Yesterday I finished up with the circles of the 4th round of the tea cloth.  It’s coming along quite nicely and I’m happy I got in some yellow so as to even it out.  I thought I was about out of this yellow and all I had left was what was on the shuttle, but I just found another half a ball of it, and since I’m just about out of the orange now (have just two shuttles full left) I’m going to switch to the yellow for the rest of this center section of the tea cloth.

Next up are the “Half Circle Joining Motifs of Fourth Circle” that go between the motifs of this 4th round and then what are called “Oblong Motifs Outside of the Fourth Circle”.  I wish they’d didn’t use the term “circle” for two different things.  I’m using “circle” to mean the small motifs that are a simple circle of ring and chain and the term “round” to mean… well, round.  (As in first round, second round, etc…)

It’s been a busy week, so no more progress on the on the “real” version, but I do think I’ve got the colors picked out for it.  The rest of the week is going to be just as busy so maybe I’ll get it started this weekend.

This weekend I only made a little bit of progress on the tea cloth as I spent most of my time working on an UFO from a while back. Finished it too, which is always nice.   I’ll probably write about that tomorrow.  I did try these circles of the 4th round with chains of 4ds instead of the 5 on the pattern and I think they worked much better.  The difference in the chains is probably due to the different way I did the center circles.  Hopefully that changes doesn’t propagate TOO far throughout the rest of the piece, but I imagine I’ll have to make changes throughout the whole thing anyway so maybe it doesn’t actually matter much.  It’s fun to watch this piece take shape.  I think that now it sort of looks like an alien creature, but that might have been because I was listening to “A Princess of Mars” by Edgar Rice Burroughs as an audio book while making it.

You can’t tell in this picture, but when I made the third circle I actually forgot to join it to the piece so I tied it on afterwards.  As the piece takes shape I’d sort of been questioning my decision to make a “throw away” version first out of old crappy thread with unhidden ends and leaving in the pieces where there’s a mistake, but I’m still glad I’m doing it.  I’ve started my first “real” version in nice thread, but haven’t gotten very far yet, partly because I keep changing my mind about the colors.  If my “test” version and my “real” version were the same I’d never make any progress.

So my question now is what to do with this “throw away” version when I’ve finished my first “real” one.  I’ll probably continue on with this test one throughout the entire piece so when I’m done I’m going to have a HUGE piece of “throw away” tatting.  So do I actually throw it away?

Got started on the 4th round of the tea cloth, but wanted to see what the motif that it is made up of would look like on its own.  I like it by itself.  This is about three inches across so seems a bit large in size 10 to use as earrings or a pendant, but maybe in a smaller thread.

I climbed out of the first round on this one to get to the second, but I forgot to start off with a chain so there’s a missing chain on the inner round.  I thought about doing a split chain to put it in, but decided that it wasn’t worth the time.  In the future I’ll just have to remember to either start with the chain or (more likely) make the two rounds seperately.  Actually, I don’t think I have enough of this yellow left to make all eight of them like this so I’ll probably do yellow in the middle and orange on the outside.

I picked out my colors for the next one.  I’m going to try it again in size 20 greens.  Figured I’d might as well start with a new size so that I can get an idea of how it will turn out as far as sizing so I can pick out a size to make the finished tea cloth in.  They actually have a version of this tea cloth at the Lace Museum in Sunnyvale and I can’t remember what size thread it’s made with, but I remember it was a lot bigger than I would have expected and it didn’t even include the outer part.  I plan on making these inner four rounds (maybe the 5th too) out of a couple different size threads just so I can get an idea of the sizing.  Should be interesting to see what they all look like together.

I finished the last circle of the third round during my lunch break at work.  It’s such a bright orange!  I’m going to mix it up with a bit of yellow in the next round.  Should help to even it out a bit.

I’m thinking that in the next one I make I’ll do the different circles in different colors based on the number of rings they have.  It might make it easier to keep track of if you’re trying to make the pattern yourself.  Especially in the next section which is circle on circle on circle and (I think) each of different sizes.

Hmmm…. Kinda looks like the start of an octopus.  I’ll have to keep that idea in mind.

On Thursday I left Seattle and headed back down to Los Angeles.  Drove straight down (well, except for a quick side trip to Lacis, in Berkeley, CA.) and got down here early Saturday morning.  Didn’t do much tatting along the way, but have done a bit since then, mostly on this tea cloth project.  Finished the second round and got started on the third.  The second round is made of circles of 12 rings and chains and then the third is 16 rings and chains just like the first.  In making the circles for the third round I did try making them with just 2 stitch chains, but as you can see, they really did curl up.  They might straighten up when I do the fourth round, but I decided to switch back to alternating between 2 and 3 chains for the rest of them.  This is not a very exciting post, I’m afraid, but soon I’ll start making another version of this in nicer thread and with a few more colors and that should make it a bit more exciting.

