Traveling, Tatting

Hello from Nepal!!

Tatting, Peanut Butter M&Ms, room service and The Mentalist...if only my husband were here, life would be perfect! :)

More later!

Tatting the Australian Way

We made it to Australia!! Hooray!!!

Now give me a few minutes to soak up the sun and get over my jet lag and I'll be Tatting All Over the Place, Australia-style!!

:)

Bye Bye Tatting Books and Supplies

(Packout starts tomorrow)

Until we meet again, sometime in the distant future (3 months or so), "in a land Down Under" 

Sniff!! :'(

Moving is the worst!!!!

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! :)

Train Tatting and Tea

Tatting on the train is by far my favorite way to travel with tatting!

I started Marilee Rockley's "Arches" on the train to Bath last week and made great strides on the way to Edinburgh today. 

Also, I flipping love the UK. Seriously, can somebody find us jobs here so we can live here forever?! 

It has been an amazing trip, but since it is Tatting Tea Tuesday I will share one of my favorite new discoveries of the trip...Cream Tea.

Ohhhhhhhh, YUM!

Seriously. Amazing.

 Then again, maybe I shouldn't move here...between the Cream Tea and the Galaxy Chocolate, I would probably weigh 100 more pounds than I do right now. But they would be happily added, I tell you. :)

A Little Tatting at Home (but not much!)

So, I'm home!!!!

I've had a really wonderful week and a half at home so far, with 3 or so weeks to come!

Mostly I've been busy with these cool kids:

Yay nieces and nephews!! They are all sooooo fun!

I have managed to tat a little in-between snuggles and play:

This is another Nina Libin necklace (http://www.georgiaseitz.com/classes2/libin.html) with a pair of earrings that I made using the first few rounds of the pattern.

I'm interested if anyone else put there has made this pattern...if so, how did you finish it? The pattern really doesn't say exactly how to finish it, but it seems that you are supposed to just attach the final chain to the first ring?? But if you do that the necklace won't fit over your head!! So, I made the last chain into a ring and attached a jump ring and clasp instead, to make it easy to put on and off. 

I also made another bell, this one a Jane Eborall pattern (http://www.janeeborall.freeservers.com/Bell20043D.pdf):

I'm not sure why, but this looks MUCH better on Jane's site! :)

Oh well. :)

More Projects (Motifs 23-26!)

Well, once again you have Grace to thank for reminding me to update my blog.

Sigh. Sorry!

If I actually posted every time I thought about it, there would be multiple posts a day. I am just not good with time management, I guess...or maybe I just put more time into tatting (and working, and cooking, and...) and less into blogging?

Anyway, thanks for the prompt, Grace, and here is my update! :)

There have been some continuing trends in the past few weeks, and some wide divergences:

For example, in the quest to make an actually wear-able sized baby bootie (and no, in case any of you are wondering, I'm not trying to drop subtle hints, I am not expecting! but I do have an awfully cute niece who is still very small). I used Cathy Bryant's book "Tatting" to make this:

Motif 23

This is still quite small, but larger than the first option.

So, I kept looking via Google images and found a (Lenore English?) pattern on somebody's Pintrest (which I am now feeling guilty about, thanks to Jane's exceptionally accurate post today...thanks for continuing your crusade Jane, you are so right! If anyone recognizes the pattern as Lenore's (or anybody else's for that matter) and knows how to contact the author I'd be happy to send remuneration if they didn't make the pattern generally available...it doesn't look like it's been copied from a book, but it could be, I suppose...)

Motif 24

Again, I'm not a mother and I don't spend a lot of time around small children (I teach middle school and my nieces and nephews are all on another continent), but I think these are a slightly better size for baby feet?

For comparison (remember the one on the top right is about the length of a Clover shuttle):

Eh.

I've kind of met my tolerance for pink and baby stuff I'll never actually use...let's move on to something usable and blue! :)

Motif 25!!!! Peacock from "Animal Bookmarks: A Tatted Zoo"

Aren't these two cute?! Normally I do not like to make multiples of things, but this was a challenging pattern and I was trying to do a good job, so one is the "practice" and one is the "perfect."

Oh wait, hahaha. :)

Also, I need to point out:

It's not even June yet, and I made it to 25 Motifs!!

This is unprecedented. And a bit amazing. :) I'm so proud :)

Finally, I decided to branch out a bit and dip into the Beanile pool. Nina Libin has so many great things out there in tat-land, and was nice enough to send me a list of Russian tatting terms when I reached out to her shortly after moving to Russia and acquiring a bunch of Russian tatting books, so I thought the least I could do was try out her signature technique:

Motif 26: Beaded Necklace by Nina Libin, pattern found on the Online Tatting Class website

 I'm not sure if this makes any difference in the end, I realized about halfway through that I was using the Needle Tatting pattern to make this necklace, rather than the Shuttle Tatting pattern. After comparing and contrasting, the big difference is the use of one needle vs. two shuttles. I think I'll work this pattern again with 2 shuttles and see what difference (if any) there is...

Because, why not?!

So, there you go Grace, another post done. Thanks again... :)

I will try to be better about posting pictures soon(er) after I finish something, but no promises... I'm off on a 6-week circumnavigation of the world next week (Vlad-Iowa, Iowa-London, London-Vlad) so I will be quite busy, but how is that anything new?! :)

Tatting in Thailand (Motif 4) and TIAS Day 8

So, Thailand is really a lot warmer than Russia.
Three days in Thailand (see the map to the right--8th new country in the past year!!) with an average temperature of about 80 degrees (all-time low temps according to people who actually live there) were heaven compared to this chilly, snowy Vladivostok...although it is nice to be back. :)

Those three days were so crazy-busy I didn't get much tatting done, but I did manage Motif 4:

Подвеска (Pendant) from "Фриволите Рукоделие" by Животовская Е. В.

