Groovin'

Ah, yes! I feel like I'm back in the tatting groove! Not much to show for today, but it makes me happy!

The curse of the UFOs

I'm not sure if I put down Kencana because I realized I had made a mistake or if I made the mistake last night while trying to stay awake in my chair. At any rate, Kencana has been snipped from the shuttles and thrown in the trash. It just didn't seem worth my time to try and retro-tat to fix it.

To get myself back on track with my tatting, I did what Jane suspected I would do...

I started a Spinning Wheel glass mat in blue! This is my all-time-favorite pattern from Tatting with Visual Patterns by Mary Konior. I have no idea how many of these I've made over the years, but whenever I get in a tatting funk, this is my go-to pattern. It always gets me back on track! What's your go-to pattern?

In addition to unearthing a mountain of shuttles, I've stumbled upon a bit of thread. I'm a sucker for a good sale, and it seems that Hobby Lobby just rotates supplies to the clearance shelves once it's been on display for a designated period of time. How can any reasonable tatter turn down a price reduction such as this? So, how much thread have I uncovered in my sewing room? Enough to fill an 11" x 11" fabric cube! I shudder to think how much more there is stored in the upstairs closet!

I don't often recommend books, because I find that my taste in books tends to be a little different. However, I do like to read books that others recommend. A friend of mine put together a list of possible books for her book club. I don't attend, because it's too far away. When I saw her list, this title caught my eye. When I was younger, it was my dream to own my own book store. That was back in the day when there were little book stores all over, and there were very few large book stores. Anyway, I started reading it after school today. I've only read 15 pages, but the story line has caught my interest. Have you read any good books lately?

Another find

I'm making slow progress on my sewing room. I keep finding things, such as this snowflake. It took a bit of investigating, but I figured out that this is the beginning of Kencana from Elegant Tatting Gems by Jon Yusoff. It's hard to believe I had two snowflakes started from the same book. Since I'm not as far along with this snowflake, I'm hoping to find the rhythm of the pattern so that I can finish this one with no mistakes!

Sorry to disappoint you, Jane. Believe it or not, I was going to start the new year with a blue Spinning Wheel. Unfortunately, I haven't found my blue thread yet! ;-)

Don't look too closely!

If you do, I'm sure you will find at least three mistakes. There's a ring that was pressed over on itself, an easy fix. There's a chain with a big lump, the result of kinked thread because I didn't drop my shuttle to untwist the thread. To top it all off, I missed a join. I sewed it together, so it's not super obvious. All in all, this is not my best tatting effort!

I find that when I come back to a project that I haven't worked on in a while, I tend to make lots of mistakes. Does that happen to you? I'm not quite ready to trash all my UFOs, but I do get tempted when I make lots of mistakes.

I will try tatting Nilam from Elegant Tatting Gems by Jon Yusoff again, hopefully with no mistakes!

I am prepared!

Dave bought this beautiful black cabinet for me for Christmas, specifically for storing shuttles!

I'm still in the middle of reorganizing my sewing room. I'm afraid it's going to take a while. I get a bit overwhelmed as I look at the supplies I have.

As I feared, I have way too many shuttles...

Was I afraid that Handy Hands would run out of Aerlit shuttles?

How many small Clover shuttles does one tatter need?

...or large Clover shuttles for that matter!

What's really scary is that I've only begun working on this room, and I have more supplies upstairs! I hope to have some pretty pictures of an organized space in the next week or two.

I did manage to find time for a little bit of tatting today. One thing I learned from working on my Jan Stawasz Masterpiece last year is that it really doesn't matter how much I tat in one day. What does matter is how much I enjoy the time spent tatting!

I hope you enjoy your tatting time today!

Look what I found!

Today was filled with the activities that come after a vacation... picking up the mail, doing the banking, catching up with laundry, paying bills, grocery shopping... the mundane list could go on and on!

I did work a little on reorganizing my sewing room, the key word being little. While trying to decide what I wanted to do first, I found a snowflake that I had started a while back, Nilam from Elegant Tatting Gems by Jon Yusoff.

I love this little book! There are 18 snowflake designs, each of them beautiful. I may be a little prejudiced, because I helped test tat some of the patterns, but I think this is one tatting book that every tatter should own!

Oh, Susanna!

Once again, we traveled to Alabama to visit Mom and I had my tatting on my knee. That's the only way I was able to finish my Jan Stawasz Masterpiece in 2015.

I am thrilled to pieces with this doily. I still need to block it so that it looks exactly right, but a little steam press sure helped make it look presentable!

I plan on putting this on my dining room table, but that will have to wait. I started rearranging my sewing room today and the table is filled with stuff.

So, how long did it take? Just over a year. I started this doily December 29, 2014, and I finished it December 31, 2015, just before we crossed the Alabama/Tennessee line. It's 32" across in size 20 Lizbeth. I can't imagine tatting anything bigger than this!

So what's in store for 2016? I'm not sure yet, but I think I'm going to avoid large projects for a while. This doily really ruled my life for the past year, and I want to do a little experimenting in 2016. What are your tatting plans?