Thanks!

 Thanks for all the suggestions about ribbon and elastic. I liked the idea of two pieces of ribbon joined by a bit of elastic, but in practice I couldn't get it to work well. My elastic wasn't elastic enough!  I've threaded a double piece of shirring elastic through, with ribbon on top to hide it. So the bow is really a faux bow.

Ribbon

 I had thought the glove would be finished by now, but there's this interruption and that interruption - that's how life goes. I bought some narrow white ribbon today. I'm not sure about using it to gather the wrist. I think it would look pretty, but it would mean that the wearer couldn't fasten the glove without assistance! Elastic might be more practical.

Better?

 I used the same wrist pattern as before, but shortened the chains and the bare thread spaces. I think it looks neater. Of course, it still has to be able to go over my hand, so I will still have to thread elastic, or perhaps white ribbon, through the 'eyelet row'.

The First Pair

The first pair is complete. I think the hand part looks ok, but the wrists are too puffy. I'm going to make some changes and see if I can improve them.

A Plan

 As I tat the second glove, I'm making a note of things I think should be changed. So I can tat another pair and end up with an 'original pair' and an 'improved pair', with the emphasis on pair, so I don't end up with a bunch of odd gloves!

Competition

Yesterday I received a booklet with the details of next year's competitions. Lo and behold, there's a tatting section! I shall do my bit to 'promote interest and thus to ensure that the craft will not become extinct'. I was thinking of doing Jane Eborall's Friendship bookmark, which is one of my favourites, but when I read the booklet more carefully, it said that the overall theme of the competition is flowers, so I had better choose a pattern that includes flowers. Plenty of scope there. There are a number of other rules and regulations to abide by, eg you can use coloured thread but not variegated thread. Not sure the point of that one, but there you go.

Folded Ring Butterfly

 This tiny butterfly is good for emptying shuttles. Leave a small bit of thread before beginning the first ring. Ring 8ds, 2 first half stitches, 1,  picot, 1, 2 second half stitches, 8ds. Close, making sure that the bit of the ring between the half stitches faces inwards.  Another ring the same. Tie the beginning thread and ending threads together with a reef knot. Trim for antennae.

I thought of making the second half of the ring smaller than the first, but it didn't look right.

Dangles

The owl was designed by Martha Ess. I used a piece of cardboard as a picot guide and still didn't manage to match his wings! He has a bit of a lopsided look. I wrote about the hearts here. When I was doing folded rings to empty a shuttle, I thought it looked like a little butterfly, so here is a very, very small butterfly.

Gloves, Tatted this time

A few months ago, someone asked me to tat fingerless gloves. I was busy at the time and said so, but the idea remained at the back of my mind. When I was researching mignonette stitch, I saw a photo on pininterest of gloves in mignonette stitch that  linked back to Tatted Webs. Wonderful tatting there, I haven't seen the site before. I didn't want to copy the gloves there, just use them for inspiration. I've done one glove, it has taken me a few days, all the while wondering whether what I visualised was going to work. As it is, this   glove fits me, but I have very small hands and rather wonder if it will fit the person who originally wanted gloves. I wrote down each step so that I can make another one to match.

Folded SSSRs

 The idea of making a string of hearts is Gina Butler's. I just used folded rings instead of dimple rings. I'm thinking of adding beads between the hearts to make a dangle that will hang well.

Mignonette Stitch

 On to the next challenge. I used Georgia Seitz's Mignonette Stitch Review Lesson. The principle is simple, but it's important that the bare thread spaces be equal. I decided that the easiest way was to do the first half of the first stitch and then measure with my small, light ruler. But I'm open to suggestions on this! I  need to learn to finish one round properly before doing the split ring to start the next round. It does make a light, airy fabric, and goes quite quickly.

Valentine Heart

 Since it's Valentine's Day, and I'm still working on pearl tatting, I thought I'd take a leaf from Gunhild's book and tat Mark Myers's Elegant Heart. I mutter a lot when I'd doing pearl tatting: 'Over and under. Under and over'. I guess it would be simple for people who do frontside/backside tatting, but I find it a little confusing to have one shuttle doing under and over while the other does over and under! Thanks Gunhild for the inspiration.

More wristlets

I'm knitting wristlets again. I'm going to knit three pairs. I thought about doing different lace patterns on the back of each pair, but repeating the pattern means I get to know it well, where the increases go in relation to the lace pattern and that sort of thing, so I'll probably make them all the same.

I had problems with the photo again. I installed Picasa and then the photo uploaded fine, so perhaps that's the answer. I didn't really want Picasa because I"ll have to learn a whole new way of editing my photos, but I guess I don't have a choice!

TIAS is finished!

Thanks very  much to Jane Eborall for organising her Tat-it-and-see, which was great fun. At last we are all sure that we were tatting a pram - short for perambulator, also called baby carriage, baby buggy, stroller......Baby's first means of transport anyway. 

I'm having problems uploading photos. After the umteenth attempt, this is the best of a very bad bunch. It happened a few days ago too. After a few hours, I uploaded the photo no problem. I tried this morning, left it until afternoon, but I'm still having a problem. Any ideas? Help!!!!

Beaded Pearl Butterfly

I complicated my life further by adding beads to the pearl tatting. I did the butterfly in two halves and then joined them onto the body. I was a bit worried about having a lot of ends to hide in the body, but here's how I solved that problem: two shuttles wound CTM, the centre thread doubled over in the middle, so when I got to the end, I had four threads and could do two lock stitch chains for antennae. No threads at all to sew in!

Pearl Butterfly

 Fox is right, this is tortuous tatting! You have to keep your wits about you. I considered doing the wings separately and then joining them onto a body, but in the end went with doing them in one pass, with no body.  That was because I could, and because I think it would've been difficult to get the angle of the wings right. Perhaps I should do the two sides separately? That's a possibility.

Day 10

In real life, the colour of the wheels matches better with the mustard of Jess's key lime raspberry parfait thread. I thought I was very clever to pick up one of the colours like that, but on my computer it looks quite different! Oh well.....

Pearl Tatting

I've done pearl tatting before, but it wasn't until I saw Iris Niebach's recent post that I realised it could be used for more than a narrow braid. Rings can be thrown off the braid in both directions. I've just seen that Gunhild has been inspired by Iris too. Directions for doing pearl tatting can be found on Jane Eborall's technique page here. I made a loop at the beginning of the centre thread on the motif above, so that I could close it like a Self closing mock ring.

A frog and a leaf

 A lady in town is interested in hooded towels. But she wants them much smaller than the ones I made before. I bought a 'bath sheet' and cut it in half. I made a frog to begin with,simplifying the original pattern because the hood is much smaller. What to do with the other half? A leaf is green. I appliqued a flower onto the hood and then machine embroidered lines on the towel to simulate the veins of a leaf. Voila.

Day 9

 Phew. I really didn't want to have to add in more thread. Luckily I just made it, by finger tatting the last 2 sections. Just as well the Catherine Wheel join uses the 'ball' thread. Now I must hide the ends.

Pay Attention!

 I was so excited about getting day 8 of the TIAS done that I twisted a picot and joined the last split ring in entirely the wrong place! Oops. Thank goodness I now know how to open split rings, so I could just undo the ring and join correctly. No, I don't know what it is, but below is day 8 done correctly  (I hope).

Folded Rings

Thanks to Jon Yusoff  for pointing the way to Martha Ess's tutorial about folded rings. I accepted my next challenge! I've changed direction in chains before, for instance in Victat's rose pattern, but I didn't realise it could be done in rings too. Clever.