The Owl and the Pussycat

Today marks 200 years since Edward Lear was born. He was an English artist, illustrator, author, and poet, renowned today primarily for his literary nonsense, in poetry and prose, and especially his limericks, a form that he popularised.  
Almost everyone knows his nonsense poem  "The Owl and the Pussycat"                                                                     

The Owl

 and the Pussycat

 went to sea

In a beautiful pea-green boat,

They took some honey,

and plenty of money,

                                          Wrapped up in a five pound note.

                                     The Owl looked up to the stars above,
                                                           And sang to a small guitar,

‘O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love,

What a beautiful Pussy you are,

You are,

You are!

What a beautiful Pussy you are!’

II

Pussy said to the Owl, ‘You elegant fowl!

How charmingly sweet you sing!

O let us be married! too long we have tarried:

But what shall we do for a ring?’

They sailed away, for a year and a day,

To the land where the Bong-tree grows

And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood

With a ring at the end of his nose,

His nose,

His nose,

With a ring at the end of his nose.

III

‘Dear pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling

Your ring?’ Said the Piggy, ‘I will.’

So they took it away, and were married next day

By the Turkey who lives on the hill.

They dined on mince, and slices of quince,

Which they ate with a runcible spoon;

And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,

They danced by the light of the moon,

The moon,

The moon,

They danced by the light of the moon.

Now it is confession time!   I did not tat the owl, Jane did and I borrowed it from her many years ago on the understanding that I would tat one myself and hand it back to her. I will one day, promise! But in the meantime here is the pattern.  Just looked at the top scan and think I got his beak folded under!

I did tat the cat (gosh that rhymes!) and it is taken from a book called Tatted Animals by Inga Madsen.  I have owned the book for a very long time and remember starting the elephant and then getting completely lost so gave up and have never had the bravery to go back to the book, until last week.  Now I am really looking forward to tatting some more animals from Inga's book.

Winsome necklace

Having made so many of Jane's winsome earrings I decided to make a necklace using the same method and here it is. Quite a long necklace!

I must admit it was a bit of a fiddle taking the thread off the shuttles each time and feeding them through the beads, but it was well worth the effort.

I purchased some beads before the postage went up in the UK, being particularly interested in the flat shell beads which are so useful for both earrings and necklaces.  I was going to wait and look for these on holiday but decided that if I saw more I could buy them, as long as I remembered the colours that I  already have!  In the meantime I am actually using these beads now, so they were well worth purchasing.

Just the two of us!

A bit of tatting and a lot of nattering went on this weekend as I was with Jane.   This was a photograph taken with Jane holding her Ipad, it took quite a few attempts to get a reasonable picture!  


As the year progresses I hope to get a few more photographs of myself and other tatters, who I will be meeting in various parts of the world.


In my luggage was the latest batch of shuttles which will be sold in her Etsy shop very soon.

Jane also introduced me to this most useful tool that I did not know even existed, it is for opening split rings so that chains etc can be fitted on them.  The gadget is now on my shopping list, no I did not take hers away with me!  Previous to discovering it I was trying to open them with scissors and my poor nails and you can guess who came off the worst!

I went for a shower yesterday and the cat had decided to get there before me!  I am now home where there are no felines to get in my way!

But she is cute!

More Bookmarks

We are having awful weather in the UK so much rain and it is really cold, just a fortnight ago some water authorities were about to impose a hosepipe ban due to an acute shortage of rainfall.  On Sunday I saw a really funny sight in the middle of the town, a man was standing with an umbrella sheltering from the rain and a duck had decided to waddle next to him so that it also did not get wet!    

Panic hit the country just before Easter after the petrol tanker drivers threatened to go on strike, culminating into a fuel shortage as people filled up their tanks.  The latest shortage is postage stamps as people rush to buy them before a huge price increase next week.  Things are really crazy here.  

I turned the Easter Egg pattern into a bookmark

This is Martha Ess's bookmark Mirror, Mirror from her book Playing with Picots

Also from the same book Canopy

No one said there was going to be a shortage of thread or shuttles so we just keep on tatting!  Which reminds me I have to test some pop-a-bobbin shuttles this evening ready for the next batch to be delivered to Janes.

The wrong pattern!

As you know my big sister has written and so kindly shared many of her patterns.  Over the years I have managed to tat only about half of them.  On her last blog post she showed a pattern that went over a CD and I got it mixed up with another pattern of hers that I had tatted in that era which was this one 

The clever thing about this snowflake pattern is the two thicknesses of thread that are used.  The tatting isn't very good as I was learning to do SCMRs at the time, but it was a really good way to practise them.

I also look at the thread colours and sigh to myself, as at that time I had such a limited supply, even some of the beads I don't recognise anymore.  I feel very spoilt now with all the different colours that are available including variegated, and HDT - its a tatters paradise!

