Category: bookmark

The good and the not-so-good.

This week has had it’s good moments and it’s bad. Let’s start with the good. I won Isdihara’s Fractured Quotes: “Knot-TEA” Parody & GIVEAWAY! This was a lot of fun to enter. She asked that you write a ‘fractured’ quote about tatting and tea, based on a quote, to enter. I wrote a couple, not necessarily that good but they were fun to come up with.

Now for the not-so-good. I’ve worked on several pieces this week. And none of them have turned out like I planned. The above is one of them. Can anyone see what’s wrong with the unfinished piece on the right?

The problem started because I started the piece with a different size thread than I’ve used before. In the past I’ve made it with size 10 but this time I thought I’d use the size 20 Lizbeth I just bought. Nothing wrong with that – I knew it would be a little smaller. And I added another ring to make it bigger. One ring. That doesn’t work with the rows that follow. So, I had to start it over. **sigh**

I also was going to make a cross bookmark for friend. I probably still will, but I mis-counted the repeats in the long arm and made it too short. **sigh** There should still be enough thread on the shuttle to start over.

I think I just need to slow down a little, sip a little tea, and do it right the first time!

Tatting Tea Tuesday Sept. 29,2009

I’m sitting here with my feet up with a cup of tea realizing I have no pictures for today 🙁 I’m tatting something a little bigger than the snowflakes and bookmarks I’ve been doing the last several weeks and have not taken pictures of it yet.

I enjoy Tatting Tea Tuesdays, sharing a few moments of tatting with others who may also be having a cup of tea while they are tatting somewhere in the world. Not quite the same as being in the same place, but still a feeling of belonging. Kind of a virtual tea party.

I happened across a site this week about having tea parties. We’re talking proper tea parties where you dress up and have fancy cups and saucers and everything. Some of these sound like fun – a lot of work, though. They are like our communi-tea in that after your tea party you share it online with others. If you’re interested in learning about how to give a fancy tea party check out Sandy’s Tea Society. She even has books on how to do it right.

One day, if we ever get our house updated like we want, this might be fun. Until then, I’ll stick with our Tatting Tea Tuesdays – I get to have my feet up and I don’t have to clean the house!

I missed it! Sort of.

Yesterday I got up, fixed a cup of tea, put my feet up and tatted for a little while. In fact, I kept tatting when I should have been writing this! I did finally put down the shuttles, but then it was time for work. Which was a very long day, so I didn’t have time to post after work. It was Tuesday, I had tea and I tatted, I just didn’t get it posted for Tatting Tea Tuesday. So, just for a minute, pretend it’s yesterday, have another cup of tea and see what I was doing.

I’ve been making snowflakes in both white and colors. The one in the bangle is, of course, Lizbeth thread size 20 in Caribbean (surprise!). The white one is in DMC size 20 Cebelia and the other one is Lizbeth size 20 in Christmas Delight. (Okay, the paperclip has a horse on it – they’re fun to make and I had to try it in this color!)

I had a terrible time finding a background for these in the short amount of time I had yesterday -oops, that’s today, I mean. At least they show up.

I have several projects that I need to start but keep on with the snowflakes and bookmarks. They are so quick I feel I’m getting a lot done with the time I have to tat. Still working a lot of overtime so I don’t have a lot of energy to think up the next thing. It’s easier to keep doing what I’m already doing, momentum I guess.

Thanks for joining me for my Tuesday Tea and tatting, even if it was a day late. I’ll try to be on time next week!

Grandma’s tea cup and a new bookmark

Today for Tatting Tea Tuesday I used a cup and saucer that belonged to my grandmother, the one who taught me to tat. I’ve always loved this golden tea set. It looks so rich and elegant. And it really looks good with that bookmark, don’t you think?

The bookmark is new this week. The center is entwined together before it’s joined at the last clover. I’ve seen something like it somewhere but I don’t remember where. Thank you, who ever you are, for a great idea. My husband really likes the look.

This one is made with Lizbeth thread “Springtime” in size 20. And it does look like springtime! I also made one in Lizbeth “Caribbean” with black on the outside. That looked pretty good, too.

This should be #25 of my 25 Motif Challenge. That is a wonderful site. They gather together what other bloggers have done, which is great so you don’t miss some wonderful work. I might just have to start it again!

I hope everyone had a few minutes to enjoy a little tatting and a cup of tea. It really is a great idea.

Tatting Tea Tuesday with more horses and butterflies

It’s Tatting Tea Tuesday again, and yes, I’m still doing horse and butterfly paperclip bookmarks. They’ve been a lot of fun and I have a lot of new colors to try them in. I’m getting quite the herd of horses and a rabble of butterflies. Debbie’s sea horse makes such a wonderful horse for this, don’t you think? The butterflies are my patterns.

