nice little tree. It needed a trunk, but as I just had a bag of necessities (I was visiting), I didn't have any brown. (Just kidding -- I don't actually own any brown. It's so brown!) I did have a shuttle with some ecru thread on it. Ta-da, a tree with an anemic trunk -- inside a ring of course, I'm making ornaments! And more ornaments. I did two more with little changes, like different bead colors and some different stitch counts.

Guess what happened when I turned the tree upside down? Yup -- an even better heart. I doctored this one so you can see it, too -- but I've not made a nice red one yet.

I think a combination of the second and third one will work out best if I decide to make more (and how can I resist?). Wouldn't these make great presents to fit inside a card? Of course, the post office would probably mangle 'em unless I use a padded envelope. (People who need padded cells ought to have lots of padded envelopes -- but they are sadly lacking in this household).

Making Ornaments

Cornelia by Iris Niebach (from Tatted Doilies) is one of my favorite patterns.
When the Bonneville Tatters Guild asked me to make another ornament or two for the guild submission to the Festival of Trees I was a little worried that I wouldn't have time to get something made. I've made other ornaments by adapting Cornelia, but that adaptation required quite a bit of tatting. This is what I finally came up with:
It's made of size 20 Lizbeth ecru. I wrapped it over the top and down the sides of a burgundy satin ornament. I had intended to make a couple of little motifs to put on the sides below the center of the strap, but there wasn't enough time. I didn't even get a picture of it. So I made two more. :) One is a nice Christmas Green and the other is Christmas Red both are size 40 Lizbeth thread. I had time to make the extra little motif for the sides for these.

Ice Crystal

November has been month for doing things I hadn't before. I've made one (yeah, just one) piece from Tatting Patterns and Designs by Blomqvist and Persson (Lucky Clover -- but I've done it a bunch of times). There are so many pretty patterns in this book, I finally decided I needed to make Ice Crystal. I've made some little icicle ornaments adapted from this pattern, but not the whole pattern.

When I was trying to decide what color to use, I finally reached dither-point. After dithering around for a while, I figured I'd just use all the colors. This is Ice Crystal in Rainbow colors. The thread is a size 80 DMC tatting cotton which my sister dyed for me. It measures just 5.25 inches (13.5 cm) across at it's widest point

Okay, it doesn't look like ice -- but it's certainly cheerful!

It's a Chicken!

Actually, it's not a Chicken -- it's a Cockerel Bookmark from Dianna Stevens' Animal Bookmarks: A Tatted Zoo.

It called for size 20 thread, but I started it in size 80. Ahhhhh, isn't that cute? Well, no actually it was very nearly tiny and sort of wimpy. I left of making the long bookmark tail and started over.

This is the result.

It actually is size 20! (Unusual for me, I generally just pick a thread I want to use and ignore what's called for -- ornery that way, I am). I used the Day and Night Rainbow my sister dyed for me on a DMC size 20 cordonet base. Not only was the pattern fun, the thread is great to work with. I do think I should have made the tail feathers a bit longer (though not so long as those on the size 80), but I'm just figuring this is an immature rooster.

Well, really. I thought it was size 20, really I did. Got looking back and decided that I really shouldn't scribble this stuff off the top of my head. It's actually a DMC size 30 Cébélia -- but is really is the Day and Night Rainbow. :)

Annalisa

Annalisa from Tatted Doilies by Iris Niebach, made with size 30 purple Cébélia.

I have had this book for about five years, and have made some of the patterns (notably Beatrice and Cornelia) a number of times. This Annalisa always looked way to scary. I got brave late in October and tackled it. I did a lot of retro-tatting, grumbling when I couldn't find my paperclip, and fussing, but got the whole thing done. I like it, and it wasn't really as difficult as I had expected.

It's been done for about two weeks, but I could not get myself to block it. It's still not blocked -- this is as it came off the shuttles. I know it will look better when I can finally bestir myself to block it!

Now I have to do the variations: Annamaria and Annarita. What fun, eh? (^_^)

Elizabeth's Giveaway!

Look at these! Aren't they pretty? Elizabeth is giving them away in honor of her 100th Etsy sale. If you'd like a chance to have these for your very own, jump on over to her blog and enter.

