Continuing the Carpet and Other Project Deviations (Motif #4)

After a month of forced inactivity in Russia I think I am getting the hang of "not having to do anything"...which is kind of a problem, since I will *hopefully* have a job here soon...

At any rate, I have started to make a little better use of all my free time. I have read at least a half dozen books, cooked a meal for my husband and myself (almost) every night, and have managed to start on a couple new tatting projects!

I'll start with the carpet, which you no doubt remember from the past couple posts:

I think I have a workable plan for the top outside edge (#9 above):

 Here is a detail of one of the "triangles"...it's off at an angle now, but once I add the side piece (#10) I think it will look pretty ok...

I completed that edge last night; I had actually taken a bit of a break from the carpet design because 1) I was getting tired of the green thread and 2) I wanted to :)

Some day when I'm no longer a worldwide traveler (or at least not a worldwide liver, I hope we travel all our lives) I hope to have a kitchen of blue and white. But not any color of blue, a specific color. This color (more or less):

 I've seen it called cornflower, dusty blue, French blue, a million names, but I just think it is so nice. I found a ball of it in a random shop in Des Moines when I was there last summer, and I have been waiting to find a project to break it out on.

This really isn't the project, but it was a "let's try out the #30 thread" project. Honestly I usually work with Pearle 8, so Cebelia 30 is something different to work with...different but not bad. Anyway, I made the above "frame" and put in the center afterwards:

Motif #4 (not very prettily laid out, sorry)
It's Medallion 1169 from Old and New Designs in Tatting: Book No. 11

Of course, after it was finished I noticed a pretty glaring error...do you? (I think it's more obvious in the first picture) :)

After that I thought I glanced through the 2 books (only 2!) I brought with me and picked out another project to start, the Duet Doily from The Tatter's Treasure Chest:

Round 1

Round 2 (It reminds me of the CBS Sunday Morning sun logo!)

Round 3...what a color! It looks a little like an inside-out egg at this point!

Round 4

 I have 3 rounds to go, but 2 of the three involve tatting techniques I don't really love (more on that later), so I put it away for a bit to start another project...I seem to have a problem in tatting of starting projects and then taking forever to finish them...

Now, you've probably noticed from the pictures above that I am actually coming to a "crisis" with the amount of thread I have here, or at least the variety. If you remember, when we moved from Honduras last June I only had about 20 balls of thread with me. I picked up a few more here and there when I was in Iowa and DC, but due to the packing/dog stress we had in DC, I only came to Russia with about 8 balls of thread in about 6 colors...I think you have seen 5 of the six on this page.

Also, I seem to be a thread wastrel.

To be honest, the big ball of fluff on the right there was a project gone wrong. I actually had 5 of these strung together as of yesterday;

but then I realized that I'd been careless and attached the wrong picots, and once I started noticing that I noticed other things that were not quite right, and so now I'm back to two again. And I'm running out of thread. Sigh.

 So I am anxiously awaiting the delivery of the rest of our "stuff", which will include our car and all my thread from Honduras! Yay! Delivery of my thread plus the mobility to look for a new "supplier" in town. Until then I will limp along with what I have (oh, woe is me) ;)

Once I have the outside rim of the carpet done I will work on getting the pattern out there for anyone else who wants to try it out... :)