The Traveling Tatter is at Rest (for now)

And, breathe.

After circumnavigating the world in 46 days (and making many side trips during stopovers in both the US and UK) I am back in Vlad and ready to be still, for a little while at least. :)

You can, of course, read about the travel part on the travel blog (www.teguciwhat.com), but here is the tatting part:

When you last heard from me, I was tatting on the train somewhere between London and Edinburgh.

That was, of course, not the first tatting I did while on vacation (see here, here and here)

Here is the finished pillowcase with the Annie Orr edging:

I entered this pillowcase in our local fair and got a blue ribbon, so I am happy with that...we'll see how the State Fair goes next month!

 Also for the fair, my mom and I mounted the sunburst doily on a piece of white foam board, with a note explaining that it was mounted for display purposes only...

Another blue ribbon...actually I ended up with 6 blues at the fair, so that is exciting. :)

 Last summer I taught my sister-in-law how to tat, and when I visited her and my brother in TN this summer I whipped out this little motif to remind her how easy tatting is!

Speaking of showing people how to tat, while I was working on the edging my two-year-old niece climbed into my lap and asked me what I was doing, then sat there and watched me work for quite a while...I promised I'd teach her when she gets just a little older, but she has such fine motor skills already that I think she will be able to pick it up very soon!

So, then I took off to the UK and tatting on trains. Besides the Arches doily I didn't really complete a whole lot besides this funny little flower:

 It actually started out as a small Annie Orr motif that cupped after the first two rounds and became this flower after I apparently skipped a whole bunch of rings in the final round. Whoops!

I made this doily-turned-flower for a nice Chinese lady we met on the train back from Edinburgh. She was visiting her son on her first trip out of China, and within 30 seconds of our sitting across the table form them on the train had already moved her baggage to make room for ours, and within 15 minutes of pulling out of the station was sharing her blueberries and raspberries with us, as well as some snacks she had brought from China. (Also, she had never had raspberries before...can you imagine that?!)

She showed interest in tatting when I started working on the Arches doily, so of course I made her something...it ended up 3d instead of flat, but she still really seemed to like it:

 The day after we arrived back in London we were back on the train again, this time for Stratford-Upon-Avon to see the birthplace of the Bard (kind of) and to meet Jane Eborall (the real reason).

Awesome! Jane gave us tea in her garden, an excellent and historical walking tour of the city, directed us to a great place to eat lunch (and two wonderful ice cream places--yes Jane, I did have ice cream at both places, so good!) and she showed me how to do a couple of tatting things I have been wondering about for a long time...it was great!!

Thanks again, Jane! We really enjoyed ourselves! :)