Round 13 Done

    Round 13 of Renulek's 2020 Spring Napkin is now finished. My hand is working a lot better now and I am getting my speed back. The next few rounds are simple and should go pretty quickly.

    Pleasant surprise this morning. I have been checking her website for the 2024 Spring Napkin every day. The other day, I emailed her and asked when and if the 2024 would be out. She didn't email back, but this morning it is on her website, here: http://renulek.blogspot.com/. I have already been to Etsy and purchased the pattern. I know I could just follow along on the web each week, but I like to support designers. I also like a written pattern. It will be a while before I get to it, but I do collect them and have all of them so far.
 

Some New Earrings

 

    I have not made earrings for a while so today I thought I would. Something different to do. I found  the pattern for these in an Italian magazine called IL Mio Chiacchierino, Issue #1. It asked for DMC #90, oranges and yellow, for spring or summer earrings. I had Lizbeth 188, Coral Splash. I think it looks about as good. Now to find someone who wants them. I think I will check with the girl who cut  my hair the other day.

I Did It My Way

    I decided to try making the happy pill as a "continuous" piece instead of 2 pieces joined. Joining in the middle seemed to be a little fiddly (one of my favorite words) more so than I care for. That probably has to do with big fingers and little thread. Also a bad hand. I still drop the shuttle a lot and have a hard time controlling the direction it is pointing. 

    So anyway, I tatted the first half, then tied off the thread leaving a tiny fake picot. I left the threads a little long, maybe 4 inches, so I could tat over them. I rewound with the second color, green, and started the next ring as 3+3 on a picot 2 ds back from where I tied off. Then I made the second half of a split ring as (vsp 3 vsp 3) cl. I made a normal 3+3/3-3,cl. Next ring has to be where the end of the last round was so I 3+3, joining to the tiny fake picot and covering threads with the second set of 3 ds. I finished the ring with /3-3, cl. Now just finish the round and go on to the next 2 rounds as usual for this pattern.

    I got up and went to the next room. Why did I come in here? I start to go back to my tatting and remember -- Get some polyfil. I hate getting old. I do that a lot, too. So now I stuff the pill. Next I make the ring for the bottom, joining to the 5 picots on the previous round.

 

 

    This time I decided not to make the pill so Goth. I used red lipstick. I am not too good at applique, but it works for me. So, my experiment worked. It made it a bit easier for me to make this. Not quite so "fiddly".

Tatted Amigurumi

 

     Jane Eborall had to post a happy pill pattern yesterday. I just had to make it. It was an interesting tat, mostly split rings. I am glad she wrote out the pattern. It was handy to use because I probably would have made mistakes without double checking with it. My result is in the picture. Isn't this amigurumi? In tatting?

    I got to wondering about the pattern and the progression. Since I did the red part first, what was the best way to do the second part, the blue? The instructions are, more or less, the same progression for both, joining in the middle to end it. Would it be a little less fiddly to stop the red, switch to blue, then continue from the center to the end? I may try that in a day or two.