primordial soup

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Over-dramatic, I know ;-D This post is about uncooked, errr unfinished, razzmatazz morsels in minestrone soup. Instead of waiting for life-forms (tatting patterns!) to evolve from the primordial soup, I am ladling out servings to see but not consume :-D 

Last year I bought a stash of beads directly from an online shop most of which can be seen in this image. These include Miyuki, bicone crystals, drop & tube glass beads, drop resin beads, and so on.

In person, I wouldn’t have bought the bulkier ones. But it also got me thinking about how to use them. 

Playing around with some leftover metallic thread, these 2 little earrings came about. 

Single thread, picot flowers, free-style. I’m calling them Spring Drop earrings for obvious reasons. I intend to use each type of bead in similar fashion....

Recently, when test tatting Anita Barry’s Laura & Itsy-Bitsy Angels, I went on a tangent and this emerged. Played with some bead arrangements. Which one of 3 do you prefer? Do you see a Victorian era lady/gown? Made with single thread/shuttle, and the 2 rings on the side are regular rings folded over and linked. This can have no other name than Laura Angel Earrings.

Anita has this uncanny ability to spy/create heart motifs from vintage doilies, etc. She’s done it before - Daisy heart here and Hidden Rose heart here - to show a few that are in public domain. 

She calls it Eye Spy, and I got to playing as well. These are 2 hearts that I spied in the Elizabeth Round Robin Doily. There’s still a lot of work needed to get into desirable shape, whenever that happens.

Can you spy them in the images below?.

This is Elizabeth Heart #1 from Round 4 designed by Kathy Lowe 

I started tatting from the right side clover, going counter-clockwise, to finish with a split ring at the tip. Why split ring?

TIP : Split Ring creates a distinct point at the tip (rather than base, as in normal ring). And using my whimsical method to finish on a split ring without sewing, (Mathew Takeda's method cannot be used due to the joins) enhances that point.

Elizabeth Heart #2 is from Round 3 designed by Bettina Lauth. I've taken a real liking to these picot flowers! 

In both motifs, worked with 2 shuttles, elements were added or removed without changing the original stitch count. The shape that seemed fine in the doily, does not appeal as an independent motif. Tweaking is needed.

Now why is it that hearts in any bookmark are always identical in shape and design? Can’t we put together different designs and sizes? I’ve done it with sizes in this Patchwork Bookmark, and the Italian Connection bookmark, but the design was the same. Elizabeth Hearts Bookmark could be an idea to work on.

another doily snood

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Elizabeth  Doily  Round Robin #15

- snood adaptation -

Started in Oct 2019 as a side project to all those designing projects, completed last month. Sue Hanson remembered the site – it has lots of round robin patterns ranging from snowflakes, butterflies, hearts, to doilies. However, this particular Doily #15 is missing. Check out the pages that are still there.

I like how this doily seems to change shape. From largely circular, these 2 green rounds define a clear octagon.

Designers :

Round 1 – Elizabeth Watts (3 central rounds)

Round 2 – Andrea Vanderpool

Round 3 – Bettina Lauth

Round 4 – Kathy Lowe

Round 5 – Emma Thomas-McGinnis

Worked with Anchor size 40.

False ctm was used several times while adding new thread. 

Some rounds were worked with one shuttle and ball. Keeping it simple!

With due apologies, I substituted the last round designed by Ruth Kurz, with my own. 

I was making this specifically for my hair bun/snood and needed a diameter of 7”. The original round 6 was quite broad and would have worked to around 9”.

This simple round holds the clovers in position and a satin ribbon was woven through the outer spaces (no pic). I’ve happily worn it a couple of times. The choice of dark and light colours was deliberate - to highlight the floral imprint when covering my hair. 

Thanks to the round robin team for this beautiful design ; 

to Jenni Clark for sending me the pattern, and 

to Sue Hanson for her incredible resourcefulness. 

a friendly neighbourhood

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I count my blessings to have such talented and generous friends in my global/digital neighbourhood. Here are a few ‘gifts’ I gratefully received recently….

In the order they were worked....

Elizabeth’s doily Round Robin 15.

Jenni Clark (Liyarra) posted her beautiful pink version on facebook & I liked it for a snood. She shared the pattern with me. It is from an old blog ‘tattingroundrobin’. Does anybody have a link?

More rounds to go.

Not happy with my chains - some overlap. Not a problem as it will not show up when worn.  I used 2 colours to showcase the flower shape, the green showing up as foliage.

Does the center look familiar?  Yes, it's what started the whole False CTM exploration. And to think I started this as a slow side project to disengage my mind and focus on downsizing my UFOs ;-P

Spool Pin Doily 

Who else but Anita Barry can come up with a butterfly to place under the spool pin?! How cute to have a butterfly sitting pretty on the sewing machine, keeping an eye on our sewing (or current lack of it, in my case)?! She is making these to sell at fairs, etc. yet shared the pattern with me!

Again playing with colour placement and had to include some lavender! It is worked continuously using 2 shuttles.

Now this is an example where we can continue into next rounds using the same core thread (in this case the mustard) but adding new colours for each round since they are chains with thrown rings : false ctm! If only I had remembered ;-P

This time I simply twisted the long antennae picots when it was wet. One picot is missing on one of the purple chains - can you identify it?

Walla-Walla Sweet Onion Motif 

Kathleen J. Minniti is not only talented but also explains so well! I understood Aurora’s onion ring technique when Kathleen used it for my dancing peacocks doily! But she uses only a half stitch instead of a full ds to capture the inner ring. I do like this method!

She PM-ed this pattern a couple of months back, with 3 versions for the center leaf. The left motif has a dot picot tip, and right one has a bullion knot (which got pulled out when I closed the ring).

A clever feature of this motif is the captured picots! Multiple alligator joins across the same picot. The left one has smaller picots than the right one. I like it, but need more practice.

Both these patterns (butterfly & onions) can be worked in one pass using 2 shuttles.
We mostly get pink/red onions here, but I've eaten similar onions in Australia.

Bobble stacked rings

And finally below is my trial of Rhoda Auld’s bobble technique posted by Ninetta Caruso which she shared with everybody ;-D  
Here again, one captures the previous thread in the current ring. It reminded me of how Ninetta curled her small rings.

I wanted to see if a circle could be formed with the stacked rings and then to see how it works with different ring sizes. I want to use this in one of my snowflake centers. Many textured effects are possible with this technique! 

Captured together...the butterfly & onion motifs are worked with Anchor Pearl cotton size 8, and the bobble trial is in Anchor size 20. Elizabeth's doily measures 4½" so far in Anchor size 40.

You generous ladies have captured my awe and gratitude J