It doesn't look quite right, but close enough. Russian patterns are sometimes kind of weird to follow...

I also kept up with Jane's TIAS--here is Day 8:

 I'm seeing windmills:

Maybe?? :)

TIAS Day 6 and Traveling Again

Here is my Day 6 for Jane's TIAS:

Once again it doesn't seem to be turning the way Jane's diagram shows, but I'm sure it will eventually get there. I still have no guesses...lack of imagination, maybe?

I'm writing this in the lull that comes between the time when you are frantically packing your bags and when you leave for the airport...yes, we're off on another (very short) trip, but I think this will be the last for a bit (March or April, probably). I have to stay home through February so I don't miss any of the Olympics!!

Speaking of the Olympics, here's something fun:

This is me (in the maroon in the back) running at the Iowa State Track and Field Meet in 1999 against Lolo Jones (navy in the front), a fellow Iowan and 2-time Summer Olympian who just qualified for the US Olympic bobsled team! (And, not to brag or anything, I actually ended up beating her in this race...it's hard to tell, but she is starting to grimace in pain, because she's just pulled her hamstring and is about to drop to the ground in agony, thus allowing a slow, chubby 9th grader to pass her, poor girl. Clearly she overcame that particular disappointment.) Anyway, so next month we'll both be in Russia! (Albeit on COMPLETE opposite sides of the country (and continent) but still...same place.  :) Funny how life is, sometimes!

Stealth Doily and Cluny Leaves

Bwahaha, I'm so sneaky. ;)

Here's my "Stealth Doily"...

Motif 2: Celtic Sugar and Spice Doily

 Look familiar? :)

Of course it does! It's (theoretically) the first thing you see every time you visit my blog...

Except, of course, it's not, because this is the new, shuttle tatted version!

I've actually been working on this for a L-O-N-G time, like, since August or something, but I FINALLY finished it over the weekend. (I kept not taking it with me when I traveled, so then I'd get involved in other projects and not work on this one...)

I call it the stealth doily because I purposely didn't put anything about it on the blog because I wanted to wait and unveil it just as I did above, as a visual comparison of needle and shuttle tatting. It's the same pattern, the same thread, just two different methods of tatting.

Discuss. :)

This doily was, in its own way, almost as much of a pain as the tulips...

Firstly, (well, kind of lastly) I ran out of shuttle thread TWO RINGS before I finished it...ugh!

 

So, I improvised a shuttle with some pre-wrapped travel thread:

And, of course, there were a few tension issues again...especially after completing the maroon split rings:

 and then again with the tan final round. Of course, that was nothing a few pins couldn't fix!

 This is a doily written for a needle tatting book...I wonder if any of the tension troubles were because I was shuttle tatting this pattern, or if I just really need to work on my tension control?

 After finishing the stealth doily I decided to try something new, something I've been wanting to try for a while: Cluny Tatting!

And here are my first attempts:

Motif 3: A Small Motif using Cluny Leaves

Clearly this is a skill I need to work on, but I do think I improved as I went around the circle (my first leaf of the motif was the small one with the long purple tail, and then continued around counter-clockwise to the last one right next to it.)

One New Country, Two Tatting Classes, Three More Motifs and Four Sunlit Shuttles! (Motifs 40-42)

Well, we're back.

That was a very rough, very fast trip home, but I'm glad we went...

Partly because I picked up yet another country (Japan--my 5th new country in the past two months, phew!), but most especially because we got to see all our families and meet our newest niece, Gemma...

The pink bib worked! (And was HUGE on my 6 lb+ niece!)

 I did a little bit of tatting while I was home and in the air...as per usual...

Motif 40 (#7 on the way to 25 by the 25th...yikes!) This is Perfect Quilter and DMC 80 threads combined.

Ok, so it was a very little bit...to be honest, that's about all I achieved on the trip...I was mostly too exhausted to even lift a shuttle.

 Understandably (I hope) I was pretty down after returning (and jetlagged!!) but a small package from Canada perked me up considerably on my first day back at work...four Sunlit Shuttles from that amazing Fox! Thank you again! :)

And they are great! As a semi-converted needle tatter I don't have a ton of shuttles and all my Clovers are full, so it was a very, very timely arrival! :)

 Suitably cheered and fully rested I started on one of the Shuttlebirds Weekly Challenges (I've been getting the e-mails for months but this is the first one I've completed)...

And yes, the thread matches the shuttles...I like it that way. :) It's the Tatted Roman Cross in size 30 Cebélia, and is Motif #41 (and #8 on the way to 25 by the 25th).

 As a thank you (sorry if this spoils the fun, Fox) I decided to make a Thank You mignonette AND practice a new skill at the same time:

BEADS! (Motif 42 on the year, #9 on the way to 25 by the 25th)

It took a couple tries but I managed to add beads from the shuttle. Amazing.

 Finally, I taught my second tatting class (needles, not shuttles...it's easier, I think)--it was actually a reschedule class, originally we were going to have it the Sunday I left for the funeral, but my students were patient and we had a nice time making holiday motifs this past weekend.

 So that's that...just under two weeks until Christmas and I have 16 motifs to go to get to 25 by the 25th...it might take a Christmas miracle to pull it off, but stranger things have occurred! :)