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Thursday, March 14, 2024

I took time to experiement

 Once a month I attend a meeting of stitchers as part of the EGA (Embroiderer’s Guild of America) in the next town over the hill. I don’t stitch as much as I tat. I am keeping focused on my primary goal of creating tatting based on musical compositions. I really am. But, I like to learn from other fiber artists and this group has taught me so much!

Currently, we’re playing with Wee Project from Freda’s FancyStitching designed by Freda Murfin. It’s a small canvas work piece. I’ve enjoyed working the design. Best of all, I’ve been able to use up bits and such from my stash. I’m all about repurposing remember? Here’s a picture of my version so far:

I think I’ll add a background and some beads. I think it needs a bit more red thread too. More later…..

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Christmas in March

 I’ve been sifting through boxes and bags of “stuff” that several creative people want to pass on to people learning to stitch and tat and crochet and knit. Some of the items will need some creativity to reuse. Some are past repair and thus not usable, some are just waiting for hands to get busy. I will keep some of the items. Including some of these books!

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

Here's to a wonderful year!

 


I finished tatting and blocked my dragon. I enjoyed tattingthe pattern. Thank you Anne!!

I hope everyone has prosperity and happiness.


Thursday, February 29, 2024

I’ve made progress

Not in the dragon. Well, I have, but not enough to show you.

I’ve made progress recovery from my 2023 Lenten Journey. You remember….the one that ended with me in the hospital for Heart Failure? That one. Anyway, I’m making progress. Today I find out just how much progress with test results. While trying to stay still, I thought of this photo I took:

The flower was on a bush growing along side the trail I hiked the other day. I was drawn to the cheery color of pink and so snapped a picture. As I looked at the picture later, I noticed that 3 of the 5 petals have darker spots of color. Asymmetry that must have some reason. I’ll take this natural occurrence to give me a reason to make my tatting pattern asymmetrical on purpose. Well, I’ll probably make them asymmetrical by accident! But, that design variation (NOT a mistake mind you!) will be because nature does that sometimes too!!

Tuesday, February 27, 2024

Will this make sense?


 I’m halfway done with my Chinese Dragon designed by AnneBruvold. You can find the pattern here. I’m glad I chose red thread! Now to connect up all those rings in the correct order…..

Thursday, February 22, 2024

Playing with color

 I’ve been working on a pair of earrings. I wanted to use a color palette a friend loves. Nothing jumped out at me when I looked over my thread options. Beads seemed to gather of their own accord as I sifted through my box ‘o shiny. But, what thread to use with all these wonderful beads????

The thread on the left I’ve used before. On the spool it seemed to coordinate with the palette. It just didn’t grab my eye though. I decided to go for contrast with the thread on the right. I like it better.

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

I got confused

 Here’s the completed Antiks snowflake. Thank you Muskaan for inspiring me. Also thanks to Lina Libin for the concept of lots and lots of beads. Their explanations were NOT confusing. I understood what they were doing with the stitch count, element order, and bead notation. That didn’t confuse me.

What confused me was my own fault. I chose to try to use two threads that are very close in color. Being metallic, you really can’t tell them apart in lamp light. It’s wintertime here, so I’m working with lamp light a lot. I also chose to use quite a variety of beads in specific places of the design. That means you must load the beads in a specific order on specific thread. It took days of puzzling it out, making notes, loading beads to get to the tatting stage of the project. That confused me just a bit. What confused me a lot?

I changed my mind. Partway through tatting the 2nd round, I changed my mind. It was the right decision. It looks much better with the new plan. I just had a devil of a time puzzling out what needed changing, undoing the beads loaded on thread, and getting things set up correctly. My own fault!

Thank you again to Muskaan and Nina Libin.