This is one of the project we did at Camp Wannatat last month. It’s Dora Young pattern that Heidi Nakamura rewrote and taught.

I realize as I try to describe it that I don’t know if I should call it a doily or a motif.  When does a motif become a doily?  Is it the physical size of the finished piece or the number of rounds?  This one is done all in one round, but it’s about 7 inches wide, done with a Snapdragon Lace size 3 hand dyed thread and black. Why size 3?  I really don’t know. I wanted to do a HDT and while choosing I just sort of gravitated to them for something different. I know a lot of people don’t like size 3, but I think it definitely has it’s place.

I was also thinking of doing it in size 80, just to see what that would look like.  If I did, the final piece would only be a couple inches wide. Would that make it a motif?

I’m

excited to have finished this version of the first section of the tea cloth.  It’s just the tiny center part of the complete piece, but for this version I’m stopping here as a sample of that center.  I’m really happy with the way it came out and how the colors all worked together.  I did it in these rainbow colors because I wanted to show how the individual rounds were done.  I pulled out the bottom half of all the small circular motifs of the second round and did them as single piece.  Then combine the top half of those motifs with the circular motifs of the third round and traveled around the piece using split rings to get from one circular motif to the next.  It was so nice to only have 4 ends to hide at the end of that rather than the 32 that would have resulted from doing them all separately.

I’ve also finished writing up the pattern for this.  Actually, I finished it while doing the yellow and green one months and months ago and doing this version was my way of checking the pattern.

Next up to format the pattern and add the pictures.  It will be exciting to have this small version of the piece written up.  Still lots to do for the whole tea cloth, but this feels like a nice milestone.

Well, it’s almost June, but I need to back-track a little and send out a huge THANK YOU to all the people that make Shuttlebirds and Camp Wannatat happen.  Both events were amazing as always.  I had a great time teaching at Shuttlebirds and learned a lot as always at Wannatat.  Patti and Tess… special thanks to the two of you for making these events happen every year.  I can’t wait for the next Wannatat in October and Shuttlebirds next April.

In tatting news, I’ve got a lot to get caught up on.  This last week I’ve been really focused on coming up with new variations on the X’s and O’s pattern I taught at Shuttlebirds.  I learn the basic pattern from Janie Wannatata a few years ago and she threw out the idea of linking up multiple rows of it.  Well, here’s my latest variation on that.  In this version I’ve staggered the weave so that this checkerboard look comes out in the pattern.  It’s been a lot of fun to experiment with, but it’s a very dense pattern so it’s very slow going as well.  I’ve just started another version of this with beads.  I’ll show a picture of that once I get a little further along on it.

What a busy last month it has been!  And there’s still a few weeks left of busy before (I’m hoping) it will calm down.  Two weeks ago I was at KCamp Wannatat in Montana which was wonderful as usual.  I was able to stop in and see Bobbie on the way too.  She is always the highlight of the trip.  I only got home last Wednesday which was just barely enough time to prepare for selling at the Fiber Arts Festival in Longbranch on Saturday.  The picture is of my booth there.  This was the first time I’ve vended at a non-tatting/lace  event so it was a bit of an experiment for me.  I wanted to learn how to set-up my booth and what might sell.  I was surprised to sell as many tatting shuttles and supplies as I did.  Sold only a few skeins of thread and a bunch of finished tatted pieces.  My main goal was to see if I had the inventory and the set-up to sell at a fair like this and I think I can safely declare that all I have left to work on is more inventory of finished tatting.  So I’ll continue with that and I’m hoping that in 2015 I’ll be able to do a few more fairs like this one.  Maybe even some bigger ones.

This weekend is the first ever Tatting Summit of Puget Sound which will be held at my house.  It’s sort of my weekend event inspired by Camp Wannatat.  We’ll have two classes a day and get lots of time for hanging out and tatting.  I’ve been wanting to do this for a while and have been trying to figure out how to get the whole thing running.  I’m looking forward to it and also looking forward to future events going even more smoothly and being even easier to put together.  Here’s hoping anyway.

The last Lace-related thing that’s going on is the Lacemakers of Puget Sound’s Lace Day on October 25th.  That’s also going to be a great event and I’m really looking forward to it.

Whew.  What a busy month.  A very exciting one though that I’m having a great time with!

These little earrings are part of a group that I’m taking in to a shop in Issaquah to put on consignment. It’s my first “official” consignment gig, though it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while. I’m trying to keep my expectations in check with a goal of just figuring out how to get myself organized for doing consignment rather than an actual sales goal. I like goals I have control over. 🙂

My second test run is this post itself. I know I’ve been quite absent from posting and I don’t mean to be, but the fact is that I just don’t use my computer at home much. Once I get home I try to stay out of work mode and sitting down at the computer just doesn’t help with that even if it’s for something fun like posting. So I’m trying out the wordpress app for the phone and iPad and hopefully they will be a more sit back bad relaxing way of posting. So please excuse any strange formatting or auto-corrects that come in the next few posts. I’ll get it figured out eventually. 🙂

Somehow despite the crazy packing for the move (movers come next Thursday!) I’ve managed to get a fair bit of tatting done. Here’s to cleaning and sorting the tatting corner and finding all sorts of goodies I had forgotten I had!

