Working With Split Rings

    A friend said they are having a little trouble with split rings, so I made a couple of short videos to show them how to get around the problem. First up is just how I make a picot on the "split" part of the ring. I call the part of the split ring that is closest to me the split part. You make the stitches as RODS, of course. 

 The other problem they were having was how to attach the split ring to a picot on another element. It is a little tricky until you understand that the core thread has to remain the core thread. This video shows how it works.

    I hope these help explain this to those who have not yet "gotten it".

Return of the Duchess

She is back! For a limited engagement, she has returned. This is, for some reason, one of my favorite little tats. I like making it. It is Jane Eborall's 2017 TIAS pattern. It does not take long and it has a variety of stitches. I have done her in a variety of threads, too. I have used not only several colors, but also several sizes. This one is the latest. The colors are 997 Alabaster and 991 Sahara Shadows. This is in King Tut quilting thread. The Duchess, as I call her, is not as big as the shuttle I used!

As I said a couple of posts earlier, I kept hearing about this thread. Now I find I do like to tat with it. It pulls through a ring very easily. It has little twist coming off the spool. I will probably be doing quite a bit with it in the future.

Delivered! Finally.

    If you have looked at this blog for a year or so you may remember I made a top hat in May of 2017. I did it because there is a tea house here called Top Hat. I was there and the owner had crochet hangings but no tatting, so I decided to make some tatting for her. That is why I made the hat. One of the ladies at work is good with ribbon so she made the hat band for it.

    Today, the hat was delivered. Four of us, Lois, Brandi, Ava and I went to lunch. When we had finished we called the owner over and gave her the hat. She loved it! Now she wants to buy my lunch. I did not do it for that. I just wanted to get some tatting out in the public eye. I was pleased that she did like it, though.

Thread For A Tryout

    I keep seeing and hearing about this one brand of thread, King Tut, by Superior Threads. Since it seems several people are enamored of it, I decided to order some and test it myself. I have not quite decided what to do with it, but I do have an idea. I ordered 5 spools of 500 yards. I figured that a few colors would not be a bad thing and would let me see how it runs in the color variants.
    When I went to the Superior Threads website, I chose King Tut and was amazed at the colors. There are 135 colors. The first 100 make up the "Egyptian" theme colors. That is inventive, to say the least. One color I have little of is browns. I got Alabaster, Cedars, Sahara Shadows, Sahara Desert, and Sphinx. From creams to browns. This should be a good mix.

What am I going to do with it? I am not sure, but I did just sign on for a round robin on Craftree, so I may just use it for that. I have tried a few rings and chains already. It seems to tat well, pull smoothly and it is strong. I will tell more after I give it a proper workout. Oh, by the way, you can also get the first 100 colors as a set for about $800. Order one for me too. Thanks.

Trying Something New

    I am trying out something new today. No, not tatting. I found my cam and thought about making a short clip. I decided that since I just put a new tablecloth on that old table I sit at, maybe I would not be so ashamed to try video, so here we are. Yes, it has sound. Please excuse the heavy breathing. I was almost on top of the cam and it has a built in microphone.
    I restarted the Spring Napkin. I am up to round 3, not far from done. Round 3 has thrown rings. One thing I hate is when I get a thrown ring that has a gap between the ring and the chain. This short video shows what I do to eliminate that problem. Actually, I do this almost everywhere. I am not, by the way, doing front side - back side tatting, though I have.

I think for a first try that the video came out ok. I probably should have a script because I was hesitating a lot. I even almost forgot the word "chain". I also spotted an error. I put the second half stitch under the ring, said don't count it, and started counting at 2. Oops! I am not going to go back and add one stitch.

Tear It Out

    AAAggghhh! I have to tear it out. I counted back and found where I missed something. On round 5 there are 24 connections. I only counted 23. I looked closer and there is a missed connection. That causes the count to be off. The solution? Tear it out or do it all over. I am going to tear it out first and see if I can just make the correction and move on. If it becomes too cumbersome, I will just start over. Let me see where it goes. (That's just tatting!)

