A Comedy Of Errors

    I finally got the 5th round done on Beatrix. You've seen that before. I was test tatting it for Jane Eborall. I got the testing done  but I still want to finish the doily. Right now it is about 6 1/2" across. Of course I am using King Tut thread. One more round to go. The color is a variegated green, King Tut # 988, Oasis.

    Finishing this round was, as the title of the post says, a comedy of errors. I got to the end and found I had joined the last outer join to the wrong picot, one on the inside. That meant that if I went ahead and connected the last chain, then it would cross and twist and make a right mess. I got a little irritated and cut it from the ball and shuttle with an extra foot of thread on each, then put it down over night. This morning I picked it up to fix it.Since the place it joined was all chain, it was simple to undo, just pulling the core thread back out. Where the thread was really kinked I smoothed it with a fingernail. 

    Next I pinched the core thread in a Pop-A-Bobbin shuttle with no bobbin, just letting the pin lock it. That was easier than finger tatting this much. I recreated the chains and about halfway realized I had the thread coming out the wrong side of the shuttle. OK. Deal with it. I got to the end again and it still didn't look right. I was supposed to have 4-4. I didn't. I had used the wrong chain counts. There are two alternating counts. I had to undo that again and finally tat the correct chains. Now it is done. The extra thread I had left just guaranteed that I had enough to work with. Once it was sewn it, it came out pretty good. On to the next and final round! I wonder, how I can mess up that one?

In the Mail

     You know, lately, our mail has gotten worse and worse. When I moved here 15 years ago it came at about 10 a.m. A few years later it got to 11 a.m., then 2 p.m., then 5 pm. In recent months it has come at 6 and 7. Once they even skipped delivering on this street. I know. I was watching. Last evening I checked the mail at 6:45. Nothing. And I know there was supposed to be at least one letter. I do use informed delivery and it shows what is in the mail. I went to bed about 7:30. I don't know what time it arrived.

 

    I got up this morning and went to get the paper at about 5 a.m. It was in the box, as usual. I reached into the mailbox to see if anything was delivered at all. The letter was there. And something I was not expecting just yet. I got 2 new shuttles! Pop-A-Bobbin, of course. If you have seen the Tat's Heaven blog you know that they got hold of some yew wood. That made the mail worth the wait. I am glad I thought to check it. Aren't they beautiful?

     I have to get some thread on them and play. See ya later!

A Bookmark

    Just a simple bookmark. That's all. But in a metallic thread. I did this to remember why I don't like metallic thread. I signed up for a class at Tat Days and later found out metallic thread is required. OK. I will do it, but I won't like it. To me metallic thread is just aggravating to work with. It won't stay wound on the ball, you have to hold things together, and it tries to come off my little finger that I use for tension for chains. It feels "sticky" to work. To top it off, one ball unwound and several "ends" popped up. The thread is fragmented. 

 

    On the plus side, it is pretty. That's all. Pretty. I will do the class at Tat Days, then put this away somewhere. In someone else's stash, hopefully.

    Meanwhile, about 50 of us are attempting to do Tat Days this year. We are going overboard to try to be safe. Class sizes are very limited, we will wear masks, keep away from each other, and have a closed campus. We are also taking temperatures and filling out medical history forms. Well, maybe not a full medical history, but some questions like "have you been ill?". It should work. I will let you know. And I will say "Hi" to everyone for you.

    It has been interesting  the last couple weeks. I watched the IOLI UnCon speeches. They were pretty good. One about the speaker touring Europe and meeting bobbin lacers was the one I liked the most. And yes, I am a member of IOLI. I don't bobbin lace though. I have thought about it, but I really like my tatting, knitting, crochet, ham radio, 3d printing and woodworking (to name a few). I don't need another hobby right now.

    Just like at most "conventions", ok - Tat Days - , they had some free patterns available for the convention goers even though it was all on Zoom. Mimi Dillman, the cluny expert, had one in the collection that I have to try, so here goes. (As if I don't have enough UFO's right now.) She has a heart pattern that is really nice. I will show it here when I finish it.

So far I have made just a few tallies from it to get back into doing clunies. I see that somehow I have a thread in the wrong place so I will just try again. You may remember the looms I made by 3D printing a few years ago. I am trying that and I am trying to do it on the hand. When the arthritis acts up, I use the loom. I finally can relax my "dead spider" enough that I am not stressing my hand so I find I can do it that way sometimes. It may take a little while to finish this though.