Lightning

No, it's not that I knit like lightning. Yesterday lightning struck an electricity pole outside the house and put the power out. Unfortunately we didn't even get much rain with the thunder and lightning. We do need rain. Fortunately it didn't happen last week when my daughter and her family were visiting.

 I don't need electricity to knit, so I was able to make some progress on my jersey today. The generator is on for a few hours, which  at least enables me to write my blog.

I hope that 2013 is a good year for anyone reading this, a year of creativity and moving forward!

How to Tat 'Chain Maille'

Tat a ring. This one is 10-10, but actually it would be better to use a ring without picots.

Before closing the ring, pass the shuttle upwards through the ring.

Pull to close the ring.

The ring should look like this.

Take the shuttle thread behind the thread over the hand to make the next ring. It should look this the picture above, not like the picture below.

In the picture above, the shuttle thread passes in front of the thread over the hand. The rings won't intersect.

Leave a  small space at the base of the first ring before starting the next ring.

Tat the same number of ds as before and pass the shuttle up through the ring before closing. Continue in this way to create a line of interlocking rings.

Snowflake

This is Jane Eborall's pattern.  I made these last year. I like the way tatted snowflakes can be put away and used again year after year.

Spots

This spotty outfit is for Annika, my youngest granddaughter. The patterns are by Madquilter. The website is no longer available, so I can't give you a link.

Spoon Angel

I remembered to add the spoon angel to me tree. I didn't make her myself, she was made by one of the other members of the craft group I go to. She looks a bit fierce, but she's a welcome addition to the tree.

Merry Christmas

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and everything of the best in 2013

A sisal flower makes a good Christmas tree. Unfortunately, this one came with an unwanted decoration - a little green snake! I had hung most of the snowflakes, but there were a few that still had to dry from their glue treatment. When I went to hang them up, I saw the snake. Presumably he had been there all the time. Jack scooted him out with a broom. 

Frogs

I hope my granddaughter Isabel will like these cheery froggies. The pattern for the top comes from Indietutes. The shorts pattern comes from ikatbag. I  added pockets because Isabel likes pockets.

Not Take-along Tatting

Since the purple 'chain maille' was easy to slip into my handbag, I thought I'd take it along yesterday. Not such a good idea. It required more concentration than I could give it. I closed a ring without putting the shuttle through first. The ring proved difficult to open again. I had to wait until I came home to sort it out. So I haven't made as much progress as I hoped.  But I think it will work to show off Jane Eborall's pendant.

Chain maille

At last I'm making some progress on interlocking rings. If you leave a small thread space between rings, you get a more linear effect. I think it looks like chain maille. Perhaps I could use it to make a chain for a tatted pendant?

Still Challenged

I still haven't quite cracked interlocking rings, but I have worked out why my rings sometimes intersected and sometimes didn't - the shuttle thread must be behind the thread round the hand, not in front of it. Aha. I knew it must be something like that, but it did take a lot of trial and error before I worked out where I was going wrong.

Slow Progress

The body of my competition sweater is plain, so I'm just knitting it in the evenings. I'm making slow progress. I'll have to put some daylight hours in sooner or later!

Bigger Doodad, Thicker Thread

At the weekend, Diane the Lace Loving Librarian, asked the Tollway Tatters for ideas on how to adapt her Snow Crystal Pattern to use a bigger doodad in the middle. Sue Anna suggested using size 10 thread rather than size 20. Aha, it's one of those 'Why didn't I think of that?' ideas. I may do this again and make the middle rings slightly bigger, but really the idea works very well. Thanks Diane and Sue Anna! The thread here is Cebelia size 10 that I rainbow-dyed. It would probably be better for me to sew the ends in and attach another thread at the top for hanging, but I haven't got that far yet.

The Next Challenge

One of the good things about challenging myself to learn new techniques is that in researching them I come across sites I didn't know about. One of them was Jennifer Williams's. Yesterday, while trying to find out how to make interlocking rings, I came across Karen Cabrera's instruction videos. I have seen her blog before - amazing 3-D tatting shown in  the latest post. But I didn't realise that there are also instructions on many aspects of tatting. The one on interlocking rings is number 77!  Thanks, Karen.

My first efforts were very hit-and-miss. Ring 1 and 2 would be joined, 3 and 4 were joined, but somehow ring 3 didn't intercept ring 2. Eventually I made some progress. I used Jon Yusoff's diagram  to do the final ring. Thanks Jon. This is number 7 of my 25 motif challenge. I haven't finished with it yet, I am far from confident with it, but at least I have managed to produce something recognisable.

