In Love with Karey's New Heart

The latest issue of Tatting Times from Karey Solomon is especially nice because it has this heart with four variations. I fell in love with it as soon as I saw it.  This is the last variation; trust me to always start with the hardest.

It still needs blocking, and I'm missing a couple of beads where I made a boo-boo, but I'm very happy with it.  I'll make some of the other variations later.

I tinkered a bit with the instructions, though not the stitches themselves.  Karey reminds us, rightly so, that post shuttles are better than bobbin shuttles for carrying lots of beads.  Her low stress approach to this pattern is to tell us to load a goodly number of beads on 2 shuttles and when one shuttle gets low on beads, do a SLT and switch shuttles. But you know I love my bobbin shuttles.  A careful analysis of the pattern showed most of the beads are on shuttle 2 if you don't switch.  Also, there are lots of lock joins, where a hook is so much better than the point of a post shuttle. So, I wound most of the thread and beads onto an oversized post shuttle (a SewMate was big enough) and used an Aero for shuttle 1 with just a few beads on it. I could have it both ways, happy dance.  Also, I noticed that most of the work is chains, or rings thrown off with the chain shuttle, so I began the first ring as though working on the back side, so that most of the time, I would be working on the front side.

I really recommend a subscription to Tatting Times, so you can find gems like this in your mailbox.  Many of the patterns eventually show up in her books later, so I'm looking forward to an exceptional future book as well.

Here are links to Karey's blog and her website.

Spinning and Knitting Again

I think most of us practice more than one craft.  While tatting is my favorite hobby, I also do a bit of spinning, knitting, crochet & etc.  Here is a project I completed in November.  I can't remember when I started.

I started with roving that I bought from Karey.  Her hand-painted thread is famous in Tatting Land, but you may not have realized she dyes yarn and roving as well.  She has a remarkable feeling for color. I spun it on a hand spindle and two-plied it.

I started with a the Esperanza pattern from Ravelry, but I took a few liberties with the design.

Here is a picture to give an idea of the finished size.  And you just try taking a selfie with your back to the mirror sometime.

I'm already pretty advanced with my next spinning adventure.  I'm trying to do the long draw drafting method and spinning from the fold.  Look at all those words I picked up on Ravelry, so I can pretend I know what I'm doing.

Ta-tilicious Thread & etc

Jess! at Tat-ilicious has very generously sent me some of her HDT.

This is her "Harvest" colorway, with a nice mix of red/gold/brown in both size 20 and 80.

Here is some "Red Velvet," a very warm rich reddish brown. The other is a skein from a trial run that wasn't what she was looking for, but I like this one more each time I look at it. Sort of grey/yellow/fuschia. I will have to find good projects for all of these.

I am excited to hear that she will be coming to the Palmetto Tat Days this year. It is so much better shopping for thread in person since cameras and monitors don't always capture its true personality, especially for HDT.

The spinning adventure continues. Here is some very brown undyed Corriedale, and some bright hand dyed Blue Faced Leicester.  Before I started this, I thought wool was just, well, wool.  It turns out there are umpteen varieties of it, not to mention fiber from other animals.

Believe it or not, I actually do some tatting once in a while. I made several butterflies last week, but I've been too lazy busy to work in the ends and block them.

But I did find this picture of a piece I made a while back and never showed. This is Karey's Heart of the Rose from her Hearts Belong to Tatting, made with some her own HDT. Since it comes from a book, I can count it toward my own special rules 25 Motif Challenge. I think this comes to number 10 for this round of the challenge. I haven't been doing too well getting this round accomplished.

Please Stand By - Your Regularly Scheduled Tatting Will Resume Shortly

My internet connection has been up and down, mostly down, all month.  Finally a service tech seems to have solved the problem today.    In the meantime, I have been mostly checking email on my Nook via public wifi spots.  I seem to have accidentally deleted some of them, so if anyone is awaiting a long overdue reply please send again.

I've got soooo much catching up to do.

Here's one of the things I made since last time: Karey's Hidden Picture Heart in Lizbeth 145 Pink Parade. She taught this pattern at Lodi this year and it was also in the most recent issue of Tatting Times. Isn't this a great design?  Of course I fell for the the little bits of block tatting.

Heart Nouveau- Motif # 8

I actually made a motif from one of those unused books on the shelf! How did that happen? Probably because I have lots of other things I am supposed to be working on :)

This is "Heart Nouveau" from Karey's Hearts Belong to Tatting, and make in some of Karey's hand painted thread. I thought this pattern was interesting because of the way the long rings just below the center are made to curve.

Motif Four--Slippery Heart

Here is another entry for my "Exercise Your Stash Challenge". This is a large ball which looks like it lost its label long ago. Judging by the texture, I suppose it may be rayon. I got it from Sherry, who was about to put it on the free stuff table at Hector one year.

I don't recommend tatting with slippery slithery threads, but you may find yourself tempted (Oooh, shiny! shiny!) She didn't like it enough to keep it, but I liked the pink and purple shades.

When working with slippery thread consider:
1) Choose a small project because you will get sick of it.
2) Choose a motif with few decorative picots, because the tatting will tend to loosen up and absorb the picots. Tatting tightly helps a little. After you are finished, take a hook and pull all the picots back into shape.
3) While working, double check rings before proceeding to the next element. The thread will want to relax and let rings open just a little bit, so give them one more tug before moving on.
4) Avoid Josephine rings. I'm not sure if this goes for all rayon threads, but this one got twisty and cantankerous.
5) Leave extra long tails for sewing in because the thread will likely fray at the ends. I hardly every tie and glue, but I suspect rayon threads might not stay glued.
6) The better the quality the thread, the easier it will be to tat with. (Well obviously...) I seem to remember YLI Pearl Crown Rayon being more user friendly.



For my project, I chose Peaceable Heart from Make Many Merrily by Karey Solomon. This is a very nice pattern worked all in one pass thanks to the use of split rings. Working with the thread was a bit of a pain in the butt for all the reasons above, plus the plies wanted to separate, and then both my magic threads broke and it was hard to cleanly sew in the ends.

But in the end I had a serviceable heart, and I do like the shiny pink and purple. I guess I'll keep that ball.