A horse, a horse

My kingdom for a horse.  Well, about two/three yards of thread!!!  For the sake of about two/three yards this doily has failed. Totally and utterly.  You can see where on the lefthand side.

In all the years I've been tatting (around 58) this has never happened to me before. Oh woe is me. Woe, woe and triple woe. 

I've plenty of the plain which is Lizbeth 635 but I ran out of Yarnplayer's Hot Pink and Lime with just 5 rings to do. So this is one for the box which will never get finished.

Sue Anna gave me this skein of the thread when I was at Palmetto and I couldn't wait to try it out. Love this colour way but now out of love with the unfinished doily. That'll teach me not to think about things before I start them!!!!  No more in her shop either and the cost of a whole skein when I still need to use up (and WANT to play with) my other HDT just isn't worth the postage either.  I suppose I could use the plain thread on both shuttles for that last bit.  Ah, there's an idea and perhaps all is not lost yet!!!!

Oh, the doily is this one.

Another bauble in the Exclusive club!!

Here's another member of the Exclusive tatting club. I'm so glad Anita has popped in with her bauble as I'd almost forgotten about this club. Also as I'm nearly finished on a current project I'm looking for something else to play with. As you know I'm addicted to this technique!!!! Here's what Anita has to say:-

"Dear Jane:

Here’s my trainee Bauble!

Hopefully this will get me in as an associate Exclusive member to your mouse/bauble tatting club.

It’s my very first attempt. It’s sort of…well….it’s the first attempt :D

Have fun with it!

Cheers,

Anita Barry, tatter

Amissville, Virginia"

Actually, Anita, I wish my first attempt had looked as good as that.

Another arrival

What a lovely surprise. A sailing boat from Axa.

You can read all about it here.

Finally got bored!

I finally got bored with the inside out snowflake so changed my allegiances and set off on the Fandango Button Snowflake which you can find here.

Well I lie. You can't find this version there as it hasn't been written down or drawn yet!!! Actually it's a simple modification to the original. All I did was switch shuttles and put a ring on top of the chain making it more 'snowflaky'. As I'm very fond of locking my designs into place I used very small picots to stop that pesky ring from twisting and turning every time I turned my back on it!!!

I will add the alterations to the pattern when I get time. I seem to be chasing my tail at the moment and that's got nothing to do with the 'silly season' as Pigmini calls it. Just life getting in the way of tatting stuff.

Continuing with the doily!

Well the Valencia doily is progressing but I'm changing the final round so that it stands out a bit more than just a round of chains. Not totally sure it'll work but we'll see.  This is where I'd got to when I last showed you.  

The light creamy rounds had to be done in a different colour than the centre due to the ball of thread having an untimely meeting with a cup of coffee!!!!  Even though it dried out just fine I decided to ditch the rest of the ball.  Well, I'd had it hanging around for probably fifty years so I thought it didn't owe me anything!!!  It had gone quite hard too.  It was a Coats thread.

Here's the progress so far.