Category: Tatting Tea Tuesday

Tatting on Tuesday

Goodies for Tuesday Tatters meeting found on wandasknottythoughts.com
Goodies for Tuesday Tatters meeting

A couple of weeks ago we had our monthly Tuesday Tatters get together, at my place this time.  It gave me an opportunity to use several dishes I rarely get out or even think about.  All of these pieces are from either my grandparents or my husband’s grandparents.  They made for a pretty table with lemon wafer cookies and assorted M&Ms with coffee.  I had hot water ready for tea but decided coffee was just fine.

Becky and me tatting on Tuesday on wandasknottythoughts.com
Tatting on Tuesday with Becky

Becky was the only one that was able to make it this time.  That’s okay, we had fun anyway.  She had some questions that I had plenty of time to answer with no distractions.

Old child's dress with tatting found at flea market found on wandasknottythoughts.com
Old child’s dress with tatting found at flea market

Becky brought this beautiful infants dress to share.  It was obviously worn, as there were a few stains on it.  Washing it took most of those out.

Detail of tatted neckline and sleeves of old child's dress found on wandasknottythoughts.com
Detail of tatted neckline and sleeves of old child’s dress

Look at the fine tatting on this!  All the way around the neck and the sleeves holes.  All that tatting and then sewn on.  The thread must be size 100, don’t you think?

Details of tatted hem and insert on old child's dress found on wandasknottythoughts.com
Details of tatted hem and insert on old child’s dress

Besides the tatting on the neck, sleeves, and hem, there was also an insert.  Someone spent a lot of time tatting all this and then stitching it on the dress – wow!  All that time and effort in such small thread!  Sad that it ended up in a thrift shop/flea market selling for a couple of dollars.  It is of heirloom quality.  Becky was glad to snatch it up!

It is wonderful to get together with other tatters, though sometimes not much tatting gets done, we’re so busy talking!  Come September I’ll be getting together with a lot more tatters – I’m going to Palmetto Tat Days!  I’m so excited!

“Heirloom” is knitting code for “This pattern is so difficult that you would consider death a relief.  ~Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, At Knit’s End:  Meditations for Women Who Knit Too Much

The Quote Garden

Bunny Face

I’ve decided I like the bunny face.  I’ve made a few more, playing around with it a little, mostly with the ears.  I think the bottom one looks a little more like a dog than a bunny, but still has potential.  I don’t think this will become an edging, at least not without a lot more work, but it looks pretty good as a bunny face. 
I’ve been trying to find out if there is another bunny that is made like this.  I’ve found several really cute bunnies: 
Tatman has a couple of cute bunnies here and here. I also hear he has a pattern for a bunny in an egg, but I don’t know where to find the pattern.  I saw it on Steph’s Stuff; very cute!
Bella OnLine has several bunny patterns, including a few edgings, found here.
[the first link on the page, Brenda’s Bunnies, does not contain tatting. It looks to have been hacked]
Nancy has a cute one on her be-stitched site, here.  
I checked Dianna Steven’s book ‘Animal Bookmarks, a Tatted Zoo’, which has a really cute bunny bookmark, but it doesn’t look like this either. 
So, if anybody is interested, I have put the pattern up on my sidebar.  The pattern has the rounded ears like the top two in the picture. I made the bottom one today while I was sipping my Tatting Tea Tuesday tea, after I had the pattern ‘finished’.  I might make an addendum for changing up the ears later.

This time of year thinking of bunnies makes me think of Easter, so I’ll leave you with another Easter poem.

Sky Bunnies
The sky is full of bunny clouds
So soft and fat and white,
I wonder if they’re hiding eggs
For stars to find at night.

Because it’s Easter Eve, you know,
And there’s no reason why
There shouldn’t be an Easter hunt
In meadows in the sky.