I just wish I could enter about 16 dozen times!

LadyShuttleMaker Giveaway

You really, really need to pop on over to Sherry's blog this morning and enter her Monday Mondo giveaway. It's a goodie today!!

Earrings

Yup. Earrings. I've been making 'em. I haven't been using a pattern, just Jon Yusoff's method for covering rings. There are four stitches over the cabone ring between each beaded ring. Oren Bayan metallic threads are the best I've ever used. That said, I must admit that the silver ones were made with DMC metallic. It takes a little longer and I have to work a little looser, but I like the look of the metallic threads. The multi-color and green ones have really tiny beads. I found a new bead store not too far from home, and it had all these really tiny seed beads. I think they are 15 or something like that -- I really can't read the codes on them. The best I could manage was to read the price. That wasn't really tiny. Sigh. They were worth it, though. You should see me when I drop one -- no, you shouldn't; it's too embarrassing. The blue beaded earrings are mine, the green ones are my sister's and the bottom two are for friends of my aunt (those two are garnering me a small remuneration -- enough to buy some more beads). Oh, the reason you can't see the hooks on most of these is that the are nylon hooks. I put beads on the shanks. The green beads barely fit and the blue beads were a total no-go, so my earrings have gold hooks.

State Fair

This post is going to look like a re-run of the county fair -- in fact, I'm using the same pictures, just changing the ribbons. If I wait until I can get all the stuff back together with the ribbons, I'm never going to get this done. There aren't 24 hours in a day any more. I'm certain something has happened to the physics or something and there are only about 6. But -- I digress -- the State Fair was held very nearly a month ago (September 10-20). I demonstrated tatting on four of those days -- three evenings from 6 to 9 and one day from 10 in the morning until 2 in the afternoon (but I took the whole day off work, lovely). Here are the pictures:
I ran out of categories in tatting and had to enter my tatting-covered purse in the "large bag" category. I'm not much of a seamstress, and I don't think they knew I used a worn-out pair of jeans on purpose. I did get a comment on it "Lots of Work!!" Well, yeah. It was interesting to see the difference between entering it in miscellaneous tatting in the County and entering it as sewing in the State (especially when it was the tatting that was new, not the purse). I'm going to be more careful about picking categories if I do this again!

The only new things I entered were a bookmark (there is a category just for tatted bookmarks!) and a "wearable motif". The bookmark is "Honor" from Sherry Pence's The Exquisite Collection of Tatted Butterflies with an added tail to turn it into a bookmark. The judges liked it. That was good, because I like it too. The wearable motif is my original pattern for a t-shirt decoration made with buttons. For this shirt, I made single diamond motifs to match and sewed them on the sleeves.
The State Fair gives money prizes. In the categories in which I entered, they pay $3.00 for a first place and $2.00 for a second place, third and fourth places get ribbons. I got 6 firsts, 2 seconds, and a fourth in Home Arts and 1 first in Creative Arts. I am a rich woman now. [uh-huh, as if] I got one check for $22.00 from Home Arts and a check for $3.00 from Creative Arts. Considering it cost me $11.00 to enter all that stuff, ending up with $25.00 felt pretty good. In the first flush of ...well, actually, greed... I thought maybe I'd get out the list of categories and start now to make something in every one. But then I noticed one was "tablecloth - tatting". Uh-uh, I'm not tatting a tablecloth! My sister suggested I purchase a small doll table and make a tablecloth for that. I don't think the judges are that liberal, really, I don't.

Holloversary Mystery Giveaway -- Aileen's Wicked Tats is de-stashing! Another place to make a comment and maybe get a goodie. Isn't this fun? She's got all the requirements right there, but be sure you make your comment by October 29 (maybe you turn in to a pumpkin if you don't??).

Thread Again!

My sister has been dying things again. She did a set of tie-dyed sheets to enter in the Fair (which won a blue ribbon). While she had all those dyes out and mixed, I ...um... let her use some on thread for me. Just because I'm nice, you know. I've ended up with a wonderful mix of marine blues and greens she calls "mermaid" and another dark rainbow in size 80 thread. The other two are pinks and reds on a size 30 Cebelia base. I didn't have anything but a tiny little plastic core (same thing the size 80 came on) to wind the reds on. So -- I have ended up with a Bermuda Onion. I've been unable to make myself use it -- don't want to mess up my onion! I have used the mermaid, though. I made a t-shirt decoration and sewed it on a white t-shirt to enter in the State Fair. OH! That reminds me, I've gotta run -- I've taken the day off work to demonstrate tatting at the fair -- not sit here and rattle on like a pea in a boxcar!