This single-shuttle motif is part of a small doily I’m working on from Priscilla Tatting #1.  I actually really like the way it looks on it’s own.  Which is good, because the next section (where it all gets put together) is proving rather hard to make work.  Why is it hard to make work?  Well, because once again, it seems like the written instructions don’t match with the pictures.  These 4 motifs were done based on the written instructions, but when you look at the pictures you can clearly see that there are more picots on the outer rings.  So I’m going to have to spend a bit of quiet time studying the pictures in the original book and seeing if there’s anything else different.  There’s definitely going to be some modifications made.  I’ll post some pictures when I actually get something that starts to work.  Here’s what it’s ultimately supposed to look like:

I’m not sure exactly what I’m going to do about the center.  It could be a small enough piece that I’ll actually do the sewing and try to put fabric in the middle.  There are lots of pieces in the Priscilla book that have that and it’s something I’ve never done before so I could use the experience.

Craftsy has a new set up that lets you link to your own pattern store and show pictures of your own patterns on the sidebar.  It’s sort of exciting to see my own patterns on both the Craftsy and the Etsy widgets on the sidebar here.  Makes me feel like I have the startings of a real business!  🙂

Things have been extremely busy here.  I had three large orders for gloves come in last month as well as a couple other smaller ones.  I’ve finally got them all pretty much out the door now.  Down to just one small one left that I’ll finish up this weekend.  It will be nice to take a few moments and recover.

I had a set of beginner classes at Pacific Fabrics in Northgate the last two weeks.  My students did very well and seem to be excited to do more.  I’m hoping to get my schedule sorted out well enough get some new classes on the calendar.  I also have another beginner class at Bird Tail Beads in Bellevue tomorrow so there are lots of new tatters getting started.  I’m super super excited to be involved with getting people interested and started with tatting!

In other news about learning, I went out to Camp Wannatat in Montana a couple  weeks ago and had a wonderful time (as always) and learned a lot.  I finally got to meet the Shuttle Brothers which was great (they signed my copies of their books) and Reit was there again from Europe.  It was great to see her again as well as everyone else.  It was the 50th Camp Wannatat and the last one to be held at Bobbie’s house so it was a great celebration and I was very honored to be included in it.  Next year they will start to be at an actual camp in Montana.  It’s going to be quite the change, but I’m glad that it will continue and that more people will be able to attend at the bigger venue.

That’s the super quick update.   Things have been busy with the rest of life as well lately, but I’m hoping that things will settle down here in October and I’ll get to work on some of my bigger projects and not just feel like I’m pushing to keep up.

Last year when I was at Camp Wannatat someone (I wish I could remember who) showed us a piece of tatting they’d done with ribbon.  It was a very simple snowflake, but because of the size of the ribbon it came out very big for the pattern.  I took a few minutes yesterday to try it out myself, but mine did NOT come out anywhere nearly as nice. So I wound the entire spool of ribbon (one of the 50 cent spools from Michael’s) on to a Tatsy shuttle and just played around with making simple rings.

I think the reasons it didn’t work as well are probably partly because of my choice of ribbon and partly just because I need more practice.  The ribbon she had used (if I remember right) 3/4 of an inch wide and a smooth cloth.  This one was cloth but much smaller (1/4 of an inch) and with a little picot-like edging.  I thick the picot-like edging made it too busy.  If I were to try it again sometime I’d use an edging-less ribbon in this same size and a larger ribbon as well.  It was an interesting little project and a nice little 30-minute experiment.  I’m not in any rush to starting making much in ribbon at the moment, but I may try it again sometime.  Here’s the rest of all the other little rings I made.

Joins!!!

I have finally gotten around to updating and posting the pattern for my mini veil on Craftsy.  Tomorrow I’ll get it up in my Etsy shop.  Hope everyone else likes the pattern.  It’s fun to tat and wear.  I’m working on making a whole collection of veils in many colors.

Tax season is over and I’m excited to be getting in to the summer.  (For those that don’t know, when I’m not tatting I’m an accountant.)  It was a very busy tax season and I’m looking forward to having a bit of time to catch my breath and get some tatting projects done.

I had a wonderful time at the Shuttlebirds Tatting Workshop in Spokane this April.  It’s hard to believe it was just two and a half weeks ago.  I miss it already.  My classes went well and I think my students learned a lot.  I’ve already got a couple ideas for what I will teach next year and have even gotten the handout ready for one already.  How’s that for staying on top of things?

I have a number of patterns I want to get put together and published, so I think that will be my focus for the summer.  One booklet will be a series of variations on a pattern from Priscilla (two of which I taught at Shuttlebirds) and the other will be one of some easy bracelet patterns.  For the second, I’d like to come with about 12 or so designs and so far I’m at about 5.  It may be a bit of time before I get that one done, but it will be a nice summer project.

The earrings here are part of the series of patterns that are variations on a Priscilla edging.  I want to sell the booklet with all the patterns, but release one as a free pattern.  I’m currently thinking it will be for these earrings, but I have another one that I might do instead that I have to write up still.

I also have a couple of beginning tatting classes coming up so if you’re in the Seattle area and interested in learning how to tat, please let me know.

All my mentioning of summer should probably come with an asterisk since it’s currently a typically cloudy Seattle day, but we had a couple of nice days in the last week and hopefully that will pick up again.