Round 7

I'm working on round 7 of Tat-a-Renda's tat along. I'm working the traditional way, ending off each round and then winding enough thread on to the shuttle for the next round. This enables me to tat most of the rounds with shuttle and ball.  I prefer to use the ball rather than a second shuttle whenever possible because it saves time and thread. There's a link to the pattern on my previous post.

Tatting Along

I miss Jon Yusoff's Tat-a Renda blog, it was one I read regularly. Apparently Jon has moved to Facebook. I followed a link to a tat-along doily Jon is presenting on Facebook. I was tempted. I was even more tempted when I saw Diane's version of the doily.

 What thread to use? I don't want to tat another white doily. How about the apricot thread left over from a crochet project? 

No. The thread is not only much too thick, it's too loosely spun and fluffy. Sure, you can tat with it, but it's far from an ideal tatting thread. Black? My daughter brought me four balls of Milford black in December, two size 20 and two size 40. Two balls of size 40 should be ample for a doily.

So here are the first three rounds. I find it quite difficult to keep finding the right place on Facebook, so here's a link that I hope I can use as a shortcut.  There are 10 rounds up so far, so I'm a bit behind. This is strictly a day time job, no way I can tat with black size 40 with our lighting, so I will knit in the evenings and tat in the day.

Green Galore

The size of the blanket in the previous post was dictated by the amount of multicoloured Italian wool, but I did hope to make a big dent in the green wool while I was at it. Mmm, not so much, the bag is still two-thirds full!

Luckily I came across a cardigan pattern that should be well suited to the green wool. I belong to a Facebook group called Brei en Geniet - Knit and Enjoy. I joined it mainly so that I can download and print patterns for my neighbour Dorie, who only has Facebook on her phone. But I like to see the patterns on there and every now and then I save one. Luckily, the patterns themselves are not necessarily in Afrikaans - I struggle a bit with Afrikaans knitting terms! Anyway, that's where I found a link to this pattern, Bamboozle Cropped Lace Cardigan, designed by Gail Tanquary for Crystal yarns:

I'm not using Crystal yarns, of course, so I've had to make a few changes, but I think the lacy pattern is showing up well with the crepe wool yarn:

Flower Blanket

I've finished the flower blanket, I think. The squares are quite small, so the blanket is not as big as it looks. It measures 88 cm by 118 cm, approximately 34 inches by 46 inches.

I like this little square, I must remember it for future reference. 

Time For Hearts

With Valentine's Day rapidly approaching, there are a lot of hearts on the internet. Naturally I must take some time out from crocheting to tat a couple of hearts! The top one is by muskaan, the lower one by Anita Barry, but links to both patterns can be found here on muskaan's blog. I like the way muskaan gave two links, one for a long post and pattern, the other for just the diagrams. I read the long version and then just downloaded the diagrams.

The Border

I joined all the flower squares, nine squares across and twelve in length:

Now for the border.  I didn't want it to be unrelieved green. But I still want it to frame the squares without distracting from them. Pops of colour is what I was aiming for. I used up all the Italian wool in the squares, but there was also a bright pink yarn in the stash I was given. It's acrylic, not wool, which is not ideal, but on the other hand it does need using up, so I'm using it.

I wasn't sure this would work, but it worked like a charm. I did a row of pink, 3 chains, single crochet into a space. On the next round, the shells cover up most of the chains, so that I'm left with the pop of colour that I wanted. I don't know if I've seen this somewhere and it was lurking in my subconscious, but as far as I know, I made it up.

Tatting Spotted

We spent a night in a guesthouse in Bloemfontein, where I spotted this tatted tray cloth:

Here's a close up so you can see the double stitches:

I didn't get a chance to ask any questions about it, but I was glad to see tatting in use.