Still doing Snowflakes in Bangles

Still doing Jon Yusoff's snowflakes in bangles. These two are "Radiance" and "Spring Blossom" from her Tatted Snowflake Collection. The thread is Oren Bayan silver metallic thread. I think it's bigger than size 80, but a bit smaller than size 40. 

When I put "Radiance" in the bangle, I found it was a bit too small, so I added rings as I covered the bangle. That was awkward; the bangle kept getting in the way. The holder-rings are obvious and a little twisted. I applied a person-using-thread-that-frays-horribly-when-you-try-to-unpick-it standard: a man on a galloping horse will never notice, so I left 'em. As the thread is fine, instead of the lock chain I usually make for hanging loops, I wrapped a second thread around the bangle at the end and made a pearle-tatted loop. 

These are the latest, but I've got another on the shuttles. I think the stack is about a dozen high now.  It's rather like being stuck in third gear! There are another 40 or 50 bangles in my supply box. Maybe I should save some for another year.

Radiance

Spring Blossom

Starting Over

This blog has been sorely neglected, so has my tatting. The doctor decided I needed exercise more than I needed to sit on my butt and tat. She's right, but it really didn't need to be an either or proposition.

Recently, I took up a Facebook challenge offered by a friend. She will send something to the first five people to comment, sometime during the year -- however, these people have to agree to post, and do the same. So, I'll be getting something from her and will be sending something to three other people (only 3 brave people signed up with me -- either I know people with no inclination to share or nobody wants anything I make). I decided it would be a good time to get out my shuttles and threads and make new things to send. The problem I've been having is that none of my tatting supplies are where I thought they were. Since I haven't finished anything for about a year, I put stuff away safely, and have forgotten the location of "safely." Yes, they should be in the hobby cabinet, or the four dedicated drawers, or the fabric bin, or on the bookshelf, or in the boxes under the bed, or in my tatting tote. Some things are there, some have run off. I can't find my rubber needle pullers anywhere. Trying to sew in the ends and use a rubber band to pull on the needle results in a bent needle. *sigh*

Since it's cold and generally nasty, I'm working on Winter stuff. These are snowflakes inside wrist bangles. Both are designs by Jon Yusoff from her snowflake pattern books. I did have to make the top rings on each point on the red one a bit larger to fit into my bangle. For the green one, I left off the decorative picots on the arching chains. It just worked better for me (it's a counting problem). The bangles are completely covered with tatting, using Jon's method for covering rings.

Yes, the picture appears blurry. It's really just the bad shadows from poor lighting (not that the excuse makes the picture better). 

More Fair

All these things I entered in the County Fair have been blog-posted during the past year, so I'm sticking them all together here.
The Utahraptor and Fantasy Tree are those I made for the Shuttlebirds convention.  Both got first place blue ribbons, but the Utahraptor also got a "high blue" (considered for sweepstakes) ribbon and a Judge's Choice ribbon.  I'm so vain -- I love getting the big ribbons!

 

The butterfly I made from Anne Bruvold's Christmas hearts got a blue ribbon, too.  These are such perfect little hearts (not bragging on my tatting -- bragging on Anne's pattern!) .  Depending on the categories at the State Fair (have to remember to look!), I might have to put a tail on it and call it a bookmark.  Since I can only enter one thing in each category in the State Fair, I can't put the dinosaur and the butterfly in unless one of them fits somewhere besides "other".

These are seven of the Christmas ornaments I made using Jon Yusoff's snowflake patterns, and some little bits of fillers of one kind or another (one went to the marvelous Jeff).  I entered them as a set and ended up with a sweepstakes ribbon!  It made me laugh, though:  the comment card said "Nice even loops, nice way to display" -- so I got a ribbon for display, or for tatting?  Which ever, I have to thank Jon for such lovely patterns.

Challenge 18 to 25 Plus One

Happy International Tatting Day.  I did my tatting for the day between midnight and 2:30 in the morning -- I've actually got some, but I don't have pictures yet.  So far during the waking hours today, I've cleaned up a lot of tatting stuff and rearranged my closet, thrown out a bunch of junk and moved things from the closet to the donation box.  Once I finish this post I'm going to go back to tatting.  But for now...

Finally!  These have been done for a while, but it took me forever to get a picture.  This is actually three views of the same nine ornaments.  All the red and green ones are made with the snowflakes from Jon Yusoff's book Elegant Tatting Gems shown here, here, and here.  The final one is "Ice Crystal" from Tatting Patterns and Designs by Blomqvist and Persson that I made and posted here.  It's the "plus one" since it's so old.  Of course, so's my challenge!  I didn't manage 25 motifs in a year, I managed 25 ornaments in about three years.  It's a sad thing! 

Thank you, Jeff R.T.!

This is a public thank you to Jeff R. T.  He does numbers like nobody's business.  I don't know if I've mentioned it, but I work for an oil and gas law firm.  We do mineral title opinions.  I'm pretty good with tract numbers, but get really confused doing unit numbers (doesn't matter).  I have a history degree for a reason!  Jeff has twice in the last few months sat down with me to go through weighted royalty rates and other parts of the unit calculations.  He is a genius.  When we get through everything adds up to 1.  One is a good number. 

