Ruth Mary Jewellery

Photo used with permission from ruthmary.com

I love surfing the Internet to find out what others are doing to bring tatting into the public eye.

Recently, I connected with Ruth Mary in England, and she introduced me to her shop, ruthmary.com, and some videos about her lace jewelry.

Ruth Mary, like us, is fascinated by lace, and she used to spend time at antique fairs looking for the perfect piece of lace to add to her collection. Then... she discovered tatting!

Ruth Mary uses silk thread for her tatting, and then makes molds for beautiful jewelry in both silver and gold. My favorite is her rose gold paisley design, shown above. Or is it the silver? Maybe the gold. Oh, my... the choices are wonderful!

I love the names of her collections: Constellation Dream, Deco, Romantic Perfection, and The Classics.

Ruth Mary will even take your tatting and turn it into a beautiful piece of jewelry!

Hmmm... now I'm thinking about how I can take my tatting to a new level!

The day after

Today was a typical day after the last performance school day... lots of tired, but happy students! Dave and I have been busy doing our usual cleanup... washing tablecloths, coffee pots, and coffee cups. We must have a good routine down, because we're almost finished cleaning and putting away. It's a good feeling!

Today was a fabulous mail day! First, I received my newest shuttle from Grizzly Mountain Arts. I do love lighthouses, and I was thrilled to be able to purchase this one.

I also received several new shuttles from Emiko Suenaga of PaintatPlus. Emiko is celebrating two years of having an Etsy shop. There were several shuttles that I wanted, so I waited until I had enough set aside to purchase all I wanted at once. It was well worth the wait!

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Front

I love the "Forget me not" theme!

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The shuttles are available in both large and small sizes.

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Front

They're also available as Clover bobbin shuttles, which I love!

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I also couldn't resist this beautiful blue butterfly shuttle!

Emiko also sent along some beautiful resin disks with flowers from her own garden. I am thrilled to have these, and when they become Ice Drops, they will be ones I treasure for years to come! Thank you, Emiko!

Lily's afghan is growing quickly! I have high hopes for finishing it within the next week. Unfortunately, that will mean less tatting time. It can't be helped. Christmas will be here in no time, and I have two more to go after this one!

One down, two to go!

The Lion King, Jr. was a great success! The kids were amazing, and the audience response was terrific!

This morning we set up for dinner theater, and now Madame Director is taking a well deserved nap. I'm really looking forward to tonight's performance!

Play week

It's play week, and that means lots of hustle and bustle around here. This week I've been repairing rental costumes, helping put together props and costumes made by those supporting the drama club, fetching meals for Madame Director, running off programs... anything and everything that is asked of me. My responsibilities have expanded with retirement!

We had a glorious sunrise this morning. I wish my phone camera could catch the true beauty. Maybe it can, and I just don't know enough about photography!

With the hope of achieving my goal of an afghan for each grandchild for Christmas, I started the Virus Blanket for Lily. I really like Fiber Spider's video tutorials. They're so clear and easy to follow. I now have this pattern down pat, so I'm carrying it with me and crocheting whenever I get the chance. This pattern works up much more quickly than the one I just finished for Ella. The yarn is Lion Brand Mandala that I found on clearance at Walmart last year. I love clearance sales!

Yes, my tatting still travels with me. This is destined to be a snowflake, but I need to take out the last ring I tatted. It wasn't time for a ring! I have an idea of what I want the next round to look like so that this looks like a snowflake. We'll see if I'm able to tat what I envision!

I didn't think I'd make it...

I was sure I'd run out of yarn. I even looked for another ball that would coordinate with Mandala "Pixie" in case I did run out. Somehow, luck was with me and I finished Ella's afghan with a little extra left over.

I know I don't have time to make three more afghans before Christmas, but I can finish just one more, all will be good!

A flurry of fun!

Tollway Tatters met today, and we had a flurry of fun! It's true... there were flurries... lots of snow flurries... in fact, it was more like a snow squall. It didn't stick, because it was too warm. However, it did cause a little excitement!

Another bit of excitement was that a water pipe burst, so there were no washrooms available. Also, the burst pipe did something to the electric and the doors had to remain open. Yes, indeed... it was quite an exciting day!

Of course, the best part of the day was spending time with tatting friends!

Kathy

Nancy and Glenda

Barbara

Carrie

Sue and Nancy

Mary

Elaine

Sue Anna

We always have a wonderful time, and it's great to have friends who are willing to travel so far to spend time sharing ideas. We won't be meeting in November or December. Those two months are way too busy for all of us. We'll have to wait and see what winter is like and when it looks like it's good enough for everyone to travel, we will meet again!

Success!

Snowflakes, as you know, have six (or multiples of six) points. The Ice Drops I've been making with Liz Metallic can be ornaments, but they can't be snowflakes. Christmas will be here before long, and I need snowflakes!

After quite a bit of fiddling around, I finally figured out a stitch count that works for me. My rings are 5-4-5, and my chains are 5-5. With that stitch count as the basis for the first round, I can now move on and design snowflake Ice Drops!

Two Ice Drop Addicts have been very instrumental in influencing me to move beyond the basic Ice Drop pattern I started with about two years ago... Sarah Wood and Shelley Perreault.

Sarah posted instructions for a one pass Ice Drop in our Facebook group. I had tatted an Ice Drop the way she described, but I didn't like the look as much so I never posted any ideas. However, many tatters in the group did, so I started doing a little experimenting. The method still didn't grab me.

Soon Shelley posted her Peacock Coins pattern. I printed it out, but since it was a one pass Ice Drop I didn't try it out until Shelley asked me to test tat it for her. She wanted to make sure her instructions were clear. They were! Again, even though I liked the pattern, the idea of the one pass method just didn't do it for me.

Then I discovered bottle caps. Lisa Adams had some bottle cap needle minders at Tatting Corner Tat Days this summer. I bought one and decided to try making some for myself. What a mess! Magnets, glue, and bottle caps require a level of coordination that is beyond me. Of course I had purchased enough bottle caps to supply all of my tatting friends. I guess I heard the saying, "Go big or go home!" too many times. 😁

As you may know, I then became intrigued with flattening bottle caps with a tortilla press. Trust me... you don't want to get started doing this. It can become another addiction! The flattened bottle caps just had to be decorated with beautiful designs and tatting. Don't you agree? My basic Ice Drop pattern needed too much tweaking to work with bottle caps, so following Sarah's and Shelley's lead I started using the one pass method.

The nice thing about using the one pass method is that you can make adjustments as you go so that your cabochon fits snugly inside the tatting, no matter what size cabochon or thread you use. That doesn't work with my method. Now I think it's time for me to revisit Edda Guastalla's patterns and do some more experimenting!