Tatting and temari

There are two unfinished doilies sitting in my drawers.  I'm trying to finish them.  It's not going well.  Here's the smaller one.  The pattern from a Japanese book, and it's supposed to be dainty and lovely.  Right now, it looks like a dish rag.

I know blocking will do wonders, but I had to take a break before I got discouraged.  So I made a temari.

Last temari

I've packed up my temari supplies.  The urge to make them has passed.  This is the last one I made before I put away the perle cotton.  It's the Dogwood design from Barbara Suess's Japanese Temari book.

On to other crafts.  Maybe I should break out that tatted doily again...

Thomas Cup Temari

I've still got a few more temari I want to make before the threads get put away.  This one is the Empress design from Barbara B. Suess's Japanese Temari book.

Here's the latest one.  It's a minor variation of the Blue Arrows pattern from the same book.

I stitched on it while watching the Thomas Cup finals.  I'm not much interested in sports, but for some reason, I'm patriotic about badminton.  At the end of the final match, I almost didn't have the heart to finish this.  As a Malaysian, watching Japan win was just heartbreaking.

Weekend Temari

I got the urge to make temari this weekend.  This one is the Bellflower from Barbara Suess's Japanese Temari book.  I didn't pay attention to the instructions, so I mine looks more like an orange slice than a flower.

I got distracted while doing google searches for temari making instructions.  I found images of koma ornaments, then I found instructions, and made one of my own.

So that's my crafting haul for the weekend; two Japanese ornaments.

Temari

I made these temari a few years ago. The balls look a little worse for wear because I let them be used in the traditional sense (basically, I let my kids play with them).

I was learning to make these following tutorials from the excellent, but now sadly defunct, Temari 101 website. The site was great. The first ball featured overlapped diamonds (the small blue one). It took me two tries to get it right. The black, red and white ball was my first try.

The next tutorials featured a whole bunch of spindle balls. I made one (the pink one), then I had my first baby. Temari require marking with lots and lots of pins. Pins and babies don't mix, so I stopped for a while.

The kids are bigger now, so I ready to try some more. The black one is another spindle ball.

The yellow one is my mis-guided attempt to follow these excellent instructions. I'll have to try again some other time. I seem to do better with my second attempts.

The ball at the back is the Rainbow design from the Temari Traditions book.

These two are my latest. They are both attempts of the Triads design from Temari Traditions. The design is a fully covered ball (meaning that the entire surface off the ball is covered with stitching thread). Getting the effect requires precise marking, something I'm still working at. The purple ball looks pretty good though, so I'm happy.