It all started with this!!!

You’ll probably guess that I get surrounded in lots of tatty bits when I’m on a designing spree. I’d actually decided not to do anymore designing anyway after the protracted midi snowflakes and all the worrying I did about copyright and treading on people’s toes. 

Then it came to tidying up and I was about to throw the top scrap in the bin when I thought it looked like a cat!!! Well I do have quite a good imagination!!!

So I picked up a pair of shuttles and started playing as you can see in the second picture. Sadly the ‘cat’ appears to have just one ear. Well, that’s if it ends up being a cat when I’ve finished playing.

I never start with a drawing of what I want to make and always just pick up shuttles and see what happens. Wonder where this adventure will take me!!!g

Start of the hat.

Now the hat I wanted to make to go with this scarf became my next project.

Last Tuesday (or was it the Tuesday before) Anne came to the craft group with three balls of yarn which she didn’t want and I brought in some fabric too. It was a great coincidence as amongst the fabric was some that she liked and the balls of yarn became a very good swop for both of us!!!  The pink (well it’s darker than it looks on this picture) is a great match for the scarf.  Luck’s on my side with this project already.  

I thought that knitting a hat with a rib (knit one, purl one) would be very slow using the continental method but in fact it turned out to be pretty fast. The video that I found most useful is this one and you’ll notice she knits into the back of the stitch. This (for me) makes it much easier to purl. I’m not sure why but that’s the way it is!!!

You know what I’ll be doing for the next day or two - knitting!!!!

A new scarf

For my birthday in October my dear Joanie gave me this scarf. 

It's very long (BRILLIANT) and she gave it to me when I was staying with her in Florida back in September. Not the sort of place you need a scarf very often I should think!!!

Well it's gone REALLY cold lately so I got it out and put it on. It's very light and has lots of holes which trap the air and I must tell you - it's the WARMEST scarf I've ever owned. It's wonderful that it's so long as it goes round the aged neck a couple or more times (doubled) and it sits snuggly in the neck of my coat too.

Now I have a pair of gloves that are blue but I don't have a hat to go with it so you can guess what my next task is going to be, can't you?!?!

Butterflies in Flight

This is another of the lessons I taught at Palmetto Tat Days and which I've remembered I'd not added to my site!! I found another pattern too but need a few hours to sort it so it won't be arriving until next week!!

Some of you will recognise the basic SCMR butterfly that I did years and years and centuries ago and which can be found here.  The original pattern is so old that I can see I haven't even got a date on it. Probably thought it wasn't important back in those days but now I realise it probably is a good idea to date my work!! 

This new idea took some working out and I haven't really given a reason  for making it as it could become a bracelet, an edging or even a bookmark.  I may well play around with this one further.  I did have a version where I had a lock chain going over the first wing but it was so complicated to explain and it kept sort of twisting on me.  Having discussed this with Joanie (my wonderful test tatter) I decided it wasn't worth the hassle and would've been too hard to get that part done in a class and we'd probably have run out of time!!!

Anyway, here's the pattern link.

Waistcoat finished

I blame my 'need' to really get to grips with continental knitting for this!! I've been knitting like crazy and am now very, very comfortable with this method of wielding knitting paraphernalia!!!

In fact I've actually already worn it and it fits a treat and is very comfortable.

You can see I managed to sort the pockets too and they were actually very easy and add a bit of interest to what is otherwise a very plain waistcoat. 

Now, what shall I do next? Who knows!!!

Moaning Monday!

I’ve decided that when I want to moan about something it should be on a Monday!! Why? Well simply because it sounds good and is an alliteration - Moaning Monday!!!

So this won’t happen every Monday as I’m not normally a moaner - in fact I am  a happy little soul. Or should that be old git!

My moan will be of no interest to most people this week as most readers don’t run a blog but it may get me some help with mine.

As you’ve noticed I run adverts on my blog as they give me a little income towards the running of my pattern site which is here. 

Recently I keep getting warnings on my Adsense dashboard that my ads aren’t running on a lot of my url’s and that I was losing income. 

That’s going to hurt if the income dries up.  I earn about £60 every 7 to 9 months when readers click on the adverts.  Now, come on, Adsense, I thought I had one url which is/was https://janeeborall.blogspot.co.uk but apparently not!  This is one of the url’s that is a problem too!  

Is there anybody ‘out there’ who has the same problem or could guide me on ‘what to do’?  I’ve clicked links, read stuff (which BC3 doesn’t quite ‘get’) and even changed the blog quite a bit (did you notice?).  The warnings are still there!!! 

So, that’s the end of Moaning Monday and here’s the warning I keep getting!!

Lots of Roly Poly bags

Well I'm 'bagged out' for now!!!

Thank you to those who ordered roly poly tat bags back a couple of weeks ago. All orders are now fulfilled and the table is cleared and machine put away!!! 

