The Fair is open

I was persuaded to enter tatted items in the Monterey County Fair this year. I can’t wait to see what else was entered. I’m not particularly competitive. If I won a ribbon, that’s great. If there were quite a few entries of tatting, that’s even better! Stop by to see in the building across from the Wool Show. It’s close to the beer garden, so you can linger there for a relaxing visit.

Second bootie rework

I decided to climb out from the center to row 1 in my second bootie. 

I doubt I’ll climb out from row 1 to row 2. The chains join between those rows. That is an awkward transition of split chains. 

I’m opting for easier construction and more consistent rings and chains.

Second bootie started

 

I sat myself down right away to start the second bootie. I’ll be using the same thread and the same stitch count. Sort of. I started this second bootie at the end so that I could climb out with a couple of split rings. We’ll see if that works or not. I think it will.

Come join us!

From this

 To this

Saturday, August 23, 2025

10:00 AM – 2:30 PM

First Presbyterian Church

on El Dorado in Monterey

Seeing the progress with in-progress

I take quite a few photos of what I’m working on. Some of them never even make it to the folder on the phone. If I leave photo taking to when I have something significant to preserve, I forget. So, I snap a lot of in progress photos that never get used. Until I forget. I intended to share some photos of a vintage pattern I’m reworking. This is the only one that made it into the folder.

More later.

What do you do with waste?

Some refer to these bits as thrums. Now there are lots of uses for the lengths of yarn left on the loom after cutting off your woven project. These were long enough I thought I would tat with them. I think it is 10/2 cotton. I’m using the smaller Takashimabari hook. The pattern is December 18 from Lene Bjorn’s snowflake book. I like working my way through all the split rings. It’s fun to create with waste.

One last entry item to make

 

I have one last piece to tat for this year’s Fair. I decided to tat an Ice Drop. I love making them. You think I would have plenty already tatted up, but I can always have more on hand. I think this one will be in blue thread with beads and curled rings.

Snowflake just about finished

 

The votes are in. Most of the opinions were for smaller picots on the inner ring. Only one person liked the larger picots. Several suggested no picots at all. I went with smaller picots.

My next question:

How did I manage that????

I was practicing the fine art of untatting on the final repeat of the snowflake. I will be using this snowflake as a sample in situations where the skill will be judged repeatedly. So, it has to be correct. I’ve been using picot gauges and paying attention to front side/back side with using RODS. But, in taking out one mistake, I twisted up this chain so badly that I needed to take stitches out to the join for this double picot. For context, I’m using shuttles to tat this. So, how did I manage to get both threads going through the picot?

It's impossible. I just don’t see how I could have done this. I’ll be unwinding the little bit of thread left on the shuttles, untying the thread from the shuttles and pulling the ends through the picot. Then I’ll be winding the shuttles and going back to correcting the mistakes.

All the while I’ll be trying to figure out how this happened, so I won’t end up in this impossible position again. I hope…….