All of these bookmarks are made with Lizbeth thread size 20. From the left starting with the horse: horse in Caribbean and purple; butterfly in Grape Pizazz and purple; horse in Grape Pizazz; flower with pearls in Grape Pizazz; butterfly in Jewels and purple; the cross is in purple.

This morning I sat down with a cup of tea to finish off this cross that I started last night. I’m not sure who to credit the pattern to as it’s so very basic. You don’t so much follow a pattern as follow the logistics of a cross. I vary the count of the double stitches and picots in the rings and chains as the mood dictates every time I make it.

A family member of my boss’s family died a few days ago and I thought I’d include a cross in the card for him and his family. Nice idea, I thought. But I had the most horrible time getting this one done! I was joining in the wrong places, twisting threads, tying knots – the wrong kind – left, right and sideways! There was once I tried to close a ring with the body of the cross inside! If I hadn’t needed to get it done today I would have put it aside for another day. I finally got it done, in about twice the time it should have taken me. (You’d think I’d had something stronger than tea!) I’m blaming my lack of concentration on my allergies as they have really started bothering me the last few days.

I really need to get on to some other projects, but these bookmarks have been such fun! I guess if I’m going to go to a craft show this fall I’ll need a lot, so I shouldn’t feel too guilty staying with them. And if I have trouble with them, they’re just small stuff, nothing tragic if I tangle the threads a bit – I’ll just start over!

Wishing all of you a wonderful week and Happy Tatting!

More paperclips and a box of thread

It’s Tatting Tea Tuesday again! That day of the week when you make yourself a nice cup of tea, put your feet up, pick up your shuttles and take a little “me” time.

This week I did have a cup of tea instead of coffee. I picked up my shuttles and tried making one of my butterflies with two colors so I could maybe write down the pattern. It ended up being a little loosey-goosey from my stopping, checking what and where I was and chasing the cat off my lap, where she insisted she should be. Oh, well, I need bookmarks, too.

These paperclip bookmarks are some of what I accomplished this week. The handy thing about this kind of bookmark is they are small and don’t take long to make. I don’t do a lot with beads but I thought I’d give it a try on one, and will probably do a few more as well. I’m not sure about the hearts because they loose their shape pretty easily. Hmm, they need a little work. The horse heads are getting to be pretty easy though. I like them.

These bookmarks are great for taking out when you only have a few minutes to tat. In fact my husband needed new work shoes this week and I was tatting while he tried on shoes. The sales lady was very curious as to what I was doing – she’d never seen or heard of tatting before. She thought it was very pretty. Tatting in public, a great way to introduce people to a great art.

I received a package in the mail yesterday from Handy Hands. A few days ago I decided I needed more thread (who doesn’t??) And HH had sent out an email coupon so I had to buy something, right? I’ve noticed that I usually use solid threads, mostly blues, white and ecru, so I thought I would get some variegated threads. And a few in colors I don’t usually think of, expand my horizons so to speak. They are all Lizbeth size 20.

The colors, reading across from top left to top right, are:

Mocha Swirl, Black, Golden Yellow Med; 2nd row, Denim Whisper, Marble, Jewels, Jewels (I’ve seen a lot of people use this and just had to have some) ; 3rd row, Caribbean, Caribbean (I really like this color!), Sea Shell, Springtime; 4th row, Grape Pizzaz, Red Burst, Christmas Delight, and Country Side.

A color chart was included in the box, so now when I need a new color I have a great place to start. They have started making Lizbeth in size 40 but I am very comfortable with 20 so this is where I’ve started. Maybe next time it will be the smaller thread. Another good excuse to buy more thread don’t you think?

Tatting Tea Tuesday Aug 11, 2009


It’s Tatting Tea Tuesday again and I even have a cup of tea today!

I have actually gotten a few more paperclip bookmarks done. The purple one is from last week, and the green is using the same modified pattern from Debbie Arnold. It’s made from DMC Cebelia size 20, green #955. The two butterflies are my own pattern; the pink is DMC Perle cotton size 8, pink variegated #116 and the blue is Manuela size 20, light blue #008.

I was trying to write down the pattern for the butterflies and find I’m having trouble with it. When I’m tatting my own patterns, while I’m doing them for the first time, I decide I want this element to go that way, and another element to go this way – I don’t really pay attention to which shuttle I’m using, I just know which one it needs to be to go in the direction I want the pattern to go. The same way for reversing the work and keeping track of up/down (I’m very much a upside/downside tatter!), I know when to reverse and which side is up, but keeping track for writing down later..! This inattention makes writing down the patterns a bit of a challenge. I think I’m my own worst enemy!

You know, if I would make everything in two colors to start with, at least I’d know which shuttle I was using. Some things might end up looking a little strange, but I could keep those as my samples.

