Been Tatting (Even if Not Posting…)

The finished doily sans center fabric.

I’ve been busy tatting though not posting.  Internet time continues to be short on the road.  Lots of tatting related stuff to talk about, though.  x

I’ve finished the tatting portion of the star doily from the 3rd Priscilla Tatting Book.  Unfortunately, it took longer than it should have because not once, but twice I managed to connect the pieces wrong. You think I would have learned after the first time, but no.  I misunderstood the mistake I made so I made it again.  The standard rule in tatting is to “check twice, close once” with regards to making rings.  Another should be “check twice, join once” with regards to putting together medallions and motifs.

As I mentioned in an earlier post about the doily I was piecing it together by creating the “points” of the star first and then tatting the medallions between them to connect them all at once.  It’s a nice way to do it for this doily because it means that you avoid having to deal with a really large piece of tatting until you’re near the end.  Problem is that I managed to “flip” one of the points of the star while joining so it pointed inward.  Didn’t figure out what I’d done until I did it again and so I had to cut the last row of both the joining medallions.  Luckily I could get away with only cutting out the last (chains-only) row and one of the rings from the previous row.  So the actual fixing wasn’t too difficult or take too long.  Though I still put it aside until just this last week because I wanted to be focused while doing it to make sure I didn’t make the same mistake again.  Lately all my “focused” tatting time (meaning tatting that I actually have to pay attention to while I’m doing) has been spent on working on stuff for the classes I’m teaching at the Shuttlebirds Workshop in Spokane.

That’s it for now.  I’ve been sitting here at Starbucks for the last few hours reading my “Governmental and Nonprofit Accounting” textbook and getting started on my homework for my new class.  First class is tomorrow night and I want to start off ahead because I’ve got so much going on in the next couple weeks.  Classes are only 4 weeks long so there NO way to get caught-up if you get behind.  Tired of the smell of coffee (which I don’t drink) and it’s time to get out of here.