teach me to count

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With shuttle in one hand and thread in the other (and toes curled in under me) how can I count on my fingers? Can you? No wonder I made mistakes... I need tutoring!

A while back I stumbled on to Liisa Maarit’s blog - Handmade by Liisa showcasing some beautiful lace along with pictorials and a few patterns.

I really liked her ‘rescued’ circular motif. So how many repeats can you count here? 9, right? Hmmm, that's 1 extra repeat extra! Irrespective, it turned out fine and lay flat.
Just over 5½ cms diameter in pearl cotton size 8 (white, & green  00225).

TIP : One can use Catherine Wheel Join in the 3^rd round for a more perfect circle. 
Here, I went with lock join followed by half stitch for a bit of floral arching.

In order to give it company I hunted through my books for a motif to go along and Lindsay Rogers' Repetition mat (with 9 repeats) in 'Mastering Tatting' appealed.

Worked in size 40 (shade 00368).

And guess what?? Yup, counting error Again. There are supposed to be 2 chains between clovers and I made one! So how many repeats did I need to complete the circle – 30!!!

The mistake led to some design-learning ...

DESIGN TIP :  Do you see how the little rings rise above?

If the rings were linked to each other through tiny picots close to the base (stabilising picots), it would’ve led to squishing and cupping. But since each ring was ‘free’ at the base, the little rings lifted above that constricting space. Textural effect!

I like the texture created. With beads, it could make a beautiful necklace! Looks nice as a collar, too.

Since it was meant to be a short round, I left the thread attached to ball. But shuttle ran out at 25th repeat. There was quite some length left, but not enough for a true ring.

TIP : So I used a slight variation of adding new thread within ring. I started SCMR with new shuttle thread acting as core, and old tail for stitches. The entire ring was done with the old tail. Then the tail ends were hidden in next 2 elements.

I now have to design/adapt rounds inside and out to make a snood. Sigh, and here I was going for something simple....

Many thanks to Liisa Maarit and apologies to Lyndsay Rogers

Wimbledon motif

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My personal tat-along for Wimbledon 2018!

2 weeks of Wimbledon. Not that I watch all the Center Court matches. Yet I needed to satisfy my tatting hands while I watched. Something medium-sized, not too stressful, where my eyes could focus more on the game…

Clover Mat

Lindsay Rogers’ ‘ Mastering Tatting’

 

July 2, evening.

After quickly completing my kitchen chores,  we sat down to watch Federer (defending champion) vs Lajovic.
I had earlier readied 2 shuttles, ctm, with Lizbeth 20, Vineyard Harvest. This variegation reminded me of the tournament colours and towels – but perhaps my memory was faulty coz I couldn’t find any magenta this time! Still, it had green for grass and shades of purple for royalty & tradition, and let's pretend the magenta represents strawberries! 

This is how far I reached after that speedy match ! 

I’d barely got the hang of the pattern when it was all over.

Now to watch Brazil vs Mexico - FIFA World cup. But the motif remains solely for the great W.

At the end of Federer’s Round 2 match. 

I had to switch to direct tatting (unflipped stitches) for chains to keep track of direction. 

The working of this pattern reminded me of the Magic Square.

His Round 3 match was too late for us to watch. 

So this was done during his Round 4 match against Mannarino. Another Master class!

Techniques : 

2-shuttles, thrown/floating rings,  inward picot, lock join, picot join to right. 

Optional: fs/bs tatting, direct tatting (reverse stitch).

Quarter-final and he’s out, shockingly. But this is how far I got.

I was pleasantly surprised that the mat was almost the same size 

as the one photographed in the book.

I finished it off during Kerber's semi-final match. 

Her quarter-final with Kasatkina was an amazing match with both ladies 

playing some spectacular tennis. Eyes glued to their play!

I had deliberately left off the central ring (which could’ve been worked as a thrown ring) 

because I had this fear that there could be cupping. 

Adding the central ring later meant I could tweak the stitch count to suit the space. 

Sure enough, I added 2ds to each segment.

Yellow is for the tennis ball!

The completed mat measures 5X5 inches.

I consider this pattern easy in terms of the techniques employed, but requires Mindful tatting- what joins where, etc. Possibly my attention was so divided that I could not memorize the joining points even till the end. 

But the book itself made me comfortable.  I absolutely love the book binding – a normal spine on the outside, but spiral binding on the inside. The pages lie completely flat and I can easily tat along without damaging the spine.

Diagram is large and clear with only a couple of picots missing. Easy to keep track and follow along. Central ring count was missing but easy to guess with the entire pattern following the same count. In fact one can easily choose a different multiple and yet get the same result - only smaller or larger depending on one's choice. 

evenings of tennis and  football are over for now

but tatting goes on forever !