Or I could write down the patterns as I go along. Or not! Talk about tedious and losing the flow!

Or maybe I should figure out how to diagram tatting. So many others do that, and there are a lot of programs that can be used. I like following diagrammed patterns and I’d really like to learn how. Another something I should do that takes time, but I think would be well worth it.

Horse bookmark


I haven’t gotten a lot of tatting done this week. I did start several things that were relegated to the trash, though (this is what happens when you don’t pay attention to what you’re doing.)

I did finally get the horse head onto a paperclip. This had been in my mind since I first started looking for a horse pattern, which turned out to be a seahorse modified, found here on ds9designs by Debbie Arnold. This is a little bulkier than the butterflies and doodles I’ve put on paperclips before, so I made the attachment to the clip a bit more robust than usual. The horse now holds its head up pretty well.

This one is made from HH Lizbeth thread size 20 in purple. This is the best picture I could get – all the others were fuzzy (I think it’s me, not the camera). I’m planning on doing a few more of these in different colors, maybe even with a bead for the eye, okay, if I sit down long enough to try it. My sister and I are thinking of doing a local craft show this fall and I thought this type of thing might go over well, and they don’t take long to make, either. And I have a box of 100 large paperclips in different colors, so all I have to do now is the tatting.

Maybe this next week I’ll get a little more tatting done that’s even good enough to keep!

Tatting Tea Tuesday

Tatting Tea Tuesday is here again. I haven’t done a lot of tatting this week and one of the things I did make didn’t get it’s picture taken – oops.
Saturday my husband and I went to a wedding in Oklahoma. I didn’t think I’d get to go because of work. But, big surprise, we didn’t have to work so we headed south. As it’s about a three hour drive I decided to tat the wedding couple a cross bookmark, something I didn’t have time to make before. (And of the three choices of colors I had with me, I picked the wrong one. I had their wedding colors with me, I just didn’t know that was it! I’ll bet they’ll like it anyway.) I didn’t take a picture of it because I didn’t think about it. I had the camera, just not the thought.
Something I have been working on this week is a challenge from Sharon on her Design Challenge blog.

This came out looking like I imagined it would, but it is kind of a pain to make, with a lot of reversing work. On the second, two color one I tried the method for making chains of NOT reversing but also not flipping the stitch. It works (I did it, I did it!) and it’s not quite so persnickety a pattern this way. Of course, you have to pay attention and remember NOT to flip the stitch…
I like the look of this and I’m counting this as #23 on my 25 Motif Challenge. And though I don’t use beads much, I’m thinking of trying this with beads. This could be my snowflake for the Christmas season. I try to come up with a new one every year for friends and family. I may just have come up with it a little early this year.

A little bitty doily and a horse

A few weeks ago I needed an ecru doily for a gift. I had a colored doily but found out that the recipient really liked ecru as this was more in line with her home decor (I like to please). Soooo, as usual, instead of going with an existing pattern I tried to come up with something that didn’t take too long. And this is the result.

I call it Arches Over Arches. This is made with DMC ecru (of course!) in size 30. I came up with this from a center I found in my old stuff that was made with size 10, which was much bigger. I think this was supposed to be an edging that went wrong. But it made a nice center for a doily.

The other two rounds I came up with this time around. I have several ideas for the next time I make it – and I do have plans to make it – and my husband has a couple of really neat suggestions, also.

There’s nothing here to compare it to so you can’t tell the size. It’s pretty small, only about 4 inches across. So maybe it’s too small to be considered a doily, but I would use it under a vase for a single rose or some such, so I call it a doily.

I’ve also had another idea in mind that I worked on last night. After seeing all the neat ideas of using a large paperclip as a bookmark, I thought a large paperclip with a horse head would be neat. Now, I make my own bookmarks and doilies and such, but coming up with something like this has not turned out well. I’m not showing my attempts, just say they met a quick end. But the Internet is our friend and makes finding the many wonderful people with great ideas easy to find if you go looking.

If you go to ds9designs you will find that Debbie Arnold has a very cute seahorse pattern. I saw it and thought “if you start here and leave that off, it would make a really nice horse head pattern.” So last night I tried it with thread I already had on a shuttle. (The colors would have made a wonderful seahorse!)

.

This is made with Lizbeth Caribbean size 20. I think I need to make the base a little wider and the neck maybe not quite so long. Then I need to try putting it on a paperclip. Maybe in a horse-y color. And then again, maybe not. To be continued…

Most of this last week was spent finishing the butterfly for the Intatters butterfly exchange. I got it done in time (just barely!) and sent it off to Cindy in Minnesota. After I know she has it I will post a picture of it. I thought it came out well and I’m looking forward to sharing it.