Motif 13: Peaceful snowflake

The beaded tatting was making me beady eyed, squinting to get the thread through those tiny holes.  So I took a break and made another of Hajjah Jon's elegant snowflakes.

This is the Adan snowflake from Elegant Tatting Gems, done in heavenly blue Cebelia thread.  There's something peaceful about the changes of direction in this design.  Ahh, so restful.

Motif 12: Double edged butterfly

This is Jane Eborall's Large Fancy Butterfly done in DMC Cebelia along with a rather alarming number of beads.

The fancy edging is unusual and makes for a striking motif.  To be honest, I'm not sure I got the edging completely right, so I just tried to be consistently wrong so the wings would match.  The edging is not that hard to do, but it does require more equipment than usual.

Here's what it looked like in progress.  There are:-

• three (3!) shuttles
• a little string of beads on a floss threader, ready to go on the picots
• paperclips, paperclips and more paperclips to hold the beads in place
• print out and pencil so I could keep track without losing all my brain cells (Jane Eborall functions magnificently with brain cell #3, but I definitely need all of mine)

Motif 11: Light on bracelet

The little lady seems to know that the best way to get me to make her more stuff is to use the stuff I've already made.  She's been wearing her blue beaded bracelet lately, so I started a new one for her.

This is the 'Bloomer' bracelet from Marilee Rockley's 'Boutique Tatting' book.  The yarnplayer does two things I like very much.  First, she sells PDF versions (great for avoiding shipping costs) and second, she gives people a way to sell things made from her designs.  I admire the work that designers do, but being able to execute a design is also a skill.  The sort of license the yarnplayer uses lets the designer and the design-user interact in new ways.

The yellow seems awfully bright to me, so I think of it as a 'lit up' bracelet.  That's my hand modelling it, but the little lady takes possession later.  I probably should have reduced the number of repeats to fit her little hand, but she's been doing a lot of growing lately.  I'm reluctant to shorten anything for her.  All her dresses are midis now.  I could have sworn I bought them full length a few months ago.

Motif 10: Interesting?

This motif is number 26 in 'Beads and Beads Tatting 1' by Mituko Ikuta.  The book is great, in that it has some nice techniques and some usual bead uses, but some of the designs look a bit dated.  So for me, this particular design is more interesting than attractive.  I'd love to get a look at book 2 and 3 in the series.

There are some mistakes there; some miscounted chains and stitches the 'wrong' way around.  Still, split rings makes me happy, so I'll leave it as it is and chase perfection some other day.

Motif 9: Green beauty

I got Jon's new book, Elegant Tatting Gems, last month and made this snowflake.  It's been done for a while, but apparently weaving in ends and taking photos takes weeks and weeks.

The book is very inviting, so I grabbed the first thread that caught my eye and did the first pattern in the book.  This is the Adiratna pattern done with Oren Bayan metallic. Jon gives the meanings of the names here.  So, loosely translated, this is the 'Green Beauty' snowflake.  In hindsight, I should have started from the back.  The last pattern is named 'Zamrud' or Emerald.  A green emerald would have been more poetic.

Motif 8: Onion doily

Those onion rings are still occupying space in my head, so I made this little onion ring doily.

This is the 'Green Vedallia' doily from Roger AKA Freedman's needle tatting site.  My version should be called 'Yellow onions and shallots'.

I have great memories of the needle tatting boards.  I learned to tat in my teens, but I had trouble getting past simple one ring edgings.  The problem was those old line by line patterns.  I didn't know it then, but I' miserable without a diagram.  I slogged at it though, because I really liked the look of the lace.

Then in my twenties, I found the needle tatting boards.  There were many lovely intermediate patterns that I wanted to try.  The things is, I don't needle tat so half the instructions sounded like gobbledygook.  The instructions didn't make sense, but Roger AKA Freedman has some of clearest pictures I'd ever seen.

It finally hit me that I didn't need the words.  I just needed the pictures and the stitch counts and I could figure it out myself.  It was a eureka moment for me and I've been a happy tatter ever since.

Motif 7: Clever onion rings

Today's motif is a little onion ring butterfly from Tatted Butterflies by Adelheid Dangela.  I haven't done a lot of onion rings, so I googled and found some lovely tutorials from Jane Eborall and Georgia Seitz.  The onion rings are worked as concentric rings, with a single shuttle.  I thought, "Oh, that's clever.  Let's try it!".

It turns out I was being too clever.  My onion rings didn't look like the picture.  The stitch count was off and the rings wouldn't lie flat.

The pattern clearly states "Work using 2 shuttles".  Onion rings with two shuttles are done by working the center round as a normal ring and the outside rounds as a series of chains.

Here's the final butterfly, with two shuttle onion rings.  I think it looks better.  It certainly lies flatter.  So, perhaps the moral of the story is: It's more important to read the instructions than to use clever techniques :)