Competition

I have rather rashly agreed to knit a jersey for a competition. I'm not a great fan of competitions, but I want to show willing and that my objections are not due to my own inability! I found a pattern that fits the brief - a Fair Isle garment for a child, with a yoke in five colours. I asked my neighbour to buy the yarn for me when she went to Johannesburg. Then I read the 'Blue Book' of guidelines and rules and promptly froze. But I have to finish it by the end of January, so yesterday I took a deep breath and began. And resisted the temptation to start over to make sure I had the perfect cast on and ribbing.

Christmas Cake

My Christmas cake is in the oven. Delia Smith's Traditional Christmas Cake, a recipe I have used for many years. Yes, yes, I know it should've been made months ago and left to mature. But I'm sure that applies in cold northern climes, not places where it's mid-summer and temperatures reach 35 degrees Celcius!

A knitted ball

I've been wanting to try this free pattern from Interweave Press. It's supposed to be a Christmas tree bauble, but I thought I'd just knit it as a soft ball for my youngest granddaughter. It was very straight forward, much easier than I thought it would be!

Diane's Snow Crystal

 Ok, my doodad has 6  holes, but it's too big for Diane's pattern. My second version isn't perfect, but I think it will work if I use smaller beads. Thanks Diane, I like this pattern with its triangular look.

Market

Well, it was a very small market, with a very small number of people who came to visit it. But I sold some things, did some bartering, bought some things, including this hobby horse. It amuses me that at these  markets the stall holders tend to sell to each other as much as to the outside public. I had some interesting conversations, met some new people; the market was worth going to even if it wasn't a roaring financial success.

Tweaked

It's interesting that even the simplest pattern can need tweaking. I was asked to make a bracelet in purple and pink. So I picked out the pink and purple beads from the packet and did the same as before, except that  I made the chains 8 ds instead of 12. The result is much neater. I put the clasp in a better place too. Voila, I hope.

Display

I thought I'd display the article about tatting in Ideas magazine on my market table tomorrow. So I made the three motifs for which there are patterns to go alongside the article. I did make two small changes to the 'snowflake' design - I made a false picot between the first and second rounds; and I joined the rings of each trefoil to each other, to make the design more stable. The article says to starch them, but of course I used my new found skill of stiffening with glue and water!

Overcoming my glue phobia

I tatted these Christmas tree decorations a couple of years ago for a craft fair my cousin participated in. I thought I could put them on my market table on Saturday, but should stiffen them first. Jane Eborall gave clear instructions for stiffening tatting with a mixture of glue and water. I reread the instructions, and the comments that followed, and then bought some glue. I'm so hopeless with glue that I don't keep the stuff in the house! Last night I experimented. The heart is a bit too stiff, so today I made a more watery mixture. I'll have to wait until the motifs are dry before I can see how well I've done, but so far so good.

Stashed

The good thing about scrabbling through my stash yesterday to try to find a pink bead  was that I found a pair of Winsome Drop earrings  that can go to market. The cube ones I wrote about here. The other three pairs are hot off the shuttles. That gives me 10 pairs for market, which is fine.

I'll have to keep it!

This was a project that should've been straightforward, but just wasn't. I won't bore you with all the things that went wrong, but the second-to-last straw was that it turned out the pink beads were not identical, there were a few that were smooth, not faceted.

I could live with that. Then came the final straw - I broke a bead. Because of the way the necklace is constructed, there was no way to shorten the necklace at that stage. I've put in a bead that doesn't match.

I can't sell a necklace with such an obvious flaw, which gives me a good excuse to hang onto Jess's wonderful sunrise thread! I'll wear the necklace to market and at least show it off, even if I can't sell it. 

Another One

I gave away a food cover as a house warming present, so I've made another for the market stall. The bigger butterfly was designed by Jennifer Williams, worked in Jess's Tat-ilicious thread and Milford purple. The small ones are, of course, Jane Eborall's very small butterfly.

Two Sides to the Story

I decided to use the last of my white polycotton to make baby pillowcases. I looked up the dimensions in my notebook and worked out that I could make nine pillowcases with my material. Great. I cut two out and then realised my stupid mistake - a pillowcase has two sides; the dimensions need to be doubled! I had added seam allowances, but forgotten that.  I  worked out a more efficient way of cutting them out and finished up with seven, so that's not too bad. These are the first two. The heart is Li'l Heart by Birgit Phelps. I don't think  baby cases really need to be made in pairs, but I've done two anyway.

The power was off for four hours this morning. It didn't really matter, since I had tatting to do, but it was a warning against procrastination!