    The bad news, I clipped a picot. That's it. Redo. Won't be that much and I don't want it to look pieced together. I should just wait for the new thread I have coming, but I won't. I have enough of this to do the doily.
    The good news is the epidural seems to have worked so far. I got it Tuesday. This is Friday. No pills. No pain. Hope it holds.

I Was Uncle Festered

    Its been an interesting few weeks lately. I really don't think I talk too much about my life outside of tatting, maybe I do, I don't know. But I have been dealing with sciatica for a while now. It started the 19th of December and really got bad. I finally got to a doctor. He put me on painkillers until I could see a neurosurgeon. Then I have had to do physical therapy for a few weeks. Finally, yesterday, I was Uncle Festered. You don't have any idea, do you? You remember the Addams Family probably. The old TV show. One of Uncle Fester's lines was "Shoot him in the back!" Well, yesterday they did that to me. The doc gave me a version of an  epidural. She (yes, she) put some kind of concoction into my back but did not penetrate the spinal cord, like a spinal tap would. The objective, in my understanding, is that it should make the bulging disc shrink back down off the sciatic nerve and numb that nerve for a while. I get to see the surgeon again in a few weeks. Hopefully it will do what he wants and I won't need surgery.

    Meanwhile, I have been tatting. I now have round 6 of the Spring Napkin done. I will start round 7 tonight. It should be interesting. I am climbing out of every round. This one comes into a sort of butterfly arrangement so I have to figure the path to develop it and be able to proceed with the rest of the round. I  think I already have it. Probably not as hard as it looks at first. I just have to try.

The Spring Napkin Round 4

    I managed to finish round 4 yesterday. It's a good thing I had the day off. Round 4 ended in a similar manner as round 3. That is, split chain, split ring, start round 5 with split ring. I like this doily. It will be a nice break from making horses for my carousel.
    I was afraid that the size 100 was going to be hard to work, but after round 3, I see that it is not. It is not a lot smaller than size 80. That is a good thing because I spent a good part of round 3 untatting. There are 2 different rings on round 3 and I kept getting them confused. I would catch myself after about 4 stitches, which meant take out 2 stitches and add a picot, or take out 2 stitches and remove the picot. I finally got it right. Undoing a few stitches was not particularly difficult.
    Another thing I had to manage was when I started a ring or chain. Getting the first stitch to snug up to the previous element was sometimes a minor challenge. Of course, if it left a gap, I took that out and fixed it. The real fix, for me at least, is to start that part with a 2nd half stitch. Take for instance, at a thrown ring. I stop the chain, loop the 2nd shuttle thread to make the ring, and the first thing I do is make a 2nd half stitch. I do not count it. I make my ring, then change shuttles to continue the chain and make a 2nd half stitch, then finish the chain. For some reason this keeps things tight, no gaps. I don't think the extra half stitch affects the count.

    Round 4 is done. Round 5 should go pretty fast.

Renulek's Spring Napkin

    After replies about working in small thread I took a look around Handy Hands and found some DMC in size 100. I ordered 2 in white and 2 in ecru. I like those for really involved patterns and they always go with any color scheme anywhere. I wound a couple of shuttles, CTM, then put the amount on the CTM thread chart I am doing. I can get 30 yards of size 100 DMC on an Aero bobbin.
     Next, the pattern. Not being artistic enough to invent one of my own, I started looking around. I thought about some of the old patterns from the turn of the century. I thumbed through the Priscilla books, Julia Sanders, and others. Then it struck me to see if maybe Renulek has a new spring napkin out. It turns out she does. Now I am told she posts a round at a time on her blog, but being impatient, and needing to know what the next round is, I bought the pattern pdf. It is only $7 and well worth the money when you think about what has to go into creating one of these.
    So now I am set. I am working on round 4 as I type this (February 3). The reason I wanted the complete pattern is that I like to work continuous method when I can. I think it makes you pay a bit more attention. The shift from round 1 to 2 was only a split chain, and from 2 to 3 was the same, but 3 to 4 was a 10 stitch split chain with a picot in it, 5-5, then the offset split ring that was a thrown ring everywhere else, then  a split ring to start round 4. Easy peasy thanks once again to Marie Smith. If you don't know what that means, look here and get the Fast and Easy pdf.

Round 2 done

Round 3 split chain

Round 3 split ring added

Round 3 finished