Earring patterns added

I’ve added the patterns for Small DragonFly Earrings and Leaf with DragonFly Earrings to my Patterns tab.
Thank you Stephanie for test tatting the for me.

Edited: 10/18/14 6:40 PM CST Made a slight correction in the pattern. I think it’s right now!  🙂

A tale of two piggies

Well, three actually, but one isn’t done yet.
My sister was telling a friend of hers some of the things I’ve tatted, including a horse, a lion, dragons, that sort of thing, and the friend asked if I could make a pink pig.
Sure, no problem.  How big?  Three inches?  Well…
Flying Pig © Jane Eborall
So I went hunting for pig patterns.  You know, I found there aren’t that many pig patterns out there.  But Jane E. has lots of animal patterns so the first stop was there and it’s where I returned later.  
The first little piggy was made in Lizbeth #617, Magenta Med is size 20.  As you can see, it’s not very big.  My sister thought it was a cute baby pig. 
I decided I would try one in size 10 thread to show her the difference, but I don’t have any pink in size 10.  I do, however, have a purple in Cébélia size 10.  This little piggy was a little bit bigger than the other (of course) but still not three inches.  I sent my sister a picture of both so her friend could see what I had.
The friend said she’d like both.  And another small pink pig facing the other way.  And a flower. 
I don’t know how big a flower, or if it should have a stem or leaves or anything, but I’ll work on it.  And the third pig.
You might have noticed the pattern name is “Flying Pig” but it doesn’t have wings.  I was going to make wings but the lady doesn’t want flying pigs, just pigs.
If you’ve made Jane’s pig before you might also notice that the center is not per the pattern.  I tried multiple times to do the onion rings and every time I got all four done but couldn’t close that last one without breaking the thread.  Yes, I know, she has a pig pattern without the onion rings, but this is what I had printed out so it’s what I had to work with.  So I made three rings then changed to the chains.  I was going to do the final pig a little differently – either do a better job on the onion rings or do the no onion ring version – but the lady likes them the way they are, so I’ll do the third little piggy just like the first. 
And now I have the nursery rhyme stuck in my head.
This little piggy went to market
This little piggy stayed home
This little piggy had some roast beef
This little piggy had none
And this little piggy went “whee, whee, whee” all the way home.

Wooly Boy Bookmark


I saw this cute idea over on Batty Tatter‘s blog and just had to make one myself.  This one is made in Lizbeth #142 Turquoise Twist size 20 I think.  I know it’s Lizbeth size 20 but the color I’m not real sure about.  I had two shuttles wound in it and thought the bookmark would look good in it, but I’m not sure where the ball is, so I’m guessing.  Whatever the color, he turned out well, don’t you think?

I’ve been tatting a bit and working on patterns a bit but nothing I’m ready to share quite yet.  I’m trying to get motivated to start my Christmas tatting as I know time is getting short for making things for it, but I keep getting sidetracked.  I was asked a couple of days ago if I could tat a pink pig, so it looks like I’ll be tatting in pink for a little while instead of white.

While on vacation we saw a lot of live critters.

We saw this little chipmunk at the lookout just past Lake Irene in Rocky Mountain National Park

This big elk was watching over his harem in Estes Park City Park.  Yes, he was only a few feet away from us.

We came upon this moose while on a pontoon boat on the Colorado River as it comes into Lake Granby.  He was trying to catch up to a cow moose that didn’t seem to interested.

While on vacation we enjoyed the easy pace of the days, not in any hurry to go anywhere or do anything.  Now we’re back in the ‘real’ world where we have to meet deadlines and constantly keep an eye on the clock.  But while I tat life slows down just a bit, so I’ll just have to enjoy my mini vacations as much as I can.

“Time, as is well known, sometimes flies like a bird and sometimes crawls like a worm, but human beings are generally particularly happy when they don’t notice whether it’s passing quickly or slowly.”
Ivan Turgenev
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Dragonfly earrings

On our vacation to Colorado a few weeks ago I never got into a large project, just several small ones.  After the zipper pulls it was earrings.  I had picked up these cute dragonfly beads somewhere and had thought to bring them along, just in case.  The Autumn Spice thread that I used for the zipper pulls just wasn’t working for earrings as they were a bit too small for the colorway – when a pair was done they didn’t look like they went together if you weren’t careful about where you started.  So I switched to Victorian Red.
Dragonfly earrings Lizbeth #670 Victorian Red size 20
I had brought a variety of things with me, hooks, jump rings, beads.  I brought silver beads, silver jump rings – and copper earring hooks.  Oh, well, they are for me so I used them anyway.
After we got home I tried out another idea with the dragonfly beads.  I think these came out pretty good, too.  But even at home I couldn’t find the silver earring wires.
Leaf and Dragonfly earrings Lizbeth #684 Leaf Green Medium size 20
I’m sill looking through all the pictures we took on our trip (we took a lot of them).  Here’s several from an excursion to find Stillwater pass.  It is so insignificant a pass we can’t find it on the map, but there is a ‘Stillwater Pass Area’ and it was beautiful while we were there.

View of Granby Lake

We stayed at Mountain Lakes Lodge, which is between Lake Granby and Grand Lake.  The cabin had three bedrooms, each with