Gifts

To me!
These wonderful items are from Tabatha that I received for our Advent exchange.  That container in the back has seven different colored seed beads.  Each bead color is in it’s own compartment so each can be opened without releasing loosing opening all the others – great!  The ball of thread is Lizbeth “Springtime” #115 in size 20.  I haven’t used it yet but it’s such a ‘spring-y’ color I’m thinking of using it for something for Easter.  The cute book is a journal, an encouragement to keep jotting down my patterns.  And the pens aren’t regular pens but crochet hook pens.  And they are soo pretty!  I’ve been keeping one in my purse so I always have one handy. 
All of these items are in such pretty colors they make me think “Spring!”  We’ve had such a mild winter here that it almost seems like spring already.  We actually had a thunderstorm yesterday with high wind and hail.  Very spring like, indeed.  Of course, it could come up and snow any day – it’s still only February.  But tatting with “Springtime” thread, using those pretty beads and crochet pens, and jotting down ideas in the journal (did you see the tea pot?) will make it feel like springtime anytime. 
I didn’t have any tea this morning for Tatting Tea Tuesday, I had coffee instead.  I was just too lazy to try and choose which tea to drink this morning 🙂  I’ve also been too busy this week to tat, so there’s no tatting to show.  I have a list of things I want/plan to tat, just not the time.  I’m hoping that this week is a little better on the tatting front.  
May you have a bit of tatting time this week, too. 
“Youth is not a time of life: it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it it a matter of the will, quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.”
Samuel Ullman

TIAS day 8

Jane Eborall posted Day 8 of her 2012 TIAS today.  I’m thinking it’s looking like a goat, though with Jane you never know until the end!  Saturday when day 7 came up I had no guesses – until I was over on Miranda’s blog and saw her day 7.  Looking at hers it suddenly looked like a goat, or at least the back end of one.  
(from http://www.supercoloring.com)
Then with Day 8 I’m seeing horns!
I’ve gotten a little bit of tatting done recently, some I’m not quite ready to share,  but here are the ones that I’m ready to.  
 I made this cute little bell from a free pattern that yarnplayer has available.  It really isn’t hard and turns out very nice. Mine bowed just a little from the size of my picots I think, but it’s a bell, and hanging on a Christmas tree it wouldn’t be out of place and not nearly as noticeable as it is laying flat. 
I was given “Tatted Snowflakes Collection” by Jon Yusoff for Christmas. I just recently took the time to make one.  I first spent some time looking through the patterns, enjoying Jon’s lovely work. The one I decided to try first was ‘The Twirly’, #14.  I did make a mistake on one chain, adding one extra repeat of picot and doublestitches – oops.  Much as I like this colorway, I don’t think that Lizbeth “Caribbean” does this pattern justice. Blogger has done a twisty on the picture – originally the words were on the bottom!
Today for Tatting Tea Tuesday I enjoyed a cup of Teavana tea, ‘Weight to Go & Sakura Allure’.  I was fortunate to have Tabatha gift me a sampling of several teas recently.  A couple of days ago I had ‘My Morning Mate’.  Both have been very good.  I have several more to try – yum!

“Don’t approach a goat from the front, a horse from the back, or a fool from any side.” 
Yiddish proverb

TIAS Day 3

Jane’s TIAS has started.  This is mine up to day 3.  It actually looked better but it curled a little and I tried to flatten it out which deformed the SCMR a little bit.  I can live with it. I have no guesses as to what it might be.  Last year she had us flying in an airplane and the year before crowing with a rooster, so this could be anything! If you haven’t started the TIAS it’s never to late to start.  She is going to post day four tomorrow (January 19).

If you don’t want to participate you might still go over and check out all the different shuttles people are using on this.  A lot of participants have taken this opportunity to show off some pretty nice looking shuttles. I haven’t shown mine – I chose to do this in Lizbeth Victorian Red #670 in size 20 using Clover shuttles in green and orange.  The green doesn’t look too bad but the orange clashes badly. Hey, they were the two shuttles that I found that didn’t have any thread on them. Most of my other shuttles either have projects on them or little bits of thread that I would have to do something with before I could start. None I found had enough for this project – Jane said you will need two shuttles filled with thread.

