State Fair Time -- Purple Might Be My New Favorite Color!

OK, so please forgive me for what may seem like bragging, but I'm just so pleased!

It's Fair time again and this year I finally achieved a long-held goal: BEST OF SHOW for tatting at the Iowa State Fair!! :)

The basic pattern is made in size 40 Lizbeth, and came from a pattern in "Workbasket" magazine. I added the flowers at the ends and middle of the necklace, and used the basic pattern to create the earrings and bracelet. The flower is actually a snowflake pattern from an Italian Christmas book, "Natale con il Chiacchierino Ad Ago" by Alicja Kwartnik.

This was my only blue ribbon this year, but I also received a 2nd place (red) on my bookmark,

my set of three Christmas Tree ornaments (far left)

and the small Rose and Thistle doily (far right)

I also got third place (white ribbon) for my stupid and frustrating handkerchief edging (I am SO excited to see the written feedback on that!) and fourth (pink) on that white collar.

All-in-all, happiness abounds. :)

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Work work work, all I do is work. Someday I will have time to tat, and then to blog about it. :)

Anyway, I found five minutes today to be festive for the holiday...

Happy St. Patty's Day to all! :)

Seventh Day of December, Stuck on the Eighth

Well, due to a crazy amount of snowfall yesterday (the cold, slippery kind, not the nice tatted kind) the boxes are still sitting in our house, just tempting me to open them up and grab more tatting stuff...but I am holding strong!!

I finished The Seventh Day of December pattern from Lene Bjørn's "24 Snowflakes in Tatting" yesterday:

It was a tough pattern with all the onion rings, but very satisfying to tat. 

Shuttle or Needle? These rings are one of the many elements of these patterns that make me wonder how well a needle tatter could execute these patterns. I needle tatted for years and never attempted an onion ring. I'm notsayin it can't be done, but I am saying some of these patterns would be quite frustrating, especially for a beginner needle tatter. 

Speaking of frustrating...has anyone out there ever successfully made The Eighth Day of December?? This is the motif with all the beautiful blocks, and frankly the pattern that first drew me to this book, but for the life of me I can't figure out how tat it!

I have started this twice, once with two shuttles and then a second time with one (the pattern calls for one shuttle, but I prefer Jane Eborall's method of block tatting with two shuttles). After my first failure I figured the pattern had to be done with just the one shuttle, but this korning I made it to exactly the same place I had to stop yesterday:

It's hard to explain without showing the pattern, but according to the diagram, right how I am supposed to make a cloverleaf, then tat 4 more rows of blocked chains underneath the last 7 ds tatted above?! How do you tat chains underneath a chain? The picots will be going the wrong way, for starters, and it just doesn't make sense. 

Yesterday's mess is on the left--see the problem with the chains under the chains? Eventually that second block is supposed to attach to the first block's corner, opposite of the false picot from the ring. 

So, dear tatting friends, help me out. Take a peek at your copy of the pattern and let me know, how do I do this?! :)

In the meantime, I'm skipping it and going on to The Ninth Day of December. :) I have too much stress right now, I refuse to let tatting be part of it. :)

The Fourth, Fifth and 6th of December...Finally Catching Up!

Packout is (almost) done, it's the weekend and I finally have time to tat!

I am still working my way through Lene Bjørn's "24 Snowflakes in Tatting"--after this weekend I am up to December 6!

The snowflake above is December 4, a nice flake that tatted up pretty quickly, which is good since I am so far behind!

The Fifth of December is another nice flake, but one that needs to be blocked out to lay nicely... And unfortunately all my blocking supplies are packed away in boxes like this:

So I improvised:

I finished the Sixth of December today:

This was a really fun one to tat, full of lock joins, shoelace tricks, false chains and switching shuttles. 

This is one of the reasons I would consider this book an intermediate tatting book, because it is assumed that you know how to so many of these skills without much explanation (lock joins and false chains aside--Bjørn includes an excellent "how-to tutorial on these, as well as how to do false picots, add beads (utilized only once in the book), ring on ring tatting (what I would call an SSSR + thrown ring), and chain on chain (block) tatting. Other inclusions are an explanation of symbols and list of materials needed (she suggests AIDA size 20 thread) with glass beads being one of the only suggested notions listed. 

--

Of course we are quickly winding down our time in Russia (less than a week?!) and last Friday was our goodbye party at the Consulate.

