My son in Singapore kindly went to China Town to pick up these shiny threads, and then posted them over to me, they are very similar to the Lizbeth ones, but feel slightly softer.
On my usual charity shop rounds I found two Aero England post shuttles that just had to come home with me. They look to have been well used and I would have loved to know who originally owned them, but that is information lost in the mists of time. There is rather a gap on the tips of one of them, but they will just go into my collection and have a long and happy retirement.
I have so much praise for tatting pattern designers as there is so much skill in getting the finished design not only looking good, but also writing it down in a format that is understandable. Personally only had a few attempts at pattern designing and the whole process drove me crazy!
Martha Ess’s book Toys for Tatting is a real gem, and I highly recommend you buy it. I pick it up now and then and tat something from it. I had to do these ‘dump trucks’ in England we say ‘dumper‘ and just loved the way Martha takes you into a tatting adventure weaving in and out of her design.
I really did not set out to tat two but started the first one and thought I had gone wrong, fortunately I did not cut the thread, just abandoned and started another. Found out with making a second one that I was doing exactly the same as the original so went back and completed it as well. I have a grandson in Singapore who may like these, I am sure he will recognise them as he loves playing with cars and trucks.
On the day when Christmas decorations are being taken down I have tatted a fir tree up to look like a decorated tree.
The pattern is another one from Inga Madsen’s ‘12 Tatted Fairy-Tales.’ As you can see I made sure that it has coloured lights on it by included lots of seed beads. In the book it is illustrated in white and instead of a star on top there is a bird. I have used hand dyed thread and this one is called forest.
I am tempted to make another one as I am particularly eager to use up the container of mixed beads (bead soup) that has grown over the years, mainly because of spillages.
Two blog posts in one day is very unusual but I wanted to achieve the total of 30 posts for the whole year, which is not many considering I used to achieve 60 a year. Still at least I am still blogging!
No resolutions but aims for 2020
1. To celebrate 10 years since the creation of the pop-a-bobbin shuttle, with some new packaging.
2. Find time for more tatting.
3. Keep my tatting supplies tidier (this is what I say every year) but hoping to achieve just once!
See you in 2020 - Happy New Year, keep tatting!
Over the last few days I have been tatting this little chap. It is the snowman from Inga Madsen’s book ‘12 Tatted Fairy-Tales'. I purchased this book from e.bay a few years ago and never managed to tat anything from it, until now. All the illustrations in the book are tatted in white, but I used black and brown thread to distinguish the different parts of the snowman.
I also spent ages choosing a background for him, this was the best, he needed to standout but at the same time I had to be careful that the background did not overpower him.
I have not been very active on this blog in 2019 and just wanted to get the count of posts to an acceptable amount, before the new year started. So please excuse this little fellow which someone from the computer group I help to run, gave me.
He is not exactly an ‘Elf on a shelf ‘ rather a ‘Pixie looking a bit tipsy’!
Back to tatting tomorrow
I really did intend to blog all through December, especially as I have organised two Craft afternoons. These were for people to create their own Christmas decorations and I have some lovely photos, which I must show you. But somehow time past that quickly and life got so busy.
These are what I tatted for my Christmas Cards this year, but now struggling to find time to write and send them.