Anyone remember this post? Trayna asked for that pattern awhile back and posted about it on her blog recently.  As I have been working on updated and sharing some of my older patterns I thought this one would be the next one up.  My previous post showed it with the arms joined at the picots and with beads but the pattern doesn’t reflect that.  I don’t think it will be hard to figure out how that was done, but if you have questions please feel free to contact me. My contact information is on my profile page.  The pattern is up on the sidebar.

Has anyone noticed that I missed Tatting Tea Tuesday?  I’ve been working some different and very long hours this last week so was just too pooped to post.  But it’s only late by a day – not too bad. Back to normal today, so I have a bit more enthusiasm.

“Enthusiasm is excitement with inspiration, motivation, and a pinch of creativity.” Bo Bennent

January is National Hot Tea Month

Did you know that January is National Hot Tea Month? This article is from 2009 but the link is still posted on the front page of TEAUSA.com.  It has a few things that are nice to know, especially if you like tea 🙂

Today for Tatting Tea Tuesday I’m drinking a cup of Strawberry Misaki from Teavana, a gift from Tabatha.  It’s a blooming tea, which means it comes in a ball that when steeped in hot water blooms into a flower. Pretty cool!  I was going to take a picture of my bloom (I’ve heard of this before and always wanted to know what the bloom looked like) but I forgot and drank the tea before I got the camera out.  Mmmm, strawberry tea.  It’s a very light flavored tea, but I like it.

Have you read Trayna’s blog post from Sunday?  She was so nice as to tat one of my snowflakes 🙂 She had seen it in one of my posts and asked me for the pattern.  She did a lovely job on it, too.  It’s part of her 100 snowflake challenge – to make 100 snowflakes in a year(!).  Knowing she was making snowflakes I sent her the pattern of another snowflake, which she was so sweet as to test tat for me (good thing that she did!). It is the snowflake I had decided would be my Christmas snowflake one year, which I posted about in December 2010.

This one.

 
If you like it and would like to give it a try, I’m adding the pattern to the sidebar.  I’m touching up the pattern for the one that Trayna made and hope to add that pattern soon as well.

Don’t forget, Jane’s TIAS starts today!

“May you always have walls for the winds, a roof for the rain, tea beside the fire, laughter to cheer you, those you love near you and all your heart may desire.”
Irish blessing 

Something New

for the New Year.

Okay, I made it at the end of December, but just barely!

I had two shuttles loaded with Lizbeth Blue Ice #163 in size 40 and had a thought, basically on a variation of one of my other patterns.  “What if I tried this…” And this is what came about.  As you can tell by the Clover shuttles beside it, the star is pretty small made in size 40.  It didn’t take too long to make and looks good in that color, don’t you think? (I had a hard time photographing it. I tried it on a black background and it was way too bright so showed up fuzzy and stark white.)

And guess what?

I have it diagrammed already!  It didn’t take too long to do that, either.  I guess practice does make things easier. Check the sidebar, I’m going to be adding it there.  How soon depends on if I have trouble or not 🙂

I’m using the new blogger changes and still getting used to the way it looks.  The one thing I definitely like is how it adds the pictures.  It doesn’t add them all at the top anymore, where you have to move them down if you’ve started adding text.  Some of the rest of the changes are still debatable on whether I like them or not, though I suppose that eventually I’ll get used to them.

Have you heard?  Jane is having another TIAS (Tat It And See) starting on January 10.  Check it out here.  I did the one last year and it was a lot of fun. My piece from last year is actually hanging on the Christmas tree as an ornament – my grandsons thought it was pretty cool.

I started this Tatting Tea Tuesday with a cup of Zen green tea by TAZO, a gift from Tabatha.  (Thanks, it’s very good!)  I didn’t really tat yet but I did work on the diagram for the star – does that count?  I do plan on getting a little tatting in today sometime, somewhere.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful start to the New Year.