There WILL be more in the future but I'm just going to grab my chances when the weather is warm enough to sew in the conservatory (and BC3 is in the mood). Here are a few I made.

Pattern finished!

These three are, I think, made with Karey's HDT.  I'm in a 'gold bead only' mood at the moment as they 'go' with everything. 

I did fall out with them the other evening when I sent them flying (the beads, that is).  A trip to the bottom of the tatting cupboard for the stocking that I have living there, a few minutes with the hand held vacuum (stocking over the long tool thingy) and they were all safely 'gathered in' again. 

Here's the link to the pattern - at LAST!!  Please take time to read the history and to add to it (via comments or email) any other information you may have.  

I'm extra careful over copyright as I've had my work taken a few times and know how upsetting it can be so I wouldn't want to do that to anybody else.

More progress

Just realised I blogged this picture before but things are still going well.  Maybe I need a new BC3, though!!!

Well the waistcoat is progressing well. Although I took this picture a week ago I'm still knitting up a storm!!! 

This is the pocket in place but there are no instructions on finishing it so I'm going to have to 'wing it'!!! Shouldn't be too hard, though. Knitting is so much more forgiving than tatting where one double stitch can make the world of difference!!

I'm back snowing again!

I'm still playing with these little snowflakes and am hoping to get them up on the site later this week along with the background stories to them.

I think the yarn is a Yarnplayer one and I've been keeping it for 'best' for ages!!!

New Snail

I thought I'd better get this snail onto my site PDQ (Pretty Darn Quick) as I am in danger of forgetting him/her!!!

This is a similar one to the other on my site which I amended slightly to make it 'class friendly' for Palmetto. 

While I was doing it I devised a simpler way of getting the beads onto the ends of the feelers without too much pain to do!!! I may well use this idea for another design which is lurking in the aged brain!!!

Here's the link to the snail!!

More progress

I'm afraid that not much tatting is getting done at the moment. I'm 'hooked' on knitting since I got home from America.

As you can see I'm now on my second front so just hope it fits in the end.

I LOVE the bamboo knitting needles Joanie gave me. They're really easy on the hands. You can see the pocket that I'm making on this. It's gone a bit 'curly' at the top so I will probably put a few rows of ribbing on it when I've finished. It doesn't say to on the pattern and, in fact, doesn't give any instructions for finishing the pockets. 

What I love about this old fashioned pattern is that it gives you the stitch count at each stage which a lot of patterns I've worked in the past don't.

Whoops a daisy!!!

Last week a new store opened about a mile away from me - just 'out of town' but within an easy walking distance.

Why am I mentioning this? Well because it's a miracle. 

Prior to this our only two fabric/yarn stores had closed down in town and it was hard (almost impossible) to buy even a sewing needle although we do have an EXCELLENT curtain/yarn supplier just on the outskirts of the town. 

Of course I had to go and check out the new Hobbycraft last Thursday. It's wonderful (apart from no tatting supplies) to have such a resource so close to home. I wandered around and found some boxes which I thought might be 'just right' for my sewing stuff. Mine is around forty years old and a bit small for what I try to put in it. So I found what looked fine to me and took one out of it's polythene sleeve, opened it and decided that perhaps I didn't really 'need' a new one and this was a bit 'flimsy' too. I carefully put it back in the sleeve and popped it on the display. Just as I was turning round to leave the whole display fell down!!!

Now it made quite the clattering noise!! What you might call an embarrassingly  LOUD clattering noise which went on forever. Finally I found I couldn't move as the boxes were literally all around me. Two assistants came and sorted it out (they decided to take them all out of the sleeves) while I discretely took a photo. Hope I'm not barred in future from Hobbycraft.

Just a reminder

As it's 'that' time of the year when some people celebrate (if that's the right word!) Halloween I thought I might put a reminder that I do have a couple of 'suitable' patterns lurking around.

The witch is an old one and she can be found here.

There's a skull here which is a quick tat.

I have two spiders as well. First this one and then there's my favourite which I really love wearing and they're here.

More fabric for Roly Poly Tat Bags!

Although I’ve got even more fabric than this - these are some that I find are really appealing for the bags.

Another one made too - cherry ripe would be a good name for this one!!! It's ready to send to Sue (Pigmini).  This one has a white lining (which is what I usually use) so that a tatter (or whoever!) can find things inside it easily.

I was hoping to make myself a new one next and I think it'll have to be the crazy cat fabric I showed back here but fortunately I have other orders that have appeared so my 'spare' time is going to be busy again.  That's good as idle hands (like mine) get up to mischief!

Useful tips from Teri Dusenbury.

"TATtle TALES" TATTING and TAT-BEAD Patterns

✋-Tatting With Your Fingers...

