Author: wandasknottythoughts@gmail.com

Not much done

I haven’t gotten much done on either the triangle doily or the horse picture.  I’ve thought about them a bit, more the horse than the triangles, but no progress on either.  The doily still taunts me from the blocking board where I’ve been ignoring it.  The horse has been teasing me from several possible backgrounds to give it a pasture to run in.  I’ve played around with tatted flowers and birds, bunnies and grass, background colors and frame sizes, and still haven’t made up my mind.
We’ve finally been making progress on a house project that’s been put off for a long time, which is now taking up some (okay, a lot) of my time.  I think most of my creative thoughts have been funneled into this instead of my tatting.  Instead of trying to come up with ideas for the doily or the horse I worked on my vest Sunday night.  I’m at a place in it where I’m just repeating the same thing over and over for a while so I didn’t have to think much.  It was very relaxing.
This is a doily I gave to my mother several years ago.  I noticed that as it aged it looked like it was stained.  I brought it back home and washed it.  It now looks good as new.
A cup of tea
A ball of thread
A shuttle close to hand
A little time
A plan in mind
A tatter’s wonderland

Tatted horse

Horse (Foal) © Inga Madsen
From Inga Madsen’s book “Tatted Animals”
Made with Lizbeth Silver #605 and Mocha Brown Dk #692, size 20
I tatted this horse over a month ago for a niece’s graduation present – and I still have it!  I want to make this a tatted scene, with flowers and  – stuff.  The horse itself wasn’t hard, though I did do a little unintentional change in the saddle right at the start.  I also took off the last chain of the pattern because I didn’t like the look.  In the book all the animals are done in one color and look great, but when done in two colors that last chain just didn’t look right. 
So why is it still at my house instead of the graduate’s?  I’m having a hard time making the decisions about the flowers and birds and such.  I have been going through Lindsay Rogers’ book “Tatting Collage” to get ideas.  And now I have a lot of them.  I have so many ideas now I have to choose how elaborate or simple it will be. Do I put it in an 8″ x 10″ frame?  A 5? x 7″?  I’m afraid the one is too big but the other would be too crowded.  Decisions, decisions!
I’m still trying to make decisions on the triangle doily as well.  It is right there beside my chair so I can see it, taunting me to finish it.  But again I can’t make up my mind exactly how to do that. I will eventually, probably sooner than later, but…  Decisions, decisions!
Maybe I should ask the horse.
“A horse is a horse, of course, of course,
And no one can talk to a horse of course
That is, of course, unless the horse is the famous Mr. Ed.
Go right to the source and ask the horse
He’ll give you the answer that you’ll endorse.
He’s always on a steady course.
Talk to Mr. Ed.

A horse is a horse, of course, of course,
And this one’ll talk ’til his voice is hoarse.
You never heard of a talking horse?

Well listen to this.

I am Mr. Ed.”

source: http://www.lyricsondemand.com/tvthemes/mredlyrics.html

Circle of Triangles

I’m still working on triangles. 
All the centers are made the same, a tatted circle motif that is then stitched to the inside of the triangle with bare thread.  Attaching the centers this way is a bit tedious.  The triangle has to be pinned down to a board so they don’t get pulled out of shape too badly while putting the centers in.  And while stitching them in the thread has a tendency to catch on the pins holding the triangles. It did seem to get a bit easier as I went along and got the hang of it.   

Even pinning the outsides while adding the centers deformed the triangle shape.  Once the centers were attached each one had to be blocked to have them lie flat.  After pinning then out flat they were sprayed with water then left to dry that way, which worked out well.  The whole thing was blocked and dampened again after joining the triangles together, too.  It now lies flat very nicely.
This arrangement was suggested by muskaan in a comment made on my first triangle post a few weeks ago.  I looked at the first triangle and could see something like that, so I tried it.  I’m now trying to decide if/what I want to do in the center.  Maybe something around the outside as well.  In white?  White and red?
Hmmm, I’ll have to work on that.

“Square box, round pizza, triangle slices.
I’m confused…” 

It’s a Plane!

I’ve been trying to post about this airplane for the last several weeks.
First I had trouble with my computer so I couldn’t work on the pattern.  
Then I thought I was ready and lost the tatted airplane without a picture of it.  So I tatted another one and in the process found I hadn’t saved the most recent changes of the pattern (I think the computer ate it).  
Today I finally get a picture of the new airplane – and the computer won’t let me download it.
After a bit of fussing and worrying I tried out a feature of our camera that we hadn’t attempted before – transferring the picture from the camera to my phone.  Have you seen the commercials for the Samsung Galaxy phones where two people hold their phones close together and the picture/file is transferred?  Just like that, except from our Samsung camera to my Samsung Galaxy III phone.  Then from my phone to my Google+ and the picture is accessible from anywhere I can get to the Internet.  Pretty cool!
Airplane @ Wanda Salmans 2014
This airplane is made of Lizbeth thread # 605 Silver in size 20.  Unfortunately the pattern isn’t up yet.  I still have to go back and fix a few things.  If things go a bit smoother tomorrow it will be up in the afternoon (I hope) but if not, then in a few days I will try to put it on my Pattern tab.
Triangle update
I’ve gotten a little bit done on the triangles.  All the white center motifs are done and I’ve started adding them to the middles.  The one on the left below has tatted chains instead of the bare thread.  The center was added last just like before except this time I went all the way around with the bare thread and caught all the picots of the triangle as well as the long stitches in the corners, then went around a second time using the needle as my shuttle and doing direct tatting (un-flipped stitches) on the bare thread.  I don’t like this very much: it wasn’t fun to make and it didn’t end up very round.

