Old earrings - part 2

Here are some more of the earrings although there are a lot more which I can't find!!!  Gracious - I'd forgotten all about these!!!!  I've still got the old exercise book somewhere in whicih I wrote down the patterns.  In fact I saw it recently!!  I'll have a look around for it.


Seems like I've lost an 'old bat' somewhere (middle towards the bottom)!!!!  


Do you recognise the giraffes?  That pattern was re-done and is on my site under 'doodles' and is right here.  


It was doing these and using some of the white school glue (PVA) to stiffen them which led me into other experiments in stiffening.  Actually this still works best for me - mostly I dilute it with a little water first as it's easier to 'squidge' into the tatting with my fingers.

Is the end near?

Maybe but maybe not!!!

Further progress but my dear old brain cell 3 is dying to try out new things he's thought of several other ideas whilst this is progressing.  I'm a determined OG and will continue!!

The figures are stacking up for me now as I'm over half way through this round.  I've worked out that I may get it finished in another week or so and will then put it to one side.  Why?  Well because I have gifts to make before we go on holiday.  

When I've finished this round I'll have to work out if I've enough of the infill thread to do the 'bits in between' the points.  This should prove easy as I know that a full Aero shuttle does four diamonds with the lighter colour.   The darker shade is a tad less.

What I did for this round was fill the shuttle and then unwind onto an Ez-bob until I knew I'd got enough 'fours' to finish.  I'll do this for the outer infills too.  If I don't have enough then I have two similar but slightly darker shades which will work.  There again I may just use the darker shades anyway!!!  I then have to decide if this travels with me to finish off on holiday!!!  IF it does it will go into my carry on luggage as I'm not trusting it in the hold of the aircraft!!!!

Old earrings part 1

I'm a bit excited about this find!!!  Why?  Well this is probably the start of my trip into 'doing my own thing'!!!!  I don't claim to be a 'designer' as really I just get an idea and then stumble around until I get what I want!!  The earrings became a 'need to save money' thing.

Anyway, these were made when I was teaching and I was made redundant from that when I was 48!!  I taught four/five year olds as they were admitted into school.  To 'help' in the process of settling them in I took to wearing totally ridiculous earrings.  NO, not pretty ones - just stupid ones.  Tea bags, clothes pegs, dog biscuits (dangerous near dogs), audio cassettes, sweets and anything imaginable that could be hung from my ears!!!  The kids used to come to school to see 'what teacher was wearing'!!!!  Some of them even made earrings for me from toilet roll middles etc.  VERY embarrassing when I forgot I was wearing those and went shopping - I'd realise what had happened when people stared at me!!  

After a while I realised that I could make tatted earwigs so these are some of the ones I 'invented'.  Don't forget - these were in the days before I knew about split rings!!!!  Before the Mary Sue Kuhn books.

Woweee

Now I'm not sure whether to thank Kelly or cuss her for tempting me off the straight and narrow (even if the straight and narrow is diamond shaped!)!!!

See what she sent me yesterday?  That's the temptation!!!  I did a small favour for her and this was more than ample reward.  HDT from Sherry, findings to 'play' with and other threads to try out too.

See the maple leaf and butterfly?  Well they're needle tatted and are the first pieces of needle tatting I've knowingly seen that are as firm as shuttle tatted pieces (apart from Rita Cochrane's).  Having tried needle tatting (albiet only for a few days) I now realise this is down to 'fine tuning' the needles to the threads.  Part the reason I'll never take it up as I'm too lazy for that and also I found it waaaaay too slow for an OG like me.

Thank you, Kelly - this gift was above and beyond the call of friendship.

Looking through old work

I found some more things in an old file that I did years ago - so over the period of the next few days (or as long as I don't get bored - or you!!) I'll show you.  


I put a lot of my work into files so that I could take it along to shows when I used to belong to the Ring of Tatters.  I'm going to try and sort things out in my tatting corner (the one in the back room - next to the tatting cupboard). It really needs doing!!  One of my tasks will be to pare down my newsletters by scanning what I really 'want' and then re-cycling the rest.  Nobody in my family would want them, I'm sure.

Again I'm not sure where this pattern came from but it's worked in an 80 Coats thread!  Actually it's probably a Mary Konior pattern.

What the Royal wedding did

This is what the Royal wedding did for tatting!!!  

It gave me the wonderful excuse to sit and tat most of the day!!!!  I got sucked into the wedding before it started and sat through the lot - even the boring bits of hymns and stuff!!!   We even watched the highlights last thing at night on the news!!!

Anyway this is the progress from before that and since.  I'm about a third of the way round this round now but I'm flagging!!!!  SO pleased I've 'hidden' the threads I'm going to use in the shoe box.  I won't allow myself to peep until I need the next batch of threads!!!  Does that sound silly?  Maybe, but it works for me!!!!