Finishes

 I finished tatting butterflies and some dragonflies and then made a concerted effort to finish the cardigan I was asked to knit.

It's very bulky, not my favourite kind of garment or knitting, but now it's done I can get on with other things without feeling it weighing on me! 

Merry Christmas

 

Merry Christmas to all those who celebrate it.  Thanks to all those who read my blog during the year, and, especially, those who commented. 

The picture shows one of the projects we did in a craft group at a retirement home. They are recycled thread cones. 

Thread Size

 

I'm working on an order for tatted butterflies. The order says size and colour immaterial, so, just for fun, I've made a series of white butterflies in different size thread - 80, 40, 20 and 10. The pattern is Jane Eborall's SCMR butterfly.  Now I had better use some of the many colours I have in stock. 

Time To Tat

 

I had time to whip up a quick food cover to give as a gift. It has gone to its new home but I remembered to take a photo before it went. 

Enough Already

 

I hope the jeweller has good sales before Christmas. I also hope she has enough bags to put said sales into! I'm delivering another 53 bags today and then I hope to have time to do other things. 

Sewing

 

I managed to sneak in a bit of shirt sewing before I had to go back to jewellery bag sewing. This one is a little boring, but I used fabric that I had on hand. I have another shirt cut out, but I'm not sure when I'll get back to it. 

I delivered this batch of bags this morning and Anne paid me for two more batches, so that's my next task. There will be a lull after Christmas and then I will catch up on other things. The craft group is closed for a month, and nothing else is urgent, so it's fine. 

Thread Bonanza

 

Yesterday a friend called in with a big bag of thread for me. Yay. My thread supplies were definitely running low. Not all of them are ideal for tatting, but I'm sure I can use many of them. There's a shuttle hiding in the picture too, see if you can spot it. It's an aero post shuttle. I gave Odette a food cover to say thanks. I sold the other food cover in the afternoon, so guess what I'll be tatting next? 

SOS

 I didn't sell a lot at the market on Saturday, but sold enough to make it worthwhile going, and I enjoyed the morning. I sold socks to two different people, which was amazing in a heatwave! There was some discussion about the food covers, but I didn't sell them. 

I had an SOS from the jeweller on Saturday, she had run out of bags and needed some more ASAP.  I sewed the bigger ones on Sunday and the small ones on Monday. I didn't get quite as many as I expected from the fabric because I had to cut out the part with labels on. The labels are stuck on with a very sticky glue that is apparently impossible to remove. 

Raiding The Tatting Tin

 

I should use muskaan's term, SOUP, as explained here. I really wanted to have two food covers for the market on Saturday, but I'm short on time, so I had a look through my tatting tin and found some pieces to sew on. Most of them are from my Teiko adventure, when I worked my way through The Tatted Artistry of Teiko Fujito.  The food cover is definitely one of a kind, but I rather like it and would be happy to keep it if it doesn't find a buyer. 

Phew

 

I worked hard yesterday to refill the puppet basket. I finished off the two frogs that I started on Monday and made another six from scratch. It's amazing what I can get done when there are no interruptions! 

Food Cover For Market

 

I want to make a couple of  food  covers for Saturday's market, but, obviously, I can't spend too much time on them. So I'm not going to sew beads around the edge. I did have to spend some time experimenting on the edging though. The net is very soft and has a tendency to get stuck under the foot plate of the sewing machine. I tried putting paper underneath, but I couldn't get the paper off without distorting the stitches. Eventually I ironed interfacing onto the back of the hem area, which will just stay there:

Most of the daisies are simple ones, but I did tat one double one:

There are 6 daisies on the cover and 11 of Jane Eborall's SCMR butterflies. I hope to make another food cover before Saturday, but one might have to suffice.

Butterfly Puppet

 

 I can take most of the puppets  I need for an order from stock, but there was a special request - a butterfly. I had to think about the mechanics of it for a while. In the end I sewed the glove and the butterfly wings separately and then hand sewed the body on to hold it all together. Note tatted antennae! 

