Joining the Lafayette Lacemakers

Yesterday was the day to head to Lafayette, Indiana to attend their lace event. It was great to see so many familiar faces!

My dear friend Pat attended with me. We've known each other for years, and I was her son Brian's 4th grade teacher. That was my only year as a classroom teacher, and each of those students will always hold a special place in my heart.

I'm terrible about remembering to take pictures, but I did remember to take this one of Battatter and Yarnplayer aka Carol and Marilee. My good friends Carol and Sue Anna were also there, but I forgot to get pictures of them. If we had planned ahead, we could have worn our tie-dye t-shirts so that everyone would recognize the Tollway Tatters!

I decided I needed a break from the two large doilies, and I turned to my favorite pattern, Spinning Wheel glass mat from Tatting with Visual Patterns by Mary Konior. I'm not especially fond of tatting with size 10 thread, but I decided to try it out with the Spinning Wheel pattern. It's not too bad, but I'm looking forward to working with at lease size 20 again. I'm using my new Astro-Knot shuttles. They are very nice, and extremely light weight!

The girls at school have been asking for crocheted button flowers, hair clips, and headbands, so I decided to focus on crocheting button flowers this weekend. I managed to get quite a few done!

It doesn't look like very many in the can, but I'm guessing there are close to 100 button flowers finished. I guess I'll have to work on those hair clips and headbands now!

Quick trip

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. I know we did, although it was incredibly busy. We drove Joanne and Sophia back to Minnesota on Saturday and headed home on Sunday. That's a lot of driving! We spent Saturday night at daughter Andrea's, and we were able to experience the fun of watching granddaughters Lily and Elly hunt for Easter eggs before we headed home.

There are days when tatting in the car just doesn't work for me, so I took along the crocheted shawl I was commissioned to complete for a June wedding. It should be finished, but I kept finding mistakes in one of the rows... one of the longest, of course! I finally got smart and checked the whole row, but I know I spent hours pulling out stitches and crocheting the row over and over again. I hope to have it finished this week. It's really a very simple pattern to follow, and I hope the lady who requested it loves the pattern as much as I do. If you're interested, the pattern can be found on Etsy.

The little bit of tatting I did accomplish was on round 9 of Renulek's Spring Doily. I think the pattern repeat is very pretty, but I can tell this round will be time consuming!

I'm rebuilding my crocheted button flower stash, five buttons at a time!

I'm also working on buttons for Elaine.

My newest shuttles from Grizzly Mountain Arts arrived today! I love these shuttles!

To make my day even better, I finally managed to get my hands on two of the new Astro-Knot shuttles! When I first learned about 3D printers, I did some investigating because I thought it would be really cool to print my own tatting shuttles. However, the price of the printers and the knowledge it would take to design and print a tatting shuttle seemed way beyond my means! I decided to sit back and wait for someone else to come up with the same idea, and I have not been disappointed.

I'll let you know how I like them once I've put them to use. In the meantime, you'll need to keep your eyes on eBay, because that's the only place they're available right now!