A most eventful weekend

This weekend was the high school performance of The Music Man. I know I'm a bit prejudiced because my daughter is the director, but it was fabulous!

The cast of 50, including some middle school students, were outstanding. I watched the movie this morning (we had the day off for Casimir Pulaski Day), and when the movie was over, I realized just how wonderful a job they all did!

Can you tell I'm proud of my daughter?

I did spend some time tatting today, using up Flora thread on my shuttles. Patti Duff's Minitats is a great source for motifs that don't require a lot of thread.

I finally tatted Motif #3 correctly. All I needed to do was turn off the t.v. so that I switched shuttles instead of reversing my work at the proper spot!

Motif #5 gave me practice with the shoelace trick. Most of the time I prefer using two shuttles to using the shoelace trick, but I think it worked out nicely this time!

Motif #6 is very simple, yet I somehow manage to mess up the final two joins and have to unpick my work every time I make it.

I had eleven 4th graders ask me to teach them to tat on Thursday! This is going to be an exciting week!

Minitats #4

Do you ever feel the need to just finish something... anything? I do, especially when I have a big project going on.

So, tonight I opened up Minitats by Patti Duff and tatted motif #4. I've skipped #3 for now. After starting it and messing it up four times, I figured I should come back to it when I'm not watching t.v.!

The kids were thrilled with all the new beaded beauties today. One motif has already been adopted by a third grader. Alas, there is no picture... I left my camera at home!

Some fourth and fifth grade girls came into the library while third graders were tatting, and wondered what was going on. Two girls even asked if I would teach them to tat. Could this thing be snowballing? We'll just have to wait and see!

More Fancy Pants!

My third graders are having so much fun tatting, and I am experiencing the most enjoyable year of my teaching career!

Let's see if I can remember who each of these tatters is from her hands...

Brooke

Dylan

Shelby

I hope I remembered correctly! If I didn't, I'll make corrections after I see the girls on Monday. As you can see, Dylan and Shelby chose tatted motifs from Fox as their reward for tatting 6" of Fancy Pants. There are other third grade tatters who are getting very close to reaching their goal, so I decided to gather together some tatted motifs for them. I found quite a few in my tatting treasure box, but I also tatted some more motifs.

This is the first motif from Patti Duff's Minitats. I had planned to tat motifs from this book all weekend, but I took the book to school to show the kids, and I left it on my desk. Luckily, I have other books with patterns I love to tat!

This is the left bud fragment from Tatting with Visual Patterns by Mary Konior...

and this is the right bud fragment.

I also tatted Masquerade from the same book.

The kids really like my snowflakes, so maybe I'll tat some of those up this weekend. Teaching others is great motivation!

The kids want tatting!

That's what several of them told me yesterday.

So, last night I pulled out one of my favorite threads, Lizbeth #149, a shuttle, and Patti Duff's Minitats. Once again, it took me three times to tat this motif correctly, but I have three pieces for the kids to choose from.

I really need to go through my sewing room. I know I have lots of motifs that I can share with them. My goal is to have my little tin overflowing with motifs so that the kids can choose one they like whenever they achieve a goal.

One more child asked to learn how to tat yesterday. That means that out of 53 third graders, 52 have asked for a shuttle. Isn't that amazing? Only about half of them are practicing on a regular basis, but I'm okay with that. I'm just thrilled that so many have shown any interest at all!

Sun Dogs

We had Monday and Tuesday off school because of blowing and drifting snow and frigid temperatures. You'd think that I'd sleep in, but I didn't. One advantage to getting up early is watching the sun rise. Yesterday's was spectacular! I admit, I didn't notice at first. Dave called me to the window to see. I might have missed seeing this if he had left for work on time.

I had read about sun dogs and I've seen pictures before, but until yesterday I had never seen them myself. Aren't they amazing? Dave took the picture for me... it was way too cold and windy for me to be outside!

Increase section with eyelets... unintentional!

I've been doing some knitting. I figured that a little different hand and arm motion might help out with my wrist and elbow, and I was right. This is a Saroyan scarf, pattern by Liz Abinante. You can find it on Ravelry if you're interested. My sister-in-law gave me some yarn for Christmas, and I was very excited, because it appeared that I'd be able to make the scarf with one skein... wrong!