Take Along Knitting

 

It turns out that the cardigan I was asked to knit is a good take along knitting project. It's very easy, consisting of oblongs of garter stitch, and is knitted on big needles. The yarn was a bit thin for the needles, so to get the correct gauge I combined it with a 3 ply grey yarn that was also in the stash. I've done the back and two fronts, I have the sleeves to knit and then the selvages to do.  That may be a stay at home job. 

I'm in a bit of a whirl at the moment though. The jewelry lady wants 50 bags this month instead of the usual 30, in anticipation of Christmas sales. Someone has ordered 8 puppets. I have them in stock, but will need to replace them before the market on the 7th December. And someone else wants 5kgs of spun wool. I said I'd give it a go, but I'm struggling to find the time to spin. It doesn't help that this is the time of the year for Christmas lunches, pantomimes, et cetera! 

Snakes And Lizards

 

You want a food cover with tatted snakes and lizards?  Sure, no problem. For the lizards I used Jane Eborall's Pamela's Gecko pattern, and for the snakes I adapted a Teiko Fujito edging. The butterflies are also Jane Eborall's pattern, the SCMR butterfly. 

Sewing

 

I took some time off working on the food cover to sew myself a dress over the weekend. I bought the fabric months ago, but there always seemed like something more urgent needed doing than turning it into a dress. I tried to take a selfie, but that didn't show how the dress looks on, so I took a photo in the mirror. There was plenty of fabric, so I was able to cut carefully positioning the motifs on the fabric, lining up the motifs on back and front skirts and that sort of thing. 

Another Gecko And A Snake

 

The brief for the food cover is lizards, snakes and butterflies. Right. Jane Eborall's gecko works fine for the lizard. What about a snake? Google threw up great numbers of tattooed snakes, so that wasn't useful. Pinterest gave me one pattern, by a Canadian designer, on Etsy, but it was a rather frivolous snake. Instead, I turned to Teiko Fujito and adapted the pattern I used on a skirt last year. 

I left the picots off and added a head and tail. The head is a bit small because I ran out of thread. I started with a chain for the tail and am pleased with the idea, though it needs a little tweaking. 

Geckos, Tatted And Real

 

I've tatted two geckos for my food cover, carefully marking off each line of the pattern as I go. 

There was a gecko on the pantry window last night, so I took a photo of him. This is his underside, but look at his legs, they show how clever Jane Eborall's  pattern is. 

In The File

 

The next food cover requires lizards. I've tatted Jane Eborall's gecko before and I reckon it qualifies as a lizard. It was tempting to just print the pattern out again, but in the interest of saving ink, I trawled through my file until I found it. It has a mark against each line for each time I've used the pattern. Surely that's unnecessary I muttered to myself as I started tatting. That was until I looked carefully and saw I'd tatted an extra ring. I will have to start again, and this time I'll mark each line so I'm sure of where I am in the pattern.

Lavender Again

 The market on Saturday had a lot of stalls, but not that many customers. I sold enough to make it worth my while, and enjoyed the morning. 

I'm working on the second half of the lavender order. 

I'm not sure I'll finish today because my little sewing pupil is coming this afternoon. I'll see how it goes. I have another food cover order to work on after this order is done. 

Market On Saturday

 

There's a market on Saturday, so I'm working on getting ready for that. I've been knitting the fingerless gloves, Leaves by ValKnitting, as take along knitting, but yesterday I finished off the thumbs at home. The yarn is my handspun wool.  Today I'm working on  puppets. I sold three at the last market, so I need to make at least another three. 

Daisy, Daisy

 

I sewed the tatting to my food cover yesterday. It's not easy to photograph, looks better in real life than it does here. There are five butterflies as well as the flowers. 

Someone Else's Stash

 

I had a phone call from an acquaintance yesterday asking if I was home. I was. She arrived with several carrier bags of yarn for me, and two half done garments, a cardigan and a sleeveless pullover, which she asked me to complete. She's moving to a smaller home and needs to downsize. My heart sank a bit. It's a generous gift, and what I can't use I'll pass on to knitters at the retirement home. But I'm going to feel guilty until I finish the knitting, which I have neither the time nor the inclination to do right now. 

