Got Thread?

I fell in love with Jess's "Forest Dusk" hand dyed thread and decided to treat myself. While I was at it, I choose a few more colors, and then took advantage of her special offer to give away some random skeins with each purchase.


She has a thread give-away going away on her Tat-ilicious blog, so check that out.


I am dying to try out some of this thread, but perhaps first I should get to work on making Christmas presents, or finish my Lace Mat, or work on my new pattern that still looks a lot like this:

Can I really wait that long? Probably not...

A heartfelt thanks to everyone who responded to my plea for help with using Blogger.  I've been able to make the improvements I was hoping for.

The Gathering

If you like Christmas music and old time string bands, I can recommend "The Gathering," a concert that will be coming to several locations in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. The schedule is here. It includes both traditional music and pieces written by members of the band.

I was lucky to see it this past weekend. The band includes Laurelyn Dossett from Polecat Creek, and Rhiannon Giddens from Carolina Chocolate Drops, my two favorite bands, so I had to go. There were other musicians I did not know previously, but enjoyed quite a lot.


If you can't go in person, you see it here on Youtube.


Your regularly scheduled tatting will resume shortly.

Surfing the Web

Last night, I saw that an alert reader over at the Yahoo Antique Pattern group has shared this link to 15 issues of Home Needlework Magazine, mostly from 1914-1915, free online. Most have tatting in them, and some really splendid crochet too. I should have been in bed or working on my next book, but nooo, there I was, downloading files and browsing through them through the wee hours.

About that Facebook thing.... Facebook always seemed to be an overwhelming bother since my newsfeed was choked with a huge amount of not-too-interesting stuff from total strangers. Like pictures of shoes.  Hundreds of shoes.  This came from accepting too many friend requests from people I didn't know, but had some friends in common. I decided to clean this up, and had unfriended some people before I realized I could simply remove them from the newsfeed. Sorry about that.  I've still got some cleaning up to do, but at least now I can log on now and then and see posts from people I actually know and some pretty pictures. I tend to wait and deal with a bunch of friend requests at once instead of one at a time, and now I usually just accept them from people I know, or who have really cool avatars. (Please don't take that as a challenge.)  Is there an advantage to having a bazillion "friends" you don't know?  I guess if I got active on Etsy again, it would be a good way to advertise.

About the Blogger thing... Some of you have tabs at the top to link to more Blogger pages for patterns and such. Some of you can reply to individual comments. How do you do that? I think I may have missed an opportunity to upgrade somewhere along the line, or maybe it's all there and I'm too dumb to find it.

There will be a new book. This is what I've got so far:

It might be ready later this year if I would quit wasting all my time on the internet.

PS. Don't tell my family they are all getting Dr Who t-shirts from RedBubble, another place where I've spent hours lately when I really should have been doing something else.

Tatting with Angeline

Bev's recent post reminded me that I never told you about my time with Angeline. Thanks to Fox's generosity, I had the loan of a rare copy of "Let's Tat" by Angeline Critchlow. Though the book may look unpolished by today's standards, I am so full of respect for Angeline’s labor of love creating this book. In the late 1970's there was not a good beginners instruction book, and she produced and hand bound this book with over 300 pages of instructions, vintage and original patterns. In the context of her era, without the advantages of computers, text editors, and scanners, this was an amazing accomplishment.

In 1976, the year of the Bicentennial, she saw many examples of crafting on display, but no tatting.  She decided then to devote herself to spreading the word about tatting.  She taught classes locally and produced this book plus a handful of thinner leaflets.

Here are a few of the things I made:

Thank you, Fox, for Angeline's Traveling Book!

You Lose Some and You Win Some

I tatted away all last week on my Lace Mat, only to discover after finishing Round 4 except for the little clovers, that I had made a Dreadful Mistake and had to cut off the whole round. Bother.

I didn't feel much like looking at it for a while, so I knitted all weekend. I eyed my dwindling skein of yarn with some trepidation, but finished the project with a whopping 2 yards left over.

The pattern is "Wingspan" by Maylin Tri'Coterie Designs, available as a free pattern on Ravelry. In a thicker yarn, it works up as a shawlette, but my rather thin yarn came out as a scarf,which is what I wanted anyway. I spun the yarn with a drop spindle, using hand painted Blueface Leicester top from Three Waters Farm.

You can see my earlier progress near the bottom of this post.

I'm Still Here

Just to show I am still here and tatting, here is my Lace Mat still in progress.

There has also been some gift tatting that I can't show yet.

The blue shuttle is one of Handy Hand's new Aerlit shuttles. This was just one of Barbara Foster's generous contributions to our Palmetto goodie bags. Those who know, say these shuttles compare with the original English Aeros. I know that it has been my main workhorse shuttle for 2 months, and it still has plenty of "click" left. I am really looking forward to these shuttles coming available in the shop, perhaps later this month.

Meanwhile, the weather has turned chilly, and I haven't finished knitting my scarf yet. Which in-progress project should I work on tomorrow?