Sometimes I just don't read carefully. I actually needed two skeins, nearly 400 yards, to complete this scarf, but by the time I realized it, I was nearly halfway through knitting it. I decided to only knit three pattern repeats for the center section instead of the ten shown on the pattern, making it a shorter scarf. By the time I finished, I realized that I probably had enough yarn to knit four pattern repeats in the center. Oh, well!

The pattern is divided into three sections. The first section is increasing to the desired depth. Six pattern repeats were used for the sample. Even though I haven't followed a knitting pattern for ages, I thought I remembered everything I needed to know. Oh, how I wish I'd refreshed my memory! About three pattern repeats into the decrease section, I noticed that there was no eyelet next to the leaves. There was on the increase section.

Decrease section without eyelets, as it is supposed to be. Oops! I made a big mistake at the end!

As I neared the end of the scarf, I realized that I wasn't going to have enough stitches to complete the decrease pattern at the end. I know I made a mistake somewhere, I'm just not sure where! The scarf won't go to waste. I have a friend whose daughter loves to dress up. I'm going to offer the scarf to her for dress-up. That way someone will love it, and I won't have to see it! ;-)

Now that I know where I made my mistakes, I've started another. So far, so good! I think this will be my sister-in-law's Christmas present next year. Since she chose the yarn, I'm sure she'll love it!

I'm slowly easing back in to tatting. Yesterday morning I took out my Minitats by Patti Duff. Lelia at Stitches of Life II has been working her way through this book, and she has tatted some beautiful samples! I didn't think I had enough thread left on the shuttle for another motif, so I decided to turn it into a bookmark. I don't think this is especially appealing, but I had fun.

I'm way behind on Jane's T.I.A.S., because I was having trouble with my split rings. As you can see, I did manage three here. They were torturous! I just can't seem to develop the correct rhythm for split rings, and I certainly struggle when picots have to be added, especially when they're on the second half. I'm not giving up yet, but it may be summer before I manage to finish!

Mom's dark green Spinning Wheel is coming along slowly but surely. With any luck, I'll have it to her in time for Valentine's Day!

Have you seen?

Clover has a new 3" shuttle! When I saw the announcement from Handy Hands, I ordered mine right away. It was a bit pricey, but how could I resist? The package holds two shuttles, a blue and a green. As you can see from the picture, it isn't much larger than the original size, however it does hold twice as much thread. I really like the feel of this shuttle, and I think it could be my new favorite. ;-)

The motif is #2 from Minitats by Patti Duff. the one on the right is a mistake motif. I didn't make my center picot large enough to join a sixth ring, so I settled for 5. It works, but I do prefer the motif with six rings.

She's at it again!

Daughter Joanne has been bugging me about posting on my blog. She reminded me again that I haven't posted since Tuesday. Since her baby is due any day, I guess I should do my best to keep her happy!

I needed something simple to take in the car yesterday, so I decided to once again set a goal of tatting all 69 motifs from Minitats by Patti Duff.

This is #1 in size 20 Lizbeth #149, Peacock Blues. It measures 1 1/2" across.

I'm making progress on the second side of the beaded bag. For those of you who are interested, the pattern can be found in Donna Kooler's Encyclopedia of Crochet, a fantastic crochet reference!

I have started the next round of Doily VI from Tatted Treasures by Jan Stawasz. I hope that with having the week off for spring break I'll be able to make more progress with this beautiful doily!

Happy New Year!

I made it all the way to 9:15! I'm such a night owl! ;-)

I did get up at 4:30. I just love the early morning hours. They're so relaxing, and I am able to organize my thoughts to get ready for the day.

So, have you made any new year resolutions? I always fail miserably, so I gave up resolving to accomplish anything years ago. I did have a conversation with daughter Andrea when we were in Minnesota, and I really like her resolution... look for joy every day. Now that's something I think I could get into!

On to my first tatting of the year...

I keep thinking that it would be nice to tat every piece from one book. I wonder how far I'll get before I'm distracted by someone's post, a new book, or a telephone call?

It occurred to me that there could be new tatters who might stumble across my little blog. Wouldn't it be nice to know all the details without having to ask questions? Maybe my resolution should be to provide more information. We'll see how that goes!

Motif #1 from Minitats: 69 Petite Motifs by Patti Duff (out of print)
finished size 1 1/4"
size 20 Lizbeth, Wedgewood Dk #656
Shuttle Brothers bobbin shuttle
Picot gauges from Georgia Seitz