Start the process of learning to tat with a positive attitude and an ounce of determination.

✋-Tatting With Your Fingers

Happy Tatting!  Video.

Demonstrated by Teri Dusenbury.

C-Lon® D Beading Thread Store Link

C-Lon® AA Beading Thread Store Link

C-Lon® Micro Tex 70 Cord Store Link

C-Lon® Fine Tex 135 Cord Store Link

C-Lon® Bead Tex 210 Cord Store Link

C-Lon® Heavy Tex 400 Cord Store Link

©1988 -♥- 2020 by Teri Dusenbury.

Coriolis finished

Now for something new!!!

This is the Coriolis that you've seen a few times before. I submitted it for a class at Palmetto this year but it wasn't taken up. No problem as they did accept the other patterns and I went and had a FANTASTIC time too.

The following weekend the group had their regular guild meeting and asked if I had anything I could teach - if I wanted to!! I'm always willing to share and fortunately had left a copy of the Coriolis on my iCloud account so could send it to them for printing. Apparently there are usually around four people who turn up for the meeting so it was incredible that around fourteen actually arrived! It was a very relaxed afternoon although I was running around like a headless chicken most of the time!!! 

Anyway, here's the link to the pattern for you to try.

As it's worked all in one without any ends (except the last one, of course) and also if done using the lazy way of block tatting there's no need to even take the threads off the hand except for split rings or the ring on the chains on the outside!!!

I've also added the edging instructions too.

One more made and more fabric

I’m just going to put a selection of the fabrics I’ve got which maybe of interest if anybody wants to order a Roly Poly Tat Bag. I'm taking orders so please contact me if you want anything in particular.

I was searching for a link to show you some of the bags I'd made in the past and was gobsmacked to realise that it was six or more years ago when I was in the height of production!!! Here's a link for you to see. There are also two 'poke proof' pouches on this page too!!

Here's one I made yesterday (well, finished off as I was waiting for my zip order to arrive).  Can  you see the contrast fabric I used for the lining?  Love this little bag.  

Sincere aplogies

To Dora Young, her grandson (who graciously gave permission for the reprint), Heidi Nakayama (who spent years getting it together) and Patti Duff (for gifting me a rare copy of the original book) for something I regret doing.

In my enthusiasm for Dora’s work I've posted the things I've made on this blog many times, as readers will know. I now regret having done that as thieves are about.

On Saturday I had a notification about a new post on Just-Tatting (a Facebook group that I belong to). This one made me curious as the lady had posted a poor rendition of a Dora Young pattern. I normally keep quiet as I like to read people's reactions to things on Facebook before I say anything - this time I didn't wait long. By the way, she's got 53 'likes' for this which proves to me that people DO NOT read the whole story. Why would you 'like' something that very quickly was brought to the group's notice, by the lady concerned, that the pattern was stolen?

This lady had STOLEN the pattern off the internet and, I later realised, that another of Dora's patterns that she was asking for help with had been STOLEN off my blog (I asked her to remove it and she appears to have done that) but am now worried that the other one she stole and copied also came from my blog too.

So in future I will NOT be posting large pictures of other people's patterns. More work for me but that's my problem. 

I'm sure copy tatting goes on a lot and sharing of patterns (secretly) too but it will come to a stage when designers will stop making books and patterns for us to use as they won't be able to make any money from doing that due to copying. 

I took the decision in the beginning not to charge for my work in order to try and keep the craft alive but running the web site does cost me money (now around £60.00 a year) which I try to recuperate from running the ads on this blog. 

Anyway, to cheer up the page I'm showing you another midi snowflake using Sue's HDT with gold beads.  Hope to have this pattern up and running next week!!

Sidedtracked

I bought some yarn while I was in America as I wanted to practice continental knitting which I'd learned from Youtube.

Last winter I sat and made myself learn this 'new to me' way of working with knitting needles and must say that I enjoyed it as it's more like crochet. 

My Aunty Nelly was disgusted that her sister (my grandmother) had encouraged me to tat at the age of 13 but that she couldn't get me interested in crochet!!! She was a great needlewoman just like my gran too. 

It wasn't until she'd died many years before that, at the age of 32, I was so disgusted with myself that I sat down with books and taught myself to crochet!!! For some reason it now doesn't do my right hand a lot of good as I have a small problem with it. Knitting is fine, though. 

I wanted something simple (as in stocking stitch) so I could get practice and thus speed with my new way of knitting so I started a waistcoat (or, as they say in America, a vest). The pattern said to start on one of the fronts but I wanted to get the back done first so that I'd know if I'd got enough yarn. Here's the back and the good news is that I will have enough!!! 

Joanie gave me a whole set of bamboo knitting needles which are really comfortable to use too so that inspired me to keep going too!!!  Don't we all like new 'toys'?