Doily Progress in Blue and White and White and Blue

 Hello!

The last couple weeks have been busy ones (shocker--you can read about it here, here, here and here if you like) but I have found a bit of time to make progress on The Big Doily. 

 Unfortunately, my tension troubles have continued to plague me on this doily:

So it was back to the ironing board and another dunking for the doily:

Of course, this left me without a tatting project, so I decided to take a second crack at the still unfinished frilling doily to try to find out what went wrong...

First I tried to relax the frills out, but to no avail...

Still Frilly

So I went back to the pattern...and instantly realized my mistake. Too many rings + chains = doily frills. Sigh. I think it's funny, this is the picture that accompanies the pattern in The Tatter's Treasure Chest:

I think my frilling doily matches this lovely lady's skirt!

So, I started over.

Center Motif

Round 1

Round 2--this is where I started going wrong last time--if you look carefully you can see that the rings are attached in an every-other pattern--one ring is attached to the center picot of the chain, the next two rings are to the first and third picots. That pattern is repeated all the way around. On my first crack at this pattern I added two rings to each chain.

Here are some comparison shots for you, first and second try:

Already a frilled mess...

Look Ma, no frills! (Or not much of one, anyway!)

 Since I decided to take my husband's advice and make The Big Doily white with blue accents, I thought I would make this one in blue with white accents. So, Round 3 is white:

 And kind of frilly. So...to the ironing board it went, to replace the newly-dry Big Doily. I am officially a convert to the mid-work blocking:

 You may notice the picture is a little...dark...that would be because I finished this round and blocked this in the middle of a blackout!

I used my headlamp to see what I was doing!

So here's what it looks like so far...the blocking helped, but it's still a little over-lappy as you can see at the top.

I'm hoping that will continue to relax out as I continue to tat, but on any level, this is MUCH better than the previous try:

 So that's where I'm at. I started back on The Big Doily when I put the new one on the board to dry, switching to blue. This round is not completed yet, but you can see where it's going...I'm curious, which do you like better? Blue and White or White and Blue?

:)

Sidetracked by the Mail (and Motif #5)

Hello all!

 We're supposed to get mail only once-every-other-week here, but luckily it seems that something shows up every week...and sometimes multiple somethings, like last week:

Hurrah! I have pretty much doubled my stock of thread with this delivery!

Aren't they beautiful?

 As I mentioned in a previous post, I have decided that I need to get out of my "Perle 8" rut, to make smaller and more delicate "tattings" like everyone else, and I'm starting with that beautiful blue thread I found over the summer in Des Moines...

 Unfortunately, they only had one ball of that thread, and I wasn't sure if the project I wanted to do would take more than just that one ball...

Thank goodness for the Internet! A very quick search on eBay not only gave me access to multiple rolls of this beautiful thread, but multiple rolls of the same dye lot (as you may or may not be able to tell from the picture below, the colors are VERY slightly different) for my large project...

 And, luckily for me, my rolls of thread came last week, so I was sidetracked from the carpet-diagramming project in favor of "The Big Doily" from the February 1925 issue of Needlecraft Magazine.

Funny that "The Big Doily" starts so small:

Left: 1 Russian Ruble   •   Right: 1 American Dime   •   3 Dimes ≈ 1 Ruble

Of course, they always grow...

Motif #5

 I was originally going to make the third round in the blue, but my husband Chris talked me out of it. He thought it would look better as a white doily with blue accents, rather than the other way around...we'll see. Chris so seldom gives me suggestions on (or even takes much notice of) my tatting things that I thought I would take his advice if for no other reason than to show that I appreciated his interest. :) He's a good guy! :)

 Apparently I didn't take a picture after round four, but you can plainly see it in the pictures below...and the problem that arose in round five:

Whoops!

Can you say tension issues?

I have run into tension issues in my tatting before...it was actually a comment from a Fair judge last summer, and of course there is the still unfinished frilling doily from Falls Church...

