7 of 25

Pattern: Queen of Hearts from the book Tatting With Visual Patterns by Mary Konior.
Thread: Lizbeth size 20, col 114.
Technique: Shuttle tatted.

I liked doing this pattern. I didn't even forget to do any of the joins.

7 of 25 Originally uploaded by michl_007 on 27th October, 2009

I may well make this heart again but in a different colour.

Some People Want Shooting

Got the train home just before 10pm this evening. It was quite busy. A man was sat on the floor, his female friend sat on the seat near to him. A group of about half a dozen drunken idiots were pestering the man but he was taking it well, smiling, shaking their hands. Two of them took umbrage at... God knows what and started laying into this man. The female tried to stop them and they all started laying into her, throwing punches. I tried shouting for reason, what man (let alone group of men) would hit a female?!? They did not take notice of me, as I suppose was expected. Police were called, thugs removed from train. I don't know how the couple are, hopefully... I would say "hopefully okay" but that seems a stupid thing to say.

Some people should do the honourable thing and just drop down dead.

Two More Down

Pattern: Patchwork from the book Tatting With Visual Patterns by Mary Konior.
Thread: Lizbeth size 20, col 601.
Technique: Shuttle tatted.

I quite enjoyed this one and haven't blocked it yet as I may do some more to make a runner.

I was very good and managed to make myself sew the ends in right away but I didn't enjoy it one bit. I did a test ring and tryed the "magic thread" method of finishing an end but found the stitches were tighter than I needed, which led to the ring opening up. I did another test with this method (pdf) and it worked very well so am going to see how it works on a finished piece.

6 of 25 Originally uploaded by michl_007 on 24th October, 2009

Pattern: Flower Fragment, from the book Tatting With Visual Patterns by Mary Konior.
Thread: Lizbeth size 20, col 684 & col 142.
Technique: Shuttle tatted.

A bit of a rush job with some thread that was left over on my shuttles.

5 of 25 Originally uploaded by michl_007 on 24th October, 2009

Free Patterns My Eye

I didn't want all my items for the 25 Motif Challenge to be from a book. I wanted to mix it up with some of the free patterns that I've found online. This has proved to be more difficult than I first thought as the patterns seem to contain mistakes or ommissions more often than not. On one ring a pattern will tell you to reverse the work, the next ring will tell you not to reverse the work, so far so good. The third ring will not state how to proceed and the following ring will direct you to reverse. Gah! If I have to keep scrolling back to view the image then why write a pattern at all, why not just superimpose the stitch numbers onto a diagram. It's not that I expect all patterns to follow the same method but surely a single pattern should be consistent throughout?!?

4 of 25

Pattern: Black Magic, from the book Tatting With Visual Patterns by Mary Konior.
Thread: Lizbeth size 20, col 604.
Technique: Shuttle tatted.

I made a couple of false starts with this one but glad I persevered as I like how it came out. Using black is good because it hides small mistakes.

4 of 25 Originally uploaded by michl_007 on 16th October, 2009

I really enjoyed this pattern and will definitely be doing it again in another colour. I'm liking this Mary Konior book very much.

Took delivery of nine more balls of Lizbeth today. I got a few of the variegated colours this time just to see how they work up.

Infuriating

Gah! I was trying to make what seemed like a relatively easy motif but messed it up three times. Need to work on my concentration.

Infuriating Originally uploaded by michl_007 on 14th October, 2009

I'm trying another edging pattern from my Mary Konior book instead which seems to be going a lot better but I'll come back to this pattern eventually.

3 of 25

Pattern: Curds and Whey, from the book Tatting With Visual Patterns by Mary Konior.
Thread: Lizbeth size 20, col 663.
Technique: Shuttle tatted.

3 of 25 Originally uploaded by michl_007 on 13th October, 2009

I started towards the left hand side with small picots but wanted to see how it would look if I made them a bit larger. I only managed a few rings before I forgot to join and since I wasn't going to attempt unpicking I cut it off and called it done.

Shuttles Originally uploaded by michl_007 on 13th October, 2009

Three shuttle brands. Clover at the top, grey ones are Inox-Prym and random yellow one.

I like the Clover ones best other than the fact that they don't have a hook on the end so I sometimes find it difficult to get the thread through small picots. I quite like the Inox-Prym too. They yellow one is pretty crap to be honest, with a wobbly hook and a hard feel to it. I might file it in the bin.

2 of 25

I quite like this... edging? I need to pull the chains tighter I think but my stitches are becoming more even. Maybe smaller joining picots would be better also.

Tomorrow I may take a couple of pictures of the bits I got from Roseground.

2 of 25 (Detail) originally uploaded by michl_007 on 11th October, 2009

Tatting

I wanted to crochet a bookmark and kept getting frustrated by the fact that I kept finding tatting patterns and didn't even know what tatting was. One evening a couple of weeks ago I decided to learn and rushed out to my LYS in the hopes that they could help with shuttles and/or needles. They had a shuttle, yay! They had some thread too which I wasn't overly happy with as it didn't seem to have much of a twist which I'd read online was helpful with tatting, still I gave it a go.

A week later and my home looked like a place where thread comes to die but since the man in the LYS had said that his wife tried and failed at the craft I was pleased as punch that I'd got my stitches to flip.

I have since found an online supplier (Roseground) who I'm impressed with. They could probably have more products/patterns online but they have a selection good enough to suit my current needs and they have lightning fast delivery. One day last week I placed an order at lunch time and it was with me the next morning.

Anyhoo... I've decided to sign up to the 25 Motif Challenge as a way of encouraging my limited tatting skills and this is my first real effort at making something, even if it's tiny. And no it isn't technically finished as you can see from the open end however that's due to lack of the right sized needle.

1 of 25 originally uploaded by michl_007 on 11th October, 2009