I have an order for another 10 tatted lavender bunches. I'd like to deliver 5 on Saturday, so I worked on those yesterday and put the food cover on hold.  As I tatted, I listened to a series of podcasts, Visible Women on Tortoise media. It was very interesting. Apparently, women are less safe in cars than men, because crash test dummies are based on male bodies. Men's pyjamas have pockets, but women's don't. Who knew? 

Edged

 

I've finished the edging of the latest food cover, a combination of  machine embroidery and beads. The beads are a bit bigger than the ones I used last time. I thought it would look a bit crowded with a bead for every leaf pair, so I  sewed a bead on every second leaf. 

I did two flowers from Jennifer Williams's Cariad Tatting,  Spring Flower and Flower using two layered tatting .

I'm rapidly giving up on the idea of doing a bouquet in each corner though. It's all taking way too long, considering the price I quoted and the number of other things I have to do. 

Daisy Doodle And More

 

The lady who ordered the third food cover said she wants daisies on it. I fiddled with stitch counts and different constructions until I came up with this. I'm sure there are similar patterns out there, but I'm not going to scour the internet looking for them. I'm all for protecting copyright, but I think the Just Tatting site on Facebook gets a bit carried away when it comes to people independently coming up with similar designs.  

I showed Chantelle the daisy; she likes it, and is happy to have other flowers on the food cover too. I thought I might do 'bouquets' in the corners and scattered daisies in the centre. Where to begin? I started with Jane Eborall's This Way And That Way pattern. If you look at the pattern, you'll see it's a snowflake! It looks like a flower to me, but to emphasise its floweriness, I did muskaan's leaf to put alongside them.

I love both these patterns, and they're both copyright-worthy!

Food Cover

 

All the butterflies are attached and the second food cover  is done. I listened to podcasts as I sewed and used white thread throughout and it went quite quickly. 

Angels and Butterflies

 

We made fabric angels at the retirement home on Friday. I saw several examples on Pinterest and then followed a series of links until I found this tutorial.  It's always fun to see the different versions of a project that emerge. 

I'm still working on Jane Eborall butterflies for my second food cover. I should have enough by the end of the day and be able to start sewing them to the net. 

Another Butterfly Net

 

My friend Grace asked me to make two butterfly food covers. I'm working on the second one. I've done the edging, with machine embroidered leaves and beads. I need to tat a lot more SCMR butterflies. 

I showed a picture of the first net to someone else and she asked me to make her a daisy one. So that's been added to my to-do list. 

The Market Went Well

 The weather was unseasonably cool on Saturday, but the market was well attended none the less. I was very happy with my sales. I sold the owl tow'l, shown in the previous post, and another towel, which was a big sale. I also sold smaller items  - gloves, puppets, jams, beaded key rings... Oh, and two small Kigelia trees that Jack has grown from seed. I like to buy as well as sell at the market, but definitely finished up in the black this month. 

I wanted some knitting to do while I was at the market, so cast on for socks on Thursday. In truth, I didn't get much knitting done at the market, but it's always a talking point. And I have finished the socks:

Ready For Market

 

 I've made an owl tow'l as well as some puppets for tomorrow's morning market. I hope the wind will have died down by tomorrow; the weather has been cool and windy, which doesn't encourage people to wander around a market. Oh well, we can't control the weather, so will have to take it as it comes. 

Ticking Along

 

I finished last week's tasks and then took the weekend off. I spent all day Monday tatting lavender bunches, while listening to podcasts.  I did five, to complete the order.  Now I'm working on puppets for Saturday's market. 

A Flutter Of Butterflies

 

 

I've tatted a flutter of Jane's SCMR  butterflies and am busy sewing them to the food cover. I need to deliver the food cover tomorrow, so I must get on with it. 

Of Bags And Butterflies

 

Once we got going, a lot of fun was had, decorating my cloth bags. The circles with a cross in the middle were done with cotton reels, the rest with bubble wrap and straight painting.  I do like how each one is unique. 

I had planned to tat more butterflies for my food cover after the craft meeting, but I had an urgent request for lavender, so I tatted those instead. I delivered one on Friday afternoon and one on Saturday, and have tatted another three towards the order for 10. Muskaan is right, I need to keep a few in stock.

I now need to sew more jewelry bags. The silversmith has asked for them to be a bit smaller, so I will have to work out the measurements before I start.