Technique Practice

I haven't picked up the doily yet today, but I did some technique practice.  After practicing a little more on the motif I was messing around with yesterday, I started my tatting time today by trying Mary Maynard's candy cane again (see the previous post for the link). I'm really pleased with my split chains. I also successfully tatted over ends and enclosed the final ends with the Magic Thread technique. I often forget to include my loops or get them in backwards, but I took the time to carefully think out where they needed to be.

The other motif started out as Lene Bjorn's Thirteenth Day of December from 24 Snowflakes in Tatting. While grumbling to myself about the thread I had chosen to use, I missed a small chain segment in the second round of chains. I didn't realize my mistake until I had come around with the third round of chains. I decided to quit with that round and hang it from the messed up chain side as an ornament. It is a wonderful pattern which I will use again with a thread I enjoy. It served well to give me some split chain practice though. There is a short 4 ds split chain in every round. The Magic Thread technique took care of the ends again.

Now I'm going to go work on the hanky edging for a while.

Another cross & my tatting plans for the day

I finished this cross early Monday morning. It is Tatmom's Colossians 2:14 Cross. I don't like to hide ends into a long chain if I can help it so I chose a different starting position. Since Tatmom provides a nice diagram of the pattern, this was easy to do. I started with one of the center clover motifs. Thanks for a great pattern, Tatmom. It was a pleasure to tat and I love the way it looks.

What little tatting time I had yesterday was inside a moving vehicle, so I picked up Lene Bjorn's 24 Snowflakes in Tatting and some white thread and started out the door. I spent more time trying to decide what to tat first than I spent tatting! The book is full of beautiful projects. I selected The Thirteenth Day of December and got started.

If you have this book, you are immediately going to realize how little tatting I accomplished when I tell you that I made it as far as the spot on round 1 where Lene suggests a false chain. I love learning new techniques, but one problem I run into is that I don't use them enough to make them my own so that I need to dig out the instructions every time I need them. Of course, I didn't take split chain instructions with me. I hadn't planned that far ahead.

The exciting news is that last night's Online Tatting Class lesson was the split chain and Mary Maynard shared a Candy Cane pattern for practice. I didn't make the class session, but I'm headed to the website today to print the instructions and review the log. So doily designs and The Thirteenth Day of December are temporarily UFOs while I master the split chain. I needed to set the doilies aside for a few days anyway so I can return to them fresh.

I've been thinking about making a list of techniques I would like to master and then setting myself a personal challenge to work with each technique until I feel really comfortable with it. I need to think it through and make the list first so I can see how many techniques I'm talking about. Maybe some of the rest of you would like to make a similar list and we can share some project ideas for practice. I expect Georgia's Online Class website will be my main resource.

Time to get back to work around here. Then I'm going to make that list!