These two pendants are in the way of a more substantive thank you than the fervent one I blessed him with when we finished the last round of numbers.  His lady friend likes blue.  Isn't it nice of him to think of her?  I didn't know which he would like so I made both with the same thread and beads.  The thread is Oren Bayan variegated gold metallic and the beads are size 15 glass seed beads.  My thanks don't go as far as chains. 
The patterns are from Jon Yusoff's Tatting with Rings.  The first is Kerosang, but I adapted the top to make a ring for the chain to go through.  The second is Permata -- it still needs a jump ring for the chain.

Remaining Elegance

Finally, finally, they're all finished.  These are the last of Jon Yusoff's Elegant Tatting Gems -- well, the last for me, at least.  They are elegant:  "Elegance is a synonym for beauty that has come to acquire the additional connotations of unusual effectiveness and simplicity."  Exactly so, I couldn't say it better so I borrowed that bit from Wikipedia.   All of the patterns in this remarkable book are made with the most basic tatting elements -- the simplicity.  But, they are put together is such a way as to create little bits of deceptive complexity.  Effective, indeed.

You may note that "Nilam" is all pointed instead of nicely rounded as Jon intended it.  The pointy version fits on the ornament easier than a rounded version. I'm using these snowflakes to make ornaments to complete my (two- or is it three-year-old?)  25 Motif Challenge.  Some of them are completed, I just need photographs.  Others are partially completed, but need some tiny fill-in motifs of some sort.  I'm working on that. 

Jon's Elegant Tatting Gems and Tatted Snowflake Collection are joining my Iris Niebach pattern books in my "most favored" stack.  They're fun to tat but challenging enough to be interesting.

More Elegant Tatting Gems

Yup -- been tatting, just not posting.  The computer has been in use -- it's school science fair season.  Wanna know how to clean a penny?  Never mind.

I've done some more of the beautiful snowflakes from Jon Yusoff's book Elegant Tatting Gems. I'm still making them all in red and green DMC size 80 tatting thread, but they're no longer in order.  I goofed on "Nilam" (joined a picot that shouldn't have been joined) and had to remake it -- goofed that one too (all the internal picots are too long) and now am going to have to find more red thread before I can finish any more at all. *sigh* 
Not that all these others were perfect right out of the gate:

As you can see, I had some problems with Lazuardi.  First, I wanted all of the round one loose threads out of my way -- I kept catching them in the rings I was making on the second round.  Second, I didn't put in magic threads, so I sewed in the ends.  Rather, I attempted to sew in the ends.  What I really did was break the thread on the first round.  I started over, but used the wrong size picot gauge and the long picots were just too long.  The last one looks pretty good, though.  When I was doing Kencana I made too many picots on the first red chain, so I did the same for all the others and then joined the bottom ones.  It makes the snowflake a lot rounder.  I did that one over too, and like the less rounded look of the original pattern much better.  Not too many problems with the other four on this page, but I'm not telling how many times I unpicked some of the rings!

Really Elegant Tatting Gems

These are the snowflakes I've been making from Jon Yusoff's book Elegant Tatting Gems.  I'm making them all in red and green DMC size 80 tatting thread.  I'm also doing them in order.  I've got seven and a half done.  This is just the first seven, not the half.

Oh, one of them is NOT in DMC size 80 red and green threads.  One of them is a Lizbeth size 20 pink and blue variegate.  I suppose which one is rather obvious.

These are really great little snowflakes.  They're all pretty and they are all done with basic techniques -- but when they're done they look so complex.  Amazing, right?

Elegant Tatting Gems . . .

is a wonderful book full of ... well ... elegant tatting gems.  Lovely snowflakes made using basic techniques.  I've been working my way through the book, but have NOT been weaving in ends.  Those will have to wait until later.  For now, these are the ones I test-tatted for Jon.  At least three of them are.  I'm just certain the other one is one of Jon's as well, because I had it stored with the other three, but I can't find it in any book.  Anybody that recognizes it, please speak up!  All of these test-tats were made with size 80 DMC tatting thread.  My sister dyed all that white thread really pretty colors, didn't she?

There!  Jon got me all straightened out -- thanks so much.  It was one of the test tat patterns she sent, so it does belong with the others, after all.  She modified the design after the test-tat and it became Ratnawilis in her new book.  The change is really pretty -- but I haven't gotten that far in the book yet.

Nervous Butterflies

I get those at hospitals.  Good thing I had Adelheid Dangela's Tatted Butterflies with me.  Now I have a bunch of Flame butterflies.  All of these were made with the thread my sister dyed for me on a size 30 Cebalia thread.  They ALL need to be blocked.  Six of these are from Tatted Butterflies.  The one in the upper left corner is supposed to have two wings, but I got it all messed up -- even the first wing isn't right -- so it turned into a butterfly in profile.  Now that I know how to do the first six, I think I'll make them in more butterfly-ish colors in finer thread.  I've got a friend who loves butterflies.  They'd look good on a Christmas ornament -- wouldn't they?