For my going away present, I was gifted this BEAUTIFUL Russian shawl:

And Chris received his very own Ded Moroz

Who very kindly offered to display some of this weekend's efforts:

On to the Seventh of December! :)

Handkerchiefs, Towels and a Pony

A friend and I went on an "I'm leaving Russia in 2 weeks" shopping spree over the weekend, and boy do I think I found some good stuff for a tatter. :)

First of all, amazingly, I found this:

I guess it's a Pony shuttle? I had never heard of this brand before (but thought the shape looked familiar, and I have been told by OneMad Tatter Fiona that it's like an Aero or Susan Bates).

Anyway, it's a shuttle and I got it in Vladivostok! Hooray! [I'm not going to mention that I usually really dislike shuttles with bobbins...oh wait, oops. :)] Before this all I had found were some tiny white shuttles that I actually think are meant for kumihimo, but work well for Celtic tatting, if nothing else.

Additionally, I picked up these beauties at an outdoor market next to the mall where I found the shuttle:

 Russian handkerchiefs for about 20 rubles (USD $0.37 each...the exchange rate is crazy right now)

I had to laugh, because these were also in the pile of handkerchiefs:

 Naturally I had to buy a bunch of these!! Hopefully I will be seeing all of these birds in just a few short months, maybe while I tat a border for one of these hankies?!

And then there are the towels...

The red, green and yellow one on the left is a traditional Russian pattern, the two in front have matryoshka dolls on them, the orange towel has a winter scene and snowflakes, and the towel with the green border says "Happy New Year" and shows Ded Moroz (something like the Western Santa Claus) with his granddaughter/helper Snegurochka (the Snow Maiden) giving a present to a sheep, which I believe has something to do with the Chinese New Year, something that is very popular in Rusia (2015 is the year of the Goat or Sheep, depending on what source you look at (it's about 75-25 Sheep to Goats represented in the New Year swag around here, in case you were wondering!!)

So, I have all this great stuff, now to decide what to add to it...

I am historically very bad at adding any tatting to anything I have bought to add tatting to, and I will admit that I am downright terrified to add an edging to a handkerchief...maybe 2015 will be the year of the edgings for me...maybe. :)

The Third Day of December...Better Late than Never

I like this pattern.

In truth, I think everybody likes this pattern.

I think Lene Bjørn likes this pattern, because she made it the center of the cover of her book.

Illustrations: The book is filled with black and white illustrations, exactly as you see on the front cover--white snowflakes on a black background. Fortunately, each snowflake is pictured. Unfortunately, the book is half-sized, so the pictures of the snowflakes are only about 2 in x 2 in (6 cm x 6 cm). Thankfully the diagrams are really good, and the photos are for the most part unnecessary.

It's just so pretty!!!

The pattern is "The Third Day of December" and it is beautiful to look at and fun to tat!

It is also the third pattern in the book, which I am slowly moving through and enjoying every minute.

And, for the record, I did finish The Second Day of December, too. :)

The Second Day of December...kind of

So. Yeah. It's not really the second day of December!

When I decided to do daily posts this month I totally discounted the fact that I am packing all my stuff up to move to Australia in 1 week and have no time for anything, least of all tatting. :(

So, here it is, the 4th of December, and I am hopelessly behind on this monthlong book review...

Here is what I have done so far of the second pattern of Lene Bjørn's 24 Snowflakes in Tatting:

"The Second Day of December"

So close, yet so far!!

Number of Patterns: There are 24 patterns in this book (amazing, right?!) and (Types of Patterns) all are snowflakes (obvs...see the title!). 

Type of Pattern Notation: The patterns are all diagrammed in black and white line drawings, and also have some short explanations of what to do to correctly implement the pattern. (Ex: The snowflake is made in 5 rounds according to the diagram...there are 6 ds between each picot). These explanations are very helpful, but not 100% necessary unless you are very unfamiliar with diagrams. 

Hopefully tomorrow I will have time to tat...we'll see! :)

The First of December (ish)

Well ok, technically it's the second of December, but I was away over the weekend and am only now able to post the first of what I hope will be 20+ straight posts, one per day, in a month-long book review of "24 Snowflakes in Tatting" by Lene Bjørn.

Each day I (hope I) will provide a tatted example of a pattern from the book as well as some pertinent information. (Like today I gave you the Title ("24 Snowflakes in Tatting") and Author (Lene Bjørn)!)

  The First of December, shuttle tatted in 30 Cebelia. 