I was given the advice to steam the frilling doily (which I have not done, as I stopped work mid-round and haven't picked it back up yet...thanks and sorry Margaret) but since I'm not sure how Chris' steamer works, I decided to try a quasi-blocking instead.

Thank goodness for the water distiller we have here! The local water takes on kind of a yellow tinge, and I'm not at all sure what it would have done to the pretty white of the doily, but the distilled water is crystal clear:

 After a thorough dunking (during which the thread relaxed beautifully) I put the ironing board to use and stuck pins into the picots of the outer-most ring (the one that is giving me trouble, naturally.)

Sorry it's hard to see...I didn't want to chance any cross-color contamination with a colored towel

 I checked it a couple minutes ago and the doily is still slightly damp, so I haven't resumed progress...maybe I'll get out that frilled monstrosity and finish my current round...and then see if I can get them to relax a bit after a dunking :)

First Incarnation of the Carpet is Finished, Diagramming Begins!

Finally! It's done!

When we last checked in, the inside motifs of the carpet had been completed, but the outside ring was only halfway complete, due to the "kissing curls" found on all four corners.

I tried to continue the pattern on the short side after completing the first long side, but after many failed attempts decided to continue with the second long side first:

The problem is shown by the orange arrow below:

If you look at the rest of the pattern, it makes sense to re-create the triangle from the inside, to make the bulk of the outside edge, but that can't be done and then also connect with the chain next to it...

See, the connection doesn't work:

Another chain/ring/chain pattern has to be added (left side) to complete the side:

So it is no longer a 12-piece pattern, but a 16-piece pattern, as shown below:

And here it is completed!

Hooray!

So, what did I do but start it over, so that I can write out the pattern. I'm going to use different colored thread to show each part...

...and will publish the pattern once it's all written out. Also, perfectionist that I am, I might tweak it a bit...there are other ring/chain/ring elements that could be added, if one chose to... :)

Also, as a break from the green, I have continued work on this mat; 5 down, 4 more to go! :)

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... :)

More "Carpet" Pattern Work

Well, I've made some progress on the carpet-inspired pattern!

Here again is the original carpet:

First of all I finished the first inside square.

(Messy) Motif #2

Here it is contrasted with the "inside motif" I made (if that makes sense at all):

And since I was thick in the middle of "The Forsythe Saga," I just kept working and finished the inside (made of 8 triangle-shaped motifs):

Sorry about the stringy mess...

That was yesterday.

Today's task is the outer edge. This is a little tricky, because the outer "triangle" areas (there are six of them, pointing up and down) aren't really that easy to make using the naturally curving tatting.

Also, I'm not sure if you noticed, but upon further investigation, if you are trying to be as true to the original pattern as possible, it's not really possible to make the outer edge in one fell swoop because of the two "kissing curley-qs" to be found in 4 places around the pattern...

These two instances are shown below:

I tackled the triangle problem first, as the two "curly-qs" are easily done, as shown on the left side below:

Motif #3?

I first tried the two kissing rings at the bottom of the motif (lots of kissing going on here), but after further perusal of the pattern decided they aren't quite right. They have the satisfying connection, but raise the "triangle" too high for my liking. Next I tried the ring/chain combo (is there a technical name for that?) at the top, and unfortunately think that is going to be my best bet...unless anyone out there can come up with something better (please!)! I think I will try to make the ring thinner, and the chain longer (higher), but otherwise it's the best I've come up with.

At any rate, it's no longer possible to stay true to the pattern and make the outside all in one piece, so we are now talking about a 4-piece outer round, to go with the 8-piece inner round, as shown below:

And, if that is too hard to see (it is for me) here's a slightly easier on the eyes version:

So that's where I am on that. :)

By the way, and completely off subject, how fascinating is this Richard III discovery!? As a history teacher, I am so into this history-as-news thing! Today as I blog and tat I am re-visiting my audiobook copy of Josephine Tey's"Daughter of Time," an excellent, intelligent book with interesting perspective on this topic...published in 1951!

Happy tatting!
KF