Titanic

It could be said that, along with many others in this part of England, I have become a little obsessed with the RMS Titanic which hit an iceberg 100 years ago today and sank in the early hours of the 15^th April 1912 in the North Atlantic with the loss of over 1,500 lives.

Part of the reason for the need to soak up all the information that can be found about what happened to this ship and its passengers on its disastrous maiden voyage; is that I live very close to the port of Southampton and many of its crew came from this area. At the time of the disaster there was hardly a single street in the city that hadn’t lost someone on that ship and in those days that meant families were left without any income, there was no compensation or help for them. The stories of the crew and the passengers have been told and retold many times but they are fascinating.  I have even met two people who had relations on board the fated ship. Someone I know very well discovered that her great uncle was a stoker and he went down with the ship. Last Sunday I sat next to a lady whose Great Grandmother was a survivor, but not only that she did her bit to row and steer the lifeboat that she was on. There is of course at the moment much on the television and radio about the disaster and some may say that it glorifies what happened. However, I don't think that is the case for we have a lot to learn from such tragedies.  The people who were involved were just like you and me, frightened and vulnerable people who had to make decisions quickly. Some of the stories are heroic whilst others may seem even cowardly, but there is often the need to survive which can bring out the best or worst in all of us. 

The tatted anchor was designed by Lily Qualls Morales, but I cannot find the link to it.  Not sure if I tatted it correctly, but it is a lovely pattern that deserves a bettter attempt than mine!  

On a more cheeful note as we remember the disaster that took place 100 years ago, I took some photographs of some Spring flowers blooming in Southamtpon today, just  to cheer us and remind us of new life.

Violet

Primrose

Easter Button Eggs

There might be just time, if you can find thread and buttons, to make one or more of these eggs before tomorrow!  I have had so much fun making them and giving them away.  The six eggs below were made using HWT (hand wound thread). The pattern instructions are loosely based on the buttons and thread sizes given but stitch count can be altered if they do not lie correctly, especially on the first and last chain.  Buttons are not all uniform sizes and so for that matter nor is thread!  Many thanks for the encouraging comments on my last blog post and I hope you enjoy making them as much as I have.

The larger version with beads 

And some were turned into Easter Cards

I hope you all have an egg-citing time making them!

BUTTON EGG PATTERN © Sally Kerson 2012

Materials required:- 1 four holed button slightly under ½” for size 40 thread or slightly over ½” for size 20 thread.

Abbreviations:

R ring Ch Chain Cl close

p picot LBP long bead picot vsp very small picot

RW reverse work + join Cl close

SS SwitCh shuttle Btnh button hole SCMR self closing mock ring

tc tie and cut

Starting at bottom

R1: 6 vsp 6 + (1st Btnh) 6 vsp 6 RW

Ch : 2 p 2 p 2 p 2 p 2 RW

R2: 6 + (vsp R1) 6 + (1^st 1Btnh) 6 vsp 6 RW

Ch: 2 p 2 p 2 p 2 RW

R3: 4 + (vsp R2) 6 + (2^nd Btnh) 6 vsp 4 RW

Ch: 2 p 2 p 2 p 2 RW

R4: 4 + (vsp R3) 6 + (2^nd Btnh) 6 vsp 4 RW

Ch: 2 p 2 RW

R5: 2 + (vsp R4) 4 vsp 4 vsp 2 RW

Ch: 2 p 2 RW SS

SCMR6: 2 + (3rd vsp R5) 4 + (2nd vsp R5) SS

R: 4 + (3^rd Btnh) 4 SS

SCMR6: 4 vsp 4 Cl RW SS

Ch: 6 p (3 graduated p with 2 in-between) 6 RW SS

SCMR7: 4 + (SCMR6) 4 SS

R: 4 + (3^rd Btnh) 4 SS

SCMR7: 4 vsp 2 Cl RW SS

Ch: 2 p 2 RW

R8: 2 + (SMCR7) 4 + (middle of SCMR7) 4 vsp 2 RW

Ch: 2 p 2 RW

R9: 2 + (vsp R8) 6 + (4^th Btnh) 6 vsp 4 RW

Ch: 2 p 2 p 2 p 2 RW

R10: 4 + (vsp R9) 6 + (4^th Btnh) 6 vsp 4 RW

Ch: 2 p 2 p 2 p 2 RW

R11: 6 + (vsp R10) 6 + (1^st Btnh) 6 + (vsp R1) 6 RW

Ch: 2 p 2 p 2 p 2 p 2 tc to base of first R

For the beaded version add 1 bead to shuttle 1 and 31 beads to shuttle 2

Instead of the vsps make them large enough to attach a bead except for the 2nd vsp on R5

At the top of the egg replace the ch after SCMR 6 with 2 bead 2 bead 3 (3 beads and the one bead from shuttle 1) 3 bead 2 bead 2 bead.