Until tomorrow then... :)

Book Review #4: "Tatted Snowflakes"

Title: "Tatted Snowflakes"

Author: Vida Sunderman
Year of Publication: 1995
ISBN: 978-0-486-28303-6 / 0-486-28303-8
Number of pages: 32
Number of patterns: 40 

"Little Ring Snowflake"

Type of pattern notation: Long notation with abbreviations (ie: R of 5 ds, p, 5 ds, lg p, 5 ds, p, 5 ds, cl r; rw). The patterns are very detailed, including giving information of how much thread to wind on the shuttle, where strung beads will be (shuttle or ball thread) and some picot spacings. There are also four diagrams spread throughout the book, but they are only labeled for where to make joins.
Types of patterns: The book is called "Tatted Snowflakes" for a reason--all 40 patterns are snowflakes. All but one are 2D (you can see the one 3D snowflake in the middle of the cover above).

"Whirlaway Snowflake"

Illustrations: All patterns are illustrated with a black and white photo, which is helpful. For the most part, the photos are clear, but sometimes the colorless beads are hard to see in the photos. There are five color photos on the front and two on the back, as well.
Notions: Each pattern is helpfully listed with suggested Materials, which in different combinations include thread sizes 10, 20 and 30 and ribbon floss, beads, crystals, a bell, ribbon and/or glitter and glue.

"Beaded Snowflake"

Shuttle or needle? The patterns are written for the shuttle (one or two shuttles are called for in the  materials section of each pattern) but I have done a few with the needle and found them challenging but workable. If you are ok with working with two needles or leaving spaces with the needle you should be fine with these patterns.

"Star-Shaped Snowflake" (Needle Tatted)

Other inclusions: The book starts out with an Introduction with 3 illustrated (black and white drawings) pages of "How to Tat," including sections on shuttles, thread, how to tat, picots, reverse work and joining. There are also two further pages with details on fold-over joins, the square knot, using two shuttles, the continuous thread, correcting mistakes, finishing ends, laundering snowflakes, blocking snowflakes and working with beads. None of these last are illustrated (with the exception of the square knot) and although the text is very detailed, for a true beginner I think it would require a bit of imagination to fully comprehend/utilize. The final page of the introduction includes ideas for Decorating with Snowflakes, Abbreviations used in the book and helpful, reproducible Blocking Diagrams for five and six-sided snowflakes.

Some patterns need a lot of blocking...like this "Unique Snowflake"

Skill level: Beginner-Intermediate None of the patterns are specifically "rated," and some are quite simple, but others include multiple cut/tie/hides or other more advanced skills, which are not always fully explained in the patterns.

"Pinwheel Snowflake"

For example, to make the chains all face the same way in the Pinwheel pattern above, those chains without the join needed to be tatted somewhat "backwards" (unflipped stitches made 2nd half first, 1st half second), something the pattern completely left out. 

Skills needed: Tatting with beads, using a picot gauge, two-shuttle tatting, SLT, Josephine chains, ability to adapt pattens "on the fly"

"Small Loop-Stitch Snowflake"

"Large Loop-Stitch Snowflake"

Availability: Although the books is a bit older, it is still readily available both in paperback and digitally!! In the US you can buy it directly from the publisher, Dover Publications, or from Amazon.com, and in paperback only from Be-Stitched and Handy Hands. Amazon.co.uk also carries both formats.
Price range: Digitally $4-8, Paperback $6-10 (US Dollars)
Personal Notes: Although this book isn't maybe as visually grabbing (being full of black and white photos and using the long notation) as other snowflake books, the patterns included are more than worth the small price you will pay to own them. This is a book you can grow with--not all of the patterns are "doable" for very beginning tatters, but some are, and the more you learn, the further in this book you can progress. To me, if you're going to own just one snowflake book, this is the one to get.

"Ruffled-Star Snowflake"

Book Review #3: "Festive Snowflakes and Ornaments"

Title: "Festive Snowflakes and Ornaments fo Needle and Shuttle Tatters"

Author: Edited by Barbara Foster (published by Handy Hands)Year of Publication: 2009
ISBN: 1-883432-16-2
Number of pages: 24Number of patterns: 18
Type of pattern notation: Short method (ie: R 4-4-4-4 cl rw) and colored and fully labeled diagrams. Some patterns have notations with specific directions for shuttle tatters.
Types of patterns: As you will have guessed from the introduction above and the title of the book, most of the patterns are snowflakes (14 of the 18 patterns listed are labeled as snowflakes), the other four are simply called "motifs". The snowflakes are all numbered, but there doesn't seem to be any type of progression in the patterns--for example, Snowflake 1 is a simple one shuttle/bare thread patter, while snowflake 2 has rings and chains and lots of fluffy picots.

