TIAS 2023 Day 2 & 3

 

I’m having fun tatting this up! I have no guess yet what we’re tatting. My mind is filled with preparations for the workshop!

Breaking News!

 I’m excited to announce that a series of tatting classes are being offered in Monterey, CA! A wonderful local small business will be hosting and facilitating the classes: Slow Fiber.

I will be teaching all 3 of the classes. They will be starting in March. Each class will last about 2 ½ hours with plenty of time to learn the techniques required to tat lace with either a shuttle or needle. Follow this link to sign up. Come join us!!

I hope you will also join in on Jane’s TIAS. She is posting pictures sent from around the world on her dedicated blog.

I’ve sent in mine of Day 1. Because I was listening to a hummingbird claiming a feeder during a break in the rain, I decided to guess she has designed a hummingbird for us to tat.

As some would say....I'm chuffed!

I received a very pleasant surprise yesterday. The Embroiderer’s Guild of America chapter I’ve been working with voted me Member of the Year for 2022! I was so surprised! I haven’t stitched that much. I’m always asking them lots of questions, some of them rather basic. Most of the time I only get a small portion of the projects done. The project I showed yesterday for Show and Tell was a whole year in the stitching. Maybe it was two. It was supposed to be for a meeting during the Pandemic and I just couldn’t fathom how to go about it. I was missing some very basic How-To instruction. Once I learned that the project fell into place nicely.

That made me think about how to present tatting patterns and how to teach tatting. After a pleasant mulling that over, I turned to how to present music for people to listen to and sing or perform. That required a bit more mulling. Still not finished……

Measure twice, warp once

I would do well to remember to calculate, calculate, and then have several back up plans.

I have dabbled in weaving over the years. I enjoyed a doubleweave workshop, found out I’m allergic to some dyes used for wools, unsuccessfully explored combining neutrals, and had fun with lace samples.

This month, I’m learning about Rep weaves. Since Rep weave is a Warp face weave, warp colors are important. And calculating how much yarn you need is tricky. I’m not doing so hot on the planning. I’m up to back up plan E now. It will turn out, I just gotta keep my wits about me as I measure…..

And measure again….

And warp…….

I gave up

 The edging from the Mary Konior book proved to be quite a difficult corner for me to come up with. I’m comfortable designing a corner ofa simple edging; one that has just one pass of rings & chains. Even a simple edging that has a mirror image around a midpoint line usually falls into place. Mischief has two lines of rings that are mirrored from a midpoint line. Not only that, but the repeats are also staggered. This means that you can work the edging in one pass using 2 shuttles, but it presents difficulties when turning that corner.

I gave up.

Now I’m working on a classic rings/chains in staggered quartets. I worked it many moons ago:

I wish everyone a Happy New Year!!

 If you’re inclined, watch for TIAS fun with Jane to start up soon.

Mischief

I thought I would weave a small bit of huck lace and edge it with tatting. This is a sample of an edging I’m considering:

For those with a copy of Tatting with Visual Patterns by Mary Konior, it appears on pg. 23. I decided I needed to switch shuttles for the whole outer section, not just the Josephine Knots and Thrown Off Rings. When I get the corner settled, I’ll post a more detailed path of work.

One of these is not like the other

 Recently I was chatting with a friend describing my “collections” of “stuff” and mentioned I use my shuttles, not just collect them. She nodded and said something along the lines of people don’t understand why she uses her “collectibles” and not preserve them for posterity. Upon pressing, we both admitted that there are some items we do try to preserve rather than use regularly. I use all of the shuttles below regularly.

They each have their strong suits and are more useful for some lace than others. I’ve made a note to post more about that in the future.