8 May 2007
Ring a Ring earrings!
7 May 2007
Another arrival in Tatland!!
Forgot to mention earlier - listed more tatting stuff on ebay!!! My seller ID is simply janeeborall!!
4 May 2007
Nothing to do with tatting!
I had a phone call yesterday evening from my youngest daughter who then put four year old Nathan on the phone. He told me that 'mummy's got a baby in her tummy and it's going to 'pop out' soon'. I can't explain how I feel as I'd been hoping for ages that Nathan would have a sibling to share his parents with. Callum has Oscar and Athena has Carter and finally Nathan will have somebody too!!!
After all those years of teaching I realised way back that it was really good to have more than one child if possible. I'm the oldest of three (one brother and one sister). I know it's not always possible but it's good to have somebody to play with, argue with and, well, just BE with!!!!
I apologise to anybody who thinks that this blog is all tatting - caught you out this time, eh?!?!?!!?
No tatting yesterday and probably not a lot today as the garden took a lot of my time!!!
Time to abandon the edging for a while
I shall now leave it for a while until the 'muse' strikes again!!! I HATE TATTING. Well I did for five or ten minutes!!!!
2 May 2007
Still playing with the edging
I think I put too many picots on the lower part of the upper part (well, I know what I'm talking about!!!!) so then went off to try something else. Oh, I was also not happy with the clarity of the bottom either!!! Below is a 'two part' tryout. In the first two 'pointy bits' I followed the same idea again but this time with less picots on the chains. Also I made the lower part slightly bigger which I think gives it a separate 'feel' to the header part.
The last two points are yet another idea using the original split ring but throwing a ring off it and down to the main central ring. I again used picots and the larger lower part. This is going to be a challenging (to me) pattern to write down for people to follow. It's not hard at all but does need some careful explanations around the continuous join concept. Anybody willing to give it a whirl? I think I may do all four versions in the end for the pattern site. Time will tell!!!
1 May 2007
Edging
BUT thanks SO much to Mark Myers for the following idea. He's such a clever chap with his computer graphics. See - he's added another ring to the top and picots. What a difference this makes. I shall try and get back to it this evening to alter the pattern. Gina, I will let you have the pattern in the original form as soon as I'm sure I can understand it!!!! Susan, I think both you and Mark were thinking along the same lines!!!!!
30 April 2007
Edging again
28 April 2007
Edging
27 April 2007
Close up of my picture
I may just get the pattern for the eye onto my pattern pages over the weekend - a lot depends on the weather, though as well as my memory!!!!
26 April 2007
Another pair
25 April 2007
Two pairs of earrings
24 April 2007
Now I know what it is!!!
Of course this little motif could be used for anything from a zip pull to a little sew on. I would like to experiment with a large 'dangly' bead in the centre of the bottom chain. The good thing about these Vlp's is that you can play with them when you get to them without the hassle of planning ahead and working out what beads to put where. Ideal for a lazy moo like me!!!!!
22 April 2007
What will this turn out to be?
20 April 2007
The Butterflies get better
Now everybody knows (or should by now!) that I like a little colour in my life!!!! I get into my tatting stash and then get lost in decision making on which colours of threads and then beads. I think my all time favourites for 'surprising' colours must be bright orange and bright pink. I make myself look at other combos too and this time I came up with the turquoise and blue. I'm pretty sure they worked just fine. Then the beads. I used to think that the 'same' coloured beads were the 'right' ones but now I'm into trying startlingly different ones. The second butterfly has turquoise and yellow beads with the orange and pink!!!!
19 April 2007
Wow and double, treble wow
15 April 2007
Earrings
11 April 2007
Mystery solved
10 April 2007
New arrival in Tatland
Oh, there's another mystery here. They all came with me to the Ring of Tatter's stand at the NEC a couple of weeks ago. They came home and were last seen 'lurking' in the middle room. I then realised after a few days that they were no longer there. They've been missing now for a week. I did hear a rumour that they were last seen heading towards Heathrow airport. I can't find their passports either so I''m getting a bit concerned. If ANYBODY knows anything about their whereabouts would they please let me know. I would be grateful of any sightings or any thoughts on where they could be.
8 April 2007
Another attempt
Later in the day and I've got the same butterfly in it's ring. Rarely do I get things finished within 24 hours of starting. I've usually 'mislaid' them in between times!!!
4 April 2007
Butterflies in rings
Thoughts on Tatting
I’ve been pondering about the following over the past few years and am offering this as my personal opinion on these subjects.
Copyright issues - Designs and Techniques.
I feel there are three intermingled issues here. I have been directly affected myself by all of the following and would like to make it clear to all who are interested in how I feel about them.
I get very upset if a pattern of mine is taken and reproduced with only slight alterations and then published as somebody else’s with their name as the ‘designer’. I think this is fair comment considering the amount of time that’s put into each design produced.