“Every day is a fresh beginning. Every morn is the world made new.”
Sarah Chauncey Woolsey

It must be Wine Wednesday

It seems I’ve missed Tatting Tea Tuesday so it must be Wine Wednesday.  I haven’t had the wine yet, but the day is young.  I haven’t gotten any tatting in today, either, but I plan to do that next.  I did get tatting in yesterday and I drank tea, I just missed posting.
Yesterday I was working on Angels. Not these – these have been sent off already, but one just like it.  Though  I tatted for several hours I didn’t even get one little angel finished.  This is my design and I’ve been making them for years, but now I’m trying to revise the pattern to make it with only one end.  Unbelievable, I know, but all these years I’ve made them with multiple ends to hide. Why I’ve never thought of trying it other ways I don’t know, but the lightbulb did finally come on. Now the problem is making it work. I worked on it all day and never got even one Angel completed. The problem are the wings – they just don’t work starting from the top. I’ve tried different stitch counts, but nothing has really worked. Unless I plan on changing the wings entirely this may just have to have several ends whether I like it or not.
Did you all have a wonderful Christmas?  We did.  We were able to get together with both sides of the family and see both of our kids and their families. And then we were lucky enough to have both of the grandsons stay over Christmas night.  They kept us quite busy. I can sure tell I’m not used to having little children around that much anymore. By the time they left, I was tired. We did have fun while they were here though. We played games, strung beads and cut out paper snowflakes then they helped me on the placement of the snowflakes in the window.
I love Christmas. I love the season. I love the weather getting colder with maybe some snow. And I love the giving of gifts. Getting gifts is fun too, but I just love trying to come up with just the right things to to share with each of my family and friends.  It was a bit different this year. This year, when I went to the store I actually had a list of things I wanted to get – no impulse buying!  I made quite a few of the gifts this year, and not just tatting.  Actually, I didn’t get much tatting done this year, not as much as usual anyway. I guess I’ll have to start a lot earlier  for next year. I guess I’ll have to start a lot earlier for next year 🙂
Now we’re getting to the new year. Do you have New Year’s resolutions? I try not to make them, or at least any more than I would on any other day, because I have a terrible time keeping them. Today I’ll leave you with a quote from Hal Borland.
“Year’s end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the 
wisdom that experience can instill in us“

Museum Stop Part 2

Now, back to Roebke Memorial Museum in Holton, Kansas…
They certainly justified the theme of “A Lacy Christmas” – there was lace and textiles of many types throughout the house. One of the front rooms showcased the work of one woman, Evelyn DeGraw.

Isn’t this display amazing? And this is only part of it!

These items were donated by the woman who lived across the street from the Roebke house The entire room was of Evelyn’s work.
December 26, the day we stopped by, they had three demonstrators in: a spinner, a weaver and a quilter.

This is Marty Mavrovich, spinning llama fiber as sock yarn. She likes to use as much local fiber to spin with as she can. She didn’t buy her spinning wheel new but thinks it’s either German or Canadian made. She made this look easy, but somehow I think that’s because she’s been doing it awhile.

This is Barbara Beyer weaving on her 8 shaft table loom. It can be converted to a floor loom if she needs it to be. This loom is from New Zealand. She was working on a tunic/vest similar to the one in the magazine behind her (which I didn’t take a picture of…).

Here is Donna Tudor hand-quilting a baby blanket. She likes to keep one or two on hand for new arrivals as they take a little while to finish. Her work is lovely. I hardly sew at all but I can appreciate the skill that it takes to do this.
These ladies were fun to talk to. It’s not often I get to talk to people who enjoy their craft like this, even though each of us had a different one. But I’m such a bad reporter that I forgot to ask where they were from!
I even got to take out my shuttles and sat with them for awhile.