LadyShuttleMaker Giveaway!

Hey! Look at this! Sherry, LadyShuttleMaker, is giving things away every Monday. Can you believe that? [She must not have that pack-rat hoarder gene I've got.] You do realize that means hand-dyed threads, ceramic shuttles, original watercolors, tatting books, bits of tatting, and other goodies, right?

All you have to do is go over to her blog Tatting Tales - All Things Tatting http://www.ladyshuttlemaker.blogspot.com every Monday and leave her a really good comment -- or a plain vanilla one if you don't happen to have a really good one churning around in your brain. I'm leaving her banner on the side-rail until she's cleared out all her stuff -- or at least until she comes to her senses and starts hoarding it. Click on the banner and head over there. She's always got something interesting to say...

Well...oops!

No tatting for a little while. I did an oops. Monday night I was slicing bread for supper. That's not all I sliced. Really, I can't imagine how my thumb came to be there -- not at all, really! What was it thinking?! I think thumbs must not have any brains -- at least mine don't. My sister took me and my thumb down to the "InstaCare" (what a misnomer -- we were there more than an hour and dinner was ruined). First they made me wait behind curtain number 2. This guy whose razor hasn't worked for at least three days must have been the winner. Oh -- nope. He was the doctor. He filled my thumb full of lead...er...no,no, he filled it full of some kind of numbing agent. He did it with a NEEDLE (shudder) . Sadist. Then he demanded someone set up a suture kit for him. (He apparently couldn't open the cupboard and take out a box and put it on the tray by himself. I hoped it was a sign he was just uppity -- not inept. He was gone forever. I thought might be thinking the box would open itself if he waited long enough. Nope. He finally came back, then spent 10 minutes complaining that it was some kind of disposable kit. The nurse told him they were out of the regular kits and this was all they had left. His response, "Well, that's not a good enough answer." What kind of answer could he want? They all ran away from home? There really are some of the others, but we don't like your patient? The others are being saved for the best doctors? Doesn't matter -- that's the only answer they had to give him. Grumbling, he decided he could use "that piece of crap". Great. I want my thumb fixed with crap -- oh, yeah. Still, fix it he did. Stitched it right up, and tied the knots with a couple of hemostats. It was beautiful to watch him tie those knots -- 30 years experience, he said. "Wow," says I, "I'd certainly like to have a couple of those hemostats." "Why would you want 'em?" he mumbles. "Oh, because I can use them with my tatting!" "Whazzat?" he says. Heathen. I told him it was lace making with a bunch of little knots, and I could use those for short thread joins and stuff. He looked at me like I was speaking Ancient Egyptian. (I could have told him tatting wasn't that old.) Still, when he finished he told the nurse to give me the hemostats -- since they were disposable anyway (maybe they melt in the autoclave?). They didn't look disposable to me -- see:

I should get the stitches out next Monday. Plenty of time to still demonstrate tatting at the State Fair!

Ornament Rings

This is a set of winter decorations. I'd use them on the Christmas tree, but they'd do just as well in the window or hanging from the ceiling.

Hanging from the ceiling actually sounds pretty good -- like they've been to a really wild party. YeeeHaaawwwww...party on, dudes. Who's got the music?...

Wait...what was I talking about? Oh, yeah, these ornaments.

All of the white ones are made with Coats Dual Duty Button Cotton. The red and green ones are made with Lizbeth size 40 in Christmas red or Christmas green. All of the white and red ones are either directly from Jon Yusoff's Snowflakes Collection or are adaptations of those patterns to get them to fit into the silver bangles. The green ones are either directly from DMC's Tatting for Today or have been adapted to fit into the bangles. It does seem strange to be making Christmas ornaments in August (given that the temperature outside is upwards of 90 F). These are for a gift. I don't think the person who's getting these even knows this blog exists, though. Sometimes it's a good thing to labor in obscurity, right?