The one in the lower left corner is an adaptation of Jane Eborall's wonderful beaded butterfly (but I didn't have any beads, and used thread ends, so there aren't any split rings on the wings either).  The tiny profile butterfly above that is Jon Yusoff's profile butterfly -- except I couldn't remember the stitch counts, so I guessed, based on how much thread I had left to finger tat with.

I didn't do a nervous scribble or just tangle the thread, because my niece was having her tonsils out.  Not a horrifying thing (except for her -- this was her first IV).  It was easier to concentrate after we finally got something to eat (I mean my sister and I got something to eat -- my niece had to go into surgery without).  They kept us waiting what seemed forever.  We got there at 12:30 in the afternoon and they finally took her into the operating room just after 3:00.  They released her much later and we got home at 7:00 in the evening.  She's recovering and we're spoiling her while she does it.  :)

Among Other Things...

My dad has a really little Christmas tree with built in fiber-optic lights which he puts up on a drum table in front of the window. I made this little ornament for it out of a bit of left over thread. This is some of the thread my sister dyed for me.
I happened to have this ring in my tote bag, too. I wanted to try Jon Yusoff's idea of putting a small flower inside the ring, as well as decorating the outside. Hey! It worked...but I ran out of thread before I got to the fifth picot of the inner flower. I'd left a nice long tail (which was part of the problem) when I started, so I had to finger-tat it back to the picot and finger-tat the other end up to the picot. All the thread that was left was enough to tie a thread loop. Dad liked it, though, and we hung it on his little tree. It might still be there -- he made a wooden box to store the tree in and just puts it away decorated. Clever, huh?

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.

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?

Still Ringing

Inspired by Jon Yusoff's wonderfully beautiful earrings, these are made from a bit of leftover size 20 Lizbeth thread. They have nylon hooks, which don't have the beads on the shank yet -- they didn't show up in the scan, so I cut 'em off this image. Next time I try this, I'm going to add some beads -- that'll make 'em more attractive, right?

I've been working on other things, but don't have pictures of some and the rest are for an exchange, so I can't show that either.

Quantiesque With a Twist

Jon Yusoff's Quantiesque Snowflake again -- but this time with a twist in the chains leading to the outer clovers. I had to make the chains almost double length to do the cross-over for the twist, and I think they should have been still a bit longer. This twist makes the outer edge look more round with sticky-outy things. The original version has a nicer flow, but I think this is interesting. I used size 80 DMC tatting cotton in red and green, but to get it to shine added one strand of white rayon machine embroidery thread. I made another one with a green center and outer round but, somehow, got the twists backward on a couple of the ends. It looks odd, so I'm not showing it off.

Quantiesque Again

Jon's Quantiesque snowflake really IS addictive. These two are made with size 12 cotton perlé in pink and purple (for those of you who have trouble with colors on your monitors). By doing two, both the front and back can be shown. Neither of these is made exactly according to the pattern. When making the purple edged one, I put too many stitches between the three picots on the center rings. On both of them I hooked the clovers to the chains. Some days I just can't read -- either that or am too poor to even pay attention.
All the little butterflies are from the shuttle thread ends. There was one more, but I tried these interwoven picots on it -- that didn't work it looked like a blob-fly, so I threw it away.

Jon's Quantiesque Snowflake

A colorful rendition of Jon's Quantiesque Snowflake (click here for the pattern). However, I think all this color detracts from the beauty of the design. Size 10 Opera tie-dyed by my sister makes this snowflake four inches in diameter. I forgot to put in "magic threads" so the ends are waiting for sewing-in. They may wait a long time, because it seems they might be used for tying the snowflake to a Christmas tree -- maybe. This is a pattern I certainly want to try again, in colors more suitable to showing off the pattern. Thanks, Jon!

Gift Ornament Ten

Flying Minor Norwegian Dragons by Anne Bruvold: one in red and one in green size 80 DMC tatting cotton. The red one has green seed beads included and the green one uses red seed beads. They are wrapped around the center of the white satin ornament. The three snowflakes that fill in the rest of the space are all from Jon Yusoff's Snowflake Collection. This one went to the 'dopted-bruvver who introduced me to the Save the Dragons Campaign. :)

July Snow

Jon Yusoff's new Tatted Snowflake Collection is a wonderful book. I like all these little snowflakes with clear directions and comprehensive diagrams. They work up so prettily in any thread. These use size 12 DMC Perle Coton, Coats Dual Duty Plus button cotton, Oren Bayan gold metalic thread, Gutterman sewing cotton and Signature machine embroidery thread, and Coats quilting thread. The largest is 3 inches (7.62 cm) in diameter and the smallest just half that. There are more in the book -- I'll get them all eventually. I've taken a break from them to work on Sharon Brigg's blog challenge (from her July 3, 2008 entry). I don't know if what I came up with looks at all like the original shape, but it's been fun getting where I am so far...