What Came Next

Well, after that disappointment described last time, years went by, and I would binge on one type of needlecraft, grow tired of it, and switch to another. In the late 1990's I had been on a long spell of crocheting and beginning to weary when something happened. I got one of my kids to show me how to log on the internet and use a search engine. (Had to go to the public library for that!) There were tons of hits for crochet, but a much smaller, more manageable number of tatting sites. And the tatting there was much more exciting than my Dover reprints.

I began to lurk. I discovered Celtic tatting and adapted the concept to crochet. (Yes, I did go back to sending stuff in to magazines eventually.)



I remember telling myself that was the last crochet I would do for a long time, because I was ready to tat!

I don't know how long I kept on lurking. Then on Oct 28, 2000, I came out and introduced myself on TatChat. (I know this since I found a copy of part of that post whilst cleaning and sorting.) The title of that post was something like "I tatted a cat and a bat", because not only did I introduce myself, I shared patterns for two little doodles. I was designing tatting again.

There were no pictures with those introductory doodles, and the notation was primitive, but one could take that message and maybe tat up something like this:



I worked those up today, and about an hour later, I found the original cat in all its lumpy size 10 glory in one of my endless bags-o-stuff. What fun!



That December I made up my Hairpin Lace Angel, and a few months later the Itty-Bitty Bumble Bee which became the original block critter. I was off and running.

I hope my trips down memory lane don't seem too egocentric. Tell me to stop. Who knew sorting and packing could be fun. I have this nagging suspicion the rest of the apartment won't be so interesting.