Somehow I don’t think I’d pass as a Victorian lady, do you? I very much enjoyed my visit with these ladies and Margaret Utes.
I’m not sure if you can tell, but we were in the kitchen of the house. Miss Doris Roebke lived in the house after her parents so it was modernized as all lived-in house are sure to be. It was interesting to see some of the older furniture next to the older.
Upstairs the bedrooms were also decked out in Victorian style.

This room was done up as a child’s room.

In the hall upstairs there was a display of embroidery. Lovely pillowcases here. On one of the beds there was an cover/quilt with a lot of embroidery, also.

These lovely creations were the graduation dresses of the three Roebke daughters. Can you imagine wearing one of these? Just wearing one of these would make you want to act like a lady.
I put a lot of pictures in today but there is so much more there to see. On another of our trips to or from Omaha we’ll have to stop in again.
Today for Tatting Tea Tuesday I tried Candy Cane Lane tea, made with peppermint. It is yummy! Didn’t get much time to tat today, but it’s not over yet.
Wishing all of you a wonderful Advent season.
“The advent of our God
Shall be our theme for prayer
Come let us meet him on the road
And place for him prepare”

Museum Stop

Did everyone have a happyThanksgiving? Ours was wonderful, spent with one of our daughters and her family. I didn’t even have to do any of the cooking! We’re very lucky that our daughter married a wonderful cook. We spent a couple of days there and then headed back to have Thanksgiving here with more of the family.
We took a slightly different route on the way home this time than usual because of an e-mail that I got from Isdihara. A few weeks ago she sent an message letting me know about a museum asking for tatters to do demonstrations in Holton, Kansas. I’m not exactly sure where she heard about it (it was in the Topeka Capital – Journal, a long way from the east coast). I told her I didn’t think we’d make it being it’s about three hours from home but I was glad of the information. But the timing was right: on the way home from Nebraska we were able to stop in. This time of year they’re usually closed except by appointment but they’re having open houses Saturdays through the 17th of December for a few hours celebrating “A Lacy Christmas.” We just happened to leave Nebraska on Saturday morning and were able to stop in about an hour before they closed.
This is the Roebke Memorial Museum, a block or so from downtown Holton, Kansas. Holton is a picturesque town, with quite a few old buildings and tree-lined streets. The original part of Boebke House itself was built in 1876 and added on as the family grew in numbers and prosperity. The displays are in each room are furnished in Victorian era style and changed periodically with items donated mostly from local people.
We were met as we walked in by Margaret Ute (pronounced ‘Oot‘), a lovely lady who gave us a personal tour of the house. Here Margaret is standing next to a Christmas tree decorated with crocheted ornaments done by one lady.
Following the theme “A Lacy Christmas” there was a lot of lace everywhere, as well as other textile exhibits. In case you are wondering around on your own there are easily read description plaques with information about the exhibits.
Check out this player piano! Okay, this picture mostly shows the tatting display, but the piano itself is beautiful! And it really works. And it looks very fine with that cloth with all that tatting on it 🙂 Margaret told me that when they found this cloth in the attic it was all brown. She soaked it several times and the stains started coming out. There were also some places where the tatting had come apart (maybe age-weakened thread?) and were repaired by Margaret’s mother.
I’m not sure you can read this, but there is a short explanation about the life-style of the Victorian age. It also talks about some of the items in the room, including the tatting.
Isn’t this blouse gorgeous? Can you imagine tatting this then carefully stitching it to the material? This would take an amazing amount of patience. But with such a beautiful result.
This is a child’s petticoat decorated with tatting.
I wish I had taken a better picture of these tatting shuttles. The one on the left was found in the house and the one on the right belonged to Margaret’s mother.

There were three ladies doing demonstrations there that Saturday, one spinning, one weaving and one hand quilting. I will share more about that next week, along with a few more pictures of the beautiful items on display.
I highly recommend this museum if you are ever in the area.
This morning for Tatting Tea Tuesday I enjoyed a cup of Cinnamon Apple Spice tea while looking over pictures from Thanksgiving – a nice way to spend the morning.
If you would be interested in hearing what a Victorian era song sounds like go here.