Btw, thank you to those who have offered to do a bit of test tatting for me on my Shuttle Birds handout.  I did finish my testing of the choker pattern and have a couple changes to make to the handout.  Somehow I forgot to make a note of the size of thread to use or that it should be CMT. 🙂

Here’s the finished motif in yarn for the belt.  I really like these colors and love the way it came out.  Overall it wasn’t too hard to tat with the yarn.  I definitely had to watch as I made my stitches to make sure I tatted a bit more loose than usual, especially on the rings, but that wasn’t much of a problem.

I’m not sure yet what the main length of the belt will be.  I may just decide that I want to do the whole thing in a ribbon that hooks on the motif and goes all the way around to tie in the back, but I’m still partial to doing some more tatting.  Just waiting until I see an edging pattern that I think goes well with this motif.  The dress is a darker and more purple shade of the coral color in center and I’m thinking that doing the rest of the belt in that center color would look good.

Here’s the two pieces next to each other for comparison.  The piece in thread is size 10.

I’ll be taking a small break from tatting and blogging over the next week as I’m packing up to spend the next month and a half in Seattle.  I’ll be driving and leaving early next week.  I should get up there by the end of that week and will be staying until the very beginning of February.  Looking forward to the time up there.  Should be able to make it to at least one of the lacer/tatters meetings in the area.

One of the things I like about this pattern is that it’s mostly chains.  I figured this would work well for tatting with yarn because it’s means you mostly work off the ball and don’t need as much on the shuttle.  Also there are no rings to close or to open if you have to retro-tat.  It went pretty smoothly and I pretty happy with the pattern so far.

This first little motif is just the center and I plan to just put a jump ring on it and call it a necklace pendant.  The next step is to tat it again in the final yarn and to add the second round.  The finished piece will be a large motif that will be the focal piece of a belt in yarn.  I got this thread specifically to match a semi-new knit dress.  The dress came with a thin little belt, but I wanted something that would stand out more and I think this will do the trick nicely.  So next up, I tat this center part again and add the next round.

I tried using one of the new wooden shuttles I bought at Shuttlebirds.  This is the first time I’ve ever felt the need for a shuttle winder.  I know they make winding faster, but I’ve never really minded winding my shuttles, but winding the yarn on the wooden shuttle seemed to pull the yarn pretty significantly.  It’s such a nice tight shuttle I couldn’t figure out a way to wind it without pulling on the yarn and so it’s wound on the shuttle under some stress.  I didn’t notice this so much with the Tatsy shuttle. Felt like this was something a shuttle winder would help with.  The sides would still be just as tight, but I think it would help some with the angle and how hard I pull the thread to wind it.

The first step to making my tatted yarn belt is to make the focal piece in thread.  It’s a motif from one of the Priscilla books that I hadn’t done before, but had seen recently on a couple blogs.  I thought it would look lovely done in yarn as the front part of the belt, but first I had to try it in thread.  My usual mode of operation when trying out a new pattern from the Priscilla books is to tatting it first in size 10 exactly as the instructions say and see how it comes out.  From there I can start to make changes or adaptations, but I like to have that first version to start with.  To make this one I use some of the thread I dyed a while back. I like the way it came out.  Especially the variations in color in the rosette part.

The next step to to try out the center part in yarn.  I think it will go well.  I’m going to make it in a variegated green that I already have wound on a shuttle, but to the right are the colors that the final piece will be made of.  I plan on using the coral color for the center and the green-based variegate for the outer part.

Decided to take on another pattern from the Priscilla books.  I really liked the scallops on this edging.  So I gave it a go with some thread that I picked up at Piecemakers in Costa Mesa after teaching there.  This was an old ball of thread so it was sort of rough and tricky to tat with and there wasn’t much left on it, but I really liked the color so I decided to just go with it and tat a nice edging until I ran out.  Got about a yard or so out of it.

The title of this post comes from the fact that I really tried to push it and get just out one more repeat of the pattern.  I got it, but look what I had left to work with!  About 4 inches on one thread and less than an inch on the other.  I was amazed I made it work.  Would have been depressing to have it come so close and not work and to have to go back and cut in down to one repeat less.  No hiding in ends for this on.  I just tied and cut.  I figure that was appropriate since both the thread and pattern are from a time when that was the standard practice.

Not actually sure what I’m going to do with it but it looks pretty.  I’m thinking maybe  put it on a pillowcase or something.  I’ll go through the pattern in another post.  I expect I’ll do a lot more with it.  I think it’d look very nice in a small thread with some beads so maybe next time I try size 80.