Happy New Year!

My year is off to a great start. Between Christmas and the new year, I managed to shake the dust off my shuttles. My oldest daughter gave me a new Lacis shuttle for Christmas along with four new books: Dianna Stevens' Animal Bookmarks, A Tatted Zoo; Karey Solomon's Tatting Turns Over a New Leaf; Inga Madsen's 12 Tatted Fairy-Tales; and Nancy Tracy's Tat's Where I Stopped. Oh, I've just had so much fun!

And I finally finished the Cecelia doily. It is complete, pressed, and ready to deliver. The doily has 42 motifs and measures 15.5 inches by 12.5 inches.



Besides completing the doily, I've been working some of the new patterns I received for Christmas. This yellow Oak Leaf was one of the designs I received in the book by Karey Solomon. The next three patterns were in Animal Bookmarks. The snake and the cockerel were designed by Dianna Stevens and the cat was designed by Diana Howe. The last image is butterfly variation 4A from Teri Dusenbury's book, Tatting Butterflies.

I must drop it at etats and then get back to my shuttles. There is so much more I want to do before school starts again next week and everything gets set aside again.

Happy tatting in the new year!

Can't believe it is December already!

I haven't managed to tat a stitch since I finished the little bits and pieces for the Palmetto tatters. College classes have kept me very busy. I did find ways to get a little tatting play into my work though. One of my classes was a Microsoft Applications course. When I needed to create a database in Access, I started one for my tatting patterns! When I needed to create a Power Point presentation, I featured tatted snowflakes with "Let It Snow" playing in the background. I'm looking forward to shaking the dust off my shuttles during the holidays. I'm eager to finish that doily I showed you in my April 14 post. Can you believe I got that close to being done and it still sits unfinished?

Happy Holidays, all!

Cecelia Doily, Day 21

Well, the image is a bit dark, but you see that the doily has gotten larger. Forty of the planned 48 motifs are almost finished--one corner left to tat on number 40. A sick child kept me home this evening so I didn't get my coffee shop time to work on the TAT proficiency projects. But that meant additional time to work on the doily while we watched movies together.

Cecelia Doily, Day 17

33 motifs completed!!! I obviously missed my original estimated completion date of April 11, but I'm not unhappy with the rate of progress.

Cecelia Doily, Day 16

Motif #30 of 48 is finished. Obviously I haven't accomplished much on this project lately. I tried to tat when I got off the computer last night, but I was doing more untatting than tatting and gave it up! The shuttle was moving smoothly this morning during the time I spent with my dad at his doctor's office though. So three more motifs were completed. I'm over half way there!

Cecelia Doily, Day 10

Twenty-seven motifs done, at least twenty-one more to go. You are seeing the work in progress so it is a bit wrinkled. I took a 24 hour tatting break yesterday to rest my left hand. Somehow I strained the reach of my pinkie. It is much better, but not yet up to several hours a day of tatting. It is a bit stiff after 3 motifs this evening.

Ruth Perry shared her Tatted Bullion Stitch Cross pattern in the Tat Calendar for March 31 and with the Online Tatting Class on Monday. Here is an image of my first effort. The technique has lots of possibilities, I think, and Ruth's instructions are good.

Cecelia Doily, Day 6

It was a lovely day to tat and I celebrated by making a long distance call to wish a Happy International Tatting Day to the woman who first taught me to tat. Then I settled in to work on the Cecelia Doily. As I packed up for the day, I count 20 completed motifs and the beginning of number 21. After our small group Bible study tonight, I did a bit of show and tell and whipped out my tatting bag to display the doily in progress. Having no tatting history in my family that I know of, I really love the tatting stories that others share about their relatives and tonight was no exception.

Cecelia Doily, Day 5

Twelve motifs finished. I'm a bit behind schedule, but tomorrow is International Tatting Day and I plan to tat all afternoon! Happy Tatting Day!

Cecelia Doily, Day 3

Plans are that the finished piece will measure 8 motifs by 6 motifs--48 total. I am in the middle of motif #9 already so that I'm averaging 3 motifs a day. The first strip went fairly fast, but the second strip requires more joins and it is a bit fiddly (is that a word?) to keep the finished part out of the way as I work. It is an enjoyable piece to work on though. I haven't tired of that little "X" yet. Each "X" is worked in one round, too, which is a real plus. If I can continue at this pace, it should be finished in 16 days from the start. That would mean the tatting would be finished by the evening of Wednesday, April 11. I'm dealing with the ends every few motifs so that I don't have a lot of "finish" work to do at the end of the project as I HATE that part. Many of my UFOs are completely tatted and awaiting the finishing touches. I don't consider them done until the final blocking and I can put those last few details off for a very long time.

Busy Shuttles

Doily Progress: My doily design is in a folder for another time. My daughter decided she'd really like one made with repeated motifs instead of in rounds. Not feeling like designing a square at the moment, I let her choose between Cherie Wheeler's Cecelia Doily (square on left) and Roger aka Freedman's square (on right). We agreed upon Cherie's doily and I'm eager to get it started. The X's work up quickly and easily in one round each.

Mini Cross Variations: This cross makes a nice little bookmark all by itself, but I also want to use it on the end of the "tail" of other bookmarks. It turns even a little strip of edging into a nice cross bookmark when you tat a tail and put the cross on the end. And since I need a lot of them in a hurry, I thought I'd simplify the pattern while rewriting it to climb out of either end. The result is 3 variations on the same basic stitch counts making the pattern much more versatile for me.

More Flowers: Dancers need an appreciative audience so meet the "Applause Flower" sitting on the sidelines with lots of enthusiasm. And lastly, there is "Justa Flower" whose leaves were formed by making a double picot and then "turning" them in opposite directions.