Merry Christmas & Happy Tatting :)

Just popping by to wish you all a Merry Christmas, or whatever you may celebrate :) Hope you're having a lovely weekend!

Don't have much tatting to show right now, because I've been crocheting a lot lately, making Christmas presents for most of the family. I did manage to squeeze in a little tatting, though, I made this little bookmark for one of my boyfriend's sisters:

The pattern is one of the flower fragments from Mary Konior's A Pattern Book of Tatting (which, by the way, was my grandmother's Christmas present for me that I bought earlier this fall). The thread is Lizbeth 20 in Dark Boysenberry and Medium Leaf Green. The tassel is the variegated Leafy Greens. Also I made the "Grand Aura" pendant from Yarnplayer's book in black Lizbeth 40 with red beads:

The stitch count didn't exactly match the beads I used, so I had to improvise a little. Fewer picots around the center and I changed the top rings of the pendant. This was a last minute gift for a cousin. I haven't heard any reactions yet, but I hope she likes it! I sure do :)

My boyfriend's mother and I gave some tatting stuff to another of my bf's sisters (this is getting complicated!), and I've spent the evening tonight trying to teach her tatting. She got the flip fairly quickly and made a few rings and chains, and even a join! Despite the bad teacher... *ehum* Tomorrow we will try some simple patterns, and there will possibly be pictures :) Another tatter in the world, yay!

Enjoy the rest of the holiday :)

Two new bookmarks

Before you ask: No, I haven't made them since my last post, I'm still resting and doing only a few stitches at a time... I will wait a little longer before I crochet again, and hopefully my wrists will be fine with a little tatting. Today I've been playing with tatting around buttons - I'll show you later :)

This pattern is Floral Bookmark by Kersti Anear, the thread is Lizbeth 20 in Jelly Bean. This might look fairly ordinary and simple enough to most of you, but let me tell you that it wasn't very easy for me! That might be because I started at with the top flower and made the bookmark from the top down, and the pattern is written bottom up. Heh! Had got too far to pick out the stitches when I realized my mistake, so I improvised a little. Worked it out after the first two flowers :) The chains are a little twisted, but I managed to straighten them out some, and if I press the bookmark with a steam iron the bumps will probably go away, hehe...

This is Stumpy, another bookmark pattern by Kersti. Made with Lizbeth 20 in Mocha Swirl. Love that color! Too bad it doesn't come out very well on that background... I haven't quite finished it yet, it needs a tassel of some sort. This would be a great pattern for a shuttle motif, as I'm sure some of you have seen already... Check out The Tatting Forums if you haven't! It's very easy and quick pattern to do, you can easily make a pair in an evening :)

Moving on to bigger things - bookmarks

My mother requested a bookmark for a book she was reading this summer, and I made her this simple bookmark from the Learn to Tat book:

It's a very easy pattern, but naturally I ran out of pink thread and I had to improvise the end... Despite the easy pattern it took me several days to complete, even though I made it a lot shorter than it's supposed to be. My mother was halfway through the book by the time I was done :p The thread is two different brands of size 20.

One of the first pattern books I bought was Dianna Stevens's Animal Bookmarks - A Tatted Zoo. It has lots of wonderful animal patterns, ranging from (fairly) easy to complicated. I decided I'd start with one of the easier patterns - the Alligator bookmark :) I filled two Sew Mates with green and yellow thread and started the alligator on the long bus ride back from my summer holiday, and a few days later I had made this:

I am still very proud of this one :) The hardest part was the head, and knowing which way to turn the work when doing the eye. I made an extra join underneath the gator's chin to make him less chubby, but apart from that I managed follow the pattern to the dot. Well, except that I made the body behind the back legs about two rings shorter, and I shrunk the second ring from the back of his head in an attempt to give him a neck. I ran out of green thread when I had six or seven rings left, and of course all I had had been on the shuttle...  Luckily I had a practice piece lying around that I was about to throw away, and I managed to unpick most of it and use the thread to finish the alligator. Yay! Can you see that two of the yellow chains on his back are a little fatter than the rest? I almost can't :) 

All in all I am pretty pleased, though I call it a crocodile rather than an alligator - I think crocodiles are way cooler :) The thread is Gjestal Maxi, a cheap crochet cotton about size 10. It's a little soft and lumpy, but it's alright for bookmarks and test projects.

After the alligator I wanted to make another (simple) bookmark, and I came across the Thistle Bookmark pattern online. The pattern doesn't specify what colors to use, so I made it in green and pink to look like a real thistle flower. Pretty, right?

The pattern itself was very easy to follow and gave me no problems at all. The trouble started when I decided that to save myself a little work, I would do a split chain to continue onto the stem without cutting the thread. Yeah, that sure worked... I'd only tried a split chain once before, and that ended in a twisted mess of lumpy half stitches:

This time I actually did the stitches right, but it ended up being to loose, and it didn't look good... I finished the stem, then I attached the thread to the ouside of  the split chain to stabilize it a little, and I continued to add another chain down the other side of the stem. Finally I made another small chain on the other side of the last "lump" of the green circle for symmetry. So I ended up having two ends to sew in anyway, and a very floppy join between the flower and the stem. Meh...

The pink thread is Mölnlycke Virkgarn and the green is Coats Opera, both size 20.

Me - a tatter!

I'm still just a beginner, but I'm proud to call myself a tatter. Shuttle tatter, actually :) 

In case you're interested, and haven't heard it before, here's the short version of how it all started:

One day towards the end of July I found an old tatting shuttle in my grandmother's stash, and I knew my mother knew how to tat, so I had her teach me. The shuttle has belonged to my great grandmother, and I'm very happy to be allowed to keep it and proud to be able to use it :)

Like many other things in my life, tatting soon became an obsession. I love collecting stuff, and shuttles became natural collector's items. I like the shape of them, and they come in so many pretty colors - I need to have them all! Judging by my shuttle collection and the many tatting books I've aquired you'd think I've been tatting for years and not two months :p And I don't think I'll ever have enough pattern books, even with the amount of free patterns you can find online. There's just something special about books... I need to have my own library when I grow up!

Anyway, the first evening when my mother tried to teach me I couldn't do it. You know, flipping the stitches, it just didn't make sense. In the end I just threw the whole thing away in frustration and continued crocheting instead. The next day I was tatting all by myself! I guess it helps to sleep on things :) (That's literally what I did! All summer I slept on a double sofa-bed, and the half not occupied by me was constantly covered with all my craft stuff...)

Here's the first item I made:

The pattern is Flower Bookmark by Yarnplayer. You can see that I didn't use a picot gauge... Later I made the bookmark again, but I added  big black beads instead of making the dreaded picots:

The thread is Mölnlycke Virkgarn in pink, size 20.