New Things

For all that I seem to be busy all the time, I have taken a few minutes here and there to get a little tatting in, and to see what others are tatting. I was intrigued by several different techniques I saw on the Internet, some of which I decided to try.

I saw a FaceBook post where muskaan talked about a Single Shuttle Beaded Braid. Oooh, I had to try that! She explains it in a blog post from April 2024. I found that it is not hard to do, but much harder to get it to look nice and even.

I am happy with this technique, but I certainly need more practice! I see how it can be used. FYI, the shuttle is one I bought from The Knotted Vine last fall.

While playing with the idea of beads in rings like this I fiddled around with beaded split rings. These were even worse in not being even! Again, more practice is needed.

As I was in the mood to try new things, I looked up a technique I had wanted to learn for a long time. I have a book of patterns that use it but I could never follow the written directions on how to do it. The Internet is a wonderful place to learn new things if you can just frame the question correctly. After a bit of trial and error, I found what I was looking for. It is a Lock Join Picot. Tatman has a video of it.

I know this looks a bit odd, but I was just trying the technique in threads that were already on shuttles. I can hardly believe how simple it turned out to be! Now I need to find the book and give those patterns a try.

I had two shuttles wound with thread from a recent project that I wanted to empty. Instead of unwinding them, I made another “Life is Bliss Butterfly”, an Endrucks #32 derivative by Antonia Lia, from the PicotMeEndrucks April game. This is the first one done in size 10 thread instead of size 20.

I changed the stitch count in several places but did the lock join picots as I did on the previous butterfly. While I’m typing this I noticed that one of the bottom lobes of the butterfly seems to be missing a picot. It’s there, I did a poor job of laying it out before taking the picture.

Did you have a good Mother’s Day? I had a wonderful weekend, including Sunday spent with my mother, our daughters, their families (and my husband!), my sister and her family.

Friday night we watched something I had never seen before, and certainly never expected to see in Kansas – the aurora borealis!

We did not see the waves of light that are usually shown when they are seen farther north. When we first went out to look, we didn’t realize we were seeing them. The sky seemed bright, with what we took as a cloudy sky to the north, but nothing we recognized as the northern lights. Our daughter came by with her family a few minutes later and showed us how to take pictures of them. By then the sky was pink to the naked eye, though not as spectacular as the pictures show. What we thought were clouds were the northern lights! We stood outside marveling at the sight for a long time. We live in Kansas, and to see them is quite rare. What an experience!

Have you tried anything new lately? How did it come out?

“You don’t have to get it right the first time.” Barbara Sher