friendly warmth ?

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A long time back I had started reading the Bible and finished the Old Testament. Then my eyes gave out and I haven’t returned to it since. But one of my dear tatting friend recently suggested I read the gospel of Luke if not the rest. I have yet to do it, but this is a reminder.

This is the tweaked charmed cross pattern to look more like a cross. A floating ring on either end extends the horizontal bar, while additional rings and chains add length vertically.

Can’t say I’m happy – perhaps changing the chain direction to face inwards at some places would make it a bit better. But that is for some future day.

Worked in Lizbeth size 40. I now regret having bought only variegated and no solid colour in Lizbeth.

For some reason I didn’t enjoy working with this at all. And as you can see, by the second round I couldn’t be bothered to try to hide colour blips caused by the lock join.

Also, I didn’t snug the chain stitches properly on the right side thus getting an asymmetrical outline inside.

There was also plenty of retrotatting to do. All in all not a happy experience.

The saving grace was the lock chain tails. I’ve long admired and wanted to do those little charms along a tail and this seemed like a good project to use in.

And in order to balance the width of the cross with the slim tail, I worked a 2^nd tail. Can’t have enough of bookmark tails - read my argument for multiple tails here !

What truly charmed me was Denise’s enthusiastic testing and working of the charmed cross pattern. She made little tweaks to suit her taste. Notice the charms? And the Heart-shaped glass gem in the center?! These are all meant as gifts for her church friends. She tells me that since it will be close to Valentine’s when these will be gifted, she used the heart and I guess the lovely pink shade.

Also warming my heart in this cold are these cute maple leaf earrings (she added a strand of Rexanna to the hand-dyed colourway), and 

appliqués Denise is tatting; the former again as gifts. She has a great big heart for sure, always helping with a smile and spreading warmth J

And for the record, I now have a finalized version of the charmed cross pendant to share soon.

cheers and stay warm/cool  J

falling over

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tatted maple leaf

My very first balls of Lizbeth threads arrived after a 3 week wait !!! The first to tumble in was Falling Leaves in size 40. Well, a fall leaf just Had to be tatted. Here is the lovely ….

Maple Leaf Motif

 Tammy Rodgers

a free pattern from Georgia Seitz's vast collection 

It was a pleasure to tat. But I did get confused about direction. I had started with ball & shuttle as mentioned in pattern. But I decided to tat the center trefoil in clockwise direction, and that resulted in the overall leaf being worked in counterclockwise direction, as seen in pic below !

Here's my working and notes....

1. Shoe lace trick or Two Shuttles ?

If working with single shuttle & ball, you need to do an overhand tie or SLT (shoe lace trick) for Ring D & also the last ring.

Rings D & U act like thrown rings, because of the change in chain direction to & from the ring, hence the need for a SLT or a second shuttle.

I try to avoid SLTs . Instead cut ample thread from ball & wound it CTM to Shuttle 2 at this stage.  

Please note that the SLT instruction is missing from an otherwise Excellent diagram.
There is also a bit of confusion about when not to reverse considering our more modern-day working. I would've explained just a bit differently, for tatters like me - I racked my brain trying to accomplish what was written. But it wouldn't work without a SLT or 2 shuttles.
This pattern was taught in the Beginner Class, but I haven't read the logs. This might have come up in the discussion. 

TIP : Brainwave ! Just struck me that I could've continued with ball & shuttle by working these 2 rings as Reverse Rings !!! Now that's a neat functional use for reverse rings. (more about RR in my next post. More synonyms & resources - scroll down to RINGS  - Thrown/floating rings).
ps : I tried it and it does work !  

2. Frontside/Backside Tatting :

If you prefer to tat rings frontside & chains backside (reverse order double stitch – RODS)), then make the first 3 rings RODS & adjacent chain frontside. From rings D through U, all can now be tatted frontside & chains RODS.

I forgot my own TWoT directions & ended up tatting All outer rings backside !

3. Stem

For a thicker stem I used padded double stitches or pds (2,2) for a decent length.

Should've blocked the leaf, coz I made a mistake in the first chain itself ! Only 15 stitches instead of 20 :-(

many thanks to Tammy and Georgia's Online Tatting Class 

for making this pattern available to us !

I have lots of fall leaf patterns in my collection to use this colorway. The thread works well. Took the plunge because Handy Hands is now listed in Amazon world & I can pay in Indian currency. But what a high price (with shipping & import duty) !!! For a total of 3 Lizbeth balls (not much choice in colours so far), I could’ve bought 43, yes forty three Anchor balls!!!

Ah well, what can you do if one has intentionally decided to fall :-D 

happy tatting always :-)