(Left) "Snowflake 1", Above) "Snowflake 2"

Of the four patterns that are labeled motifs, at least one could be a 15th snowflake, and one is shown attached to a satin-covered Easter egg. The third motif is somewhat circular, and is shown attached to to a satin-covered Christmas ball, and the fourth is an oval shown making a simple mat.
Illustrations: All of the patterns are pictured tatted in white, with a pretty blue background on the page with their pattern, and all are also shown in variegated colors, attached to satin covered Easter eggs or Christmas balls, either on the page with patterns or on the last page of the book labeled "additional examples". When I first received this book, I found these extra pictures to be very helpful, especially because it is easy to always make snowflakes in white--it's nice to see multi-colored snowflakes shown in a book, it feels like permission to branch out from traditional snow colors.

"Motif 2"

Notions: Beyond the thread needed for tatting (all the patterns are shown in size 10 or 20 Lizbeth, this being a Handy Hands publication, after all,) and the aforementioned satin-covered balls and eggs (as well as the pins needed to do the attaching), this book doesn't show (or advocate) the use of beads, metal rings or other often-suggested snowflake accouterments, even though I find the patterns lend themselves to beads especially.

"Snowflake 3", with beads added

:Snowflake 8," with beads added

Shuttle or needle? The title says "For Needle and Shuttle Tatters," and I feel that designation is appropriate. Handy Hands patterns are traditionally written with the needle tatter in mind (their logo is a tatting needle, after all,) but in this book, directions for the shuttle tatter are included where necessary (mostly directing the shuttle tatter to SLT, something needle tatters do after every RW). I have done these patterns in both needle and shuttle, and have found them to be equally nice to tat in both ways:

Needle Tatting ("Snowflake 5")

Shuttle Tatting ("Snowflake 5")

Other inclusions: The book starts with a 3/4-page description of the ideology behind the book (and lists a few suggestions of what can be done with the patterns held within) and a 1/4 page ad for Handy Hands. The second page begins with a short list of the "Abbreviations" used, as well as an explanation of the SLT and a reminder about when to and not to rw. It also has a "Pattern Legend" showing the shapes and colors used to denote rings, chains, picots, etc, and a "Table of Contents"...as well as a 1/4 page ad for Lizbeth thread. :)

Skill level: Beginner The patterns are individually labeled as Beginner, Beginner-Intermediate and Intermediate, but I really would call only one or two anything beyond the beginner level. Most of the patterns can be made in one pass, and all involve nothing more challenging than rings and chains.

A truncated "Motif 1" (It's supposed to have 8 "arms," not 5--also, I think this should be called a snowflake, not a motif)

Skills needed: These patterns don't utilize particularly difficult tatting skills--no SCMRs or split rings here (unless you decide to climb out from one round to another, and there are only a few opportunities to do that, anyway, as many of these patterns can be done in one round AND with one shuttle/needle and ball.) One of the features I love in this book is that each pattern begins with the method to be used (Ring and Thread/Ring and Chain), as well as what you need to complete the pattern (Shuttle and Ball/One Shuttle). The SLT is about the toughest thing about these patterns, and that's only for shuttle tatters. And, I guess there are a few places where you have to make two rings face opposite directions, and two with some twisted/joined threads, but those are the ones I would put in the beginner-intermediate range. Additionally, I have found that a few of the patterns don't lay well, so some blocking skills might be useful, as well.

"Snowflake 4"

Availability: Although I didn't find the book on the UK's Amazon, it is readily available on the US version, at Be-Stitched and of course, Handy Hands. Tatting and Design does have the book, and I'm sure it's available elsewhere, if you take the time to Google it.
Price range:  $12-$18 (US Dollars) Frankly, I think this book is slightly overpriced, considering the small number of patterns you get, and the fact that one pattern is used twice, just with the threads twisted instead of laid out straight. There are three other easily-obtained snowflake/holiday books on the market (reviews coming soon!) with more patterns and a smaller price tag. Still, these patterns are quick and easy, which is a good thing for those of us who may find themselves with a need to make a few snowflakes at this time of the year.
Personal Notes: To be honest, I probably wouldn't have bought this book for myself, given the ratio of pattern to price, (what can I say, I'm cheap!) but my mom wanted tatted snowflakes so she bought the book for me. That said, it is a nice addition to my collection, and I have used the book many times over the years, and really, that's what is important.

"Snowflake 9"