Independence Day is this Friday and I actually get the whole weekend off!  This doesn’t mean I’ll have a lot of time for tatting but I plan to get a little in one way or the other. 
“When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.”
Henry Ford
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More Triangles

I had such wonderful comments on my triangle from last week that I thought I’d try a few of the things that were suggested.  I had a lot of time to tat Sunday between watching the NASCAR race and watching a movie on Blu-ray (Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit).  The outside is a very simple edging pattern making it easy to watch TV and tat. I completed four more triangles and most of a fifth that evening.  
Now I’m working on the centers. Making the centers first might seem like a good idea but I also want to try putting a few triangles together so I don’t want them to look too different from the original.  I can tat these on the way to work while my husband drives so it shouldn’t take me too long to get them done even if I don’t have as much time this week to watch TV.  The hard part will be putting the centers into the triangles.  Of course, once I’ve done a few it will probably get easier. I will have to pay close attention so TV viewing might not be a good idea while working on this part. 
I’m actually pretty excited about this little experiment and am hoping for plenty of time to work on it.

“True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
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Trying Triangles

The other day I wanted to tat but had no thought about exactly what except something simple that didn’t take a lot of thinking.  I had Lizbeth #670 Victorian Red size 20 thread in my bag so wound a shuttle and started tatting.  
It started out as a simple edging then I thought to turn a corner. 
 At one point I thought of making this a square or rectangle and then got the bright idea to do a triangle.  That worked out pretty well but it needed something in the center.  If I had known what I was doing it would have been much easier to start with the center instead of filling it in last.
Several ideas presented themselves but this is what came out of it.  The circle of rings was easy but it didn’t quite fill in enough, so I tried stitching it in. I like the corners but I’m not sure I like the way the bare thread goes around the center.  Overall I like how this turned out.
I ended up having to do a lot more thinking than I planned to for this.  It’s finished, now what?  Maybe join several together? It could make an interesting doily, couldn’t it?

I’m finishing up several projects, and have been for a week or so. They really are almost done, just need a few little things completed and I could share them.  Now, if I can just stay with them long enough to finish them.


“All life is an experiment.  The more experiments you make the better.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Yellow tangle

We took a family vacation over the Memorial Day weekend; my husband and I, our kids, and their families.  It was a lot of fun! While on vacation I did very little tatting, even on the long drive to and from our destination.  I took my tatting with me (of course!) and sorta, kinda, had an idea of what I wanted to work on.  I had shuttles wound with  Perfect Quilter 085 ready to go.

Why I thought I could tat anything on vacation with such tiny thread when I usually use size 20 baffles me.  Using thread I’m not used to in the car while traveling or when likely to get interrupted by the grandkids was  a mistake waiting to happen.
This is the extent of what I accomplished while on vacation.

The one time I actually got a little tatting done ended abruptly when I was needed due to some minor emergency, which I can’t even remember.  I only know I was finally putting in a little tatting time when I had to put it down in a hurry then came back to such a tangled mess I put it away.

Over the next two weeks I picked up my yellow tangle and tried to work on it several times.  I think it is a lost cause.  I have made stitch count mistakes, broken the thread, and kept making a bigger mess.  I think it is time to retire this piece all together.

The little yellow piece after two weeks of messing with it.
I might try making this in a larger thread if I ever sit down with it and write down the stitch counts. We’ll see.

I thought I would have another pattern ready for today but I’m still fighting with my computer.  We had gotten it working better but today while trying to touch up the pattern a bit it just froze up.   It’s becoming quite annoying.


“One of the most feared expressions in modern times is ‘The computer is down.'”
Norman Ralph Augustine
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Cleaning?

I have a confession to make.
I hate cleaning. 
I would rather watch tatting dry than clean the house.
And I’m not a neat person, making my house somewhat cluttered.  
So when I do clean house it takes a lot of time.  (I keep telling myself I’m going to do better, pick up things more often – but it hasn’t happened yet.) We don’t have people over often  – we would probably keep the house up better if we did – so when we plan to have company we have a lot to do.  Then it comes down to the wire and I start putting my clutter in boxes so I can stash them out of the way in a hurry, thinking, of course, that I’ll go back soon and take care of all of it when the company is gone.  
What usually happens is most of it stays in the boxes and I start the clutter all over again.  Those things I thought I was using/needing are replaced by other things.
Yesterday I was going through a box of such things when I came across a couple of pattern books I knew I had but couldn’t find.  Yea!
The “Tatted Animals” book by Inga Madsen I had purposely purchased to have patterns suitable for boys – what boy doesn’t like animals of some sort?  I have already started a project out of it, though it’s not for one of the boys, it’s for a niece ☺
Also in the box were these note cards I made probably twenty years ago, possibly more.  They are large, unlined index cards – 5″ by 8″? – folded in half.  The thread used is DMC size 8 in various colors, the only thread I could find at the time that came in so many colors.  I wasn’t much of an artist with these, but I was guaranteed that the recipient wouldn’t be getting cards like these from anyone else.  And they would know who it was from.

There were a lot of other things in the box that I had been looking for.  I kick myself sometimes for how unorganized I am.  I really, really need to start putting things away better.
I also need to start spending less time on social media and the Internet in general.  I get sucked in and spend more time there than I plan to.  But, the other day while on Facebook there was a suggested article, you know, one of those that pops in that are chosen for you based on what you’ve read or searched for, from Ancestry.com, which I found interesting. And it mentions tatting by name!
Celina Anzalone, 2264 First Ave. making lace for Cappallino's factory near by. (Library of Congress)
Picture from Ancestry.com
11 Skills Your Great-Grandparents Had That You Don’t
That’s only 10 skills for us tatters!
For myself, better housekeeping should probably be on this list of skills I don’t have.
“Housekeeping is like being caught in a revolving door.”
Marcelene Cox
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