3 April 2007
Whooopppeeee!
I was going to add two more butterflies today but they can wait now!!! This arrival is MUCH and FAR too important to miss. Thanks again, Martha.
31 March 2007
Nothing done!
Just hope that I feel well enough today to be able to get to the NEC tomorrow with the Ring of Tatters. That annual trip is my 'treat' of the year!! I love helping to demonstrate there. Busy but fun.
29 March 2007
Pair of Butterflies
27 March 2007
Relaxing tatting
25 March 2007
Finished - I think!
I then went back to adding beads to the very long picots which is the second butterfly but I wasn't happy with this either.
All I have to do is finish off the drawing, put it all together and it's done! Another one off my list of 'to do's'!!! The hardest part of this design was getting it into my head that the rings were facing outwards and the chains inwards. Don't know why but I just couldn't get it going at first. I struggled with the instructions just after the fourth SR where a chain takes the worker to the lower left wing. This I did about six times just so I could get the SS or RW or whatever right! Just hope it is now!!!
23 March 2007
Looking a bit better!
22 March 2007
Not so good!!!
21 March 2007
Goody, goody, goody!
20 March 2007
Another project started
As a lot of people will know I use Serif DrawPlus for doing my drawings (along with a Wacom graphics pad). The way I normally work is by finding an image from the internet through searching Google images. I find a definitive picture to study and usually paste this onto a lower 'layer' of my file in Serif. This is then made transparent by 50% so that I can go back to the layer above and make a guess at how I would tat it - i.e. starting places, progression, techniques etc. First efforts are rarely any good but in the case of this butterfly I did quite well. I then tat this piece (guessing at numbers of ds etc) and scan it (see above). This again goes onto the lower layer in Serif and is made transparent. I can then 'draw' over it. This should be named the 'guestimate' stage!! Below you will see the result. I have added some more ideas to it which I now want to work on - one suggested by Sue. This is where life gets more complicated as this will throw out all the numbering on the text that I've already written in Word!!!! I've omitted the possible picots as I need a clear idea of where I need to join rings etc. I'm hoping that this will allow me to use two colours which is always difficult when working a piece in 'one hit'. Hopefully only one lot of ends to finish off too.
Hey, what's an old lady gonna do on a bitterly cold day in the UK?!?!? Tat and dream of butterflies!!!
19 March 2007
18 March 2007
Nearly finished
Here's another finger ring - my favourite so far although I am making one in a variegated purply, maroon thread!!!
Right, I'm off to finish the pages and then list some more Aero shuttles.
14 March 2007
The final version
11 March 2007
Drum roll, please!
I'm also working on a 'how to block tat without changing shuttles' instruction sheet too. I used this method for making the meercat BUT I'm sure the traditional way would work too.
Here's a url to the Oakland Zoo's information on meercats. http://www.oaklandzoo.org/atoz/azmeerkat.html and there are lots of pictures if you use google images.
Oh, I've also listed some more Aero shuttles on ebay too!!
10 March 2007
Another teaser
I think I've nearly got the back legs right at last!!! I'll 'tweak' them on the next one to make them a little better. This animal has claws which is what the cut picots at the end of the feet represent. Hey, ho, off to attack the face now!! Hopefully when this is done the guesswork and teasing will be over. Just below is the latest attempt done this afternoon.
7 March 2007
The latest pattern
Tuesday evening I bit the bullet and went back to the offending leg and after several more attempts did a reasonable one!! It's not that good yet but it's good enough to 'improve' on, I hope! In the end cause I couldn't decide whether to show the other back leg or not I cut the thread and decided about half past eight to have a go at the head! Now any normal person would just do a sideways looking or full frontal head but this isn't really in the character of the animal. About three goes with several retro tats and I finally got a head. Crikey, I thought, that's awful!! I've just looked at it again in the 'light of day' and actually it's not bad. Still needs quite a lot of tweaking etc, though. I'm not going to add the picture yet as I'd like another good evening sorting out a few of the problems!! At the moment the pattern has to be worked in two parts and I cannot see a way to avoid this. I love to avoid starting and stopping so I shall take another look at this too.
Well, that's the story, so far!!! I want to finish this animal soon as it's been living in my head for about a year now!!!
27 February 2007
Now where did this tatbead angel fly in from????
26 February 2007
New Tatbead arrived
25 February 2007
New stuff
19 February 2007
President's Day
Yes, I'm so VERY proud to announce the arrival of Abraham Lincoln. I bet you all thought he was dead but he's alive and well. Here's the link so you can go and visit him http://tinyurl.com/2l7ehb
Creative Commons Licence
Tatting and NOT a Lot Else by Jane Eborall is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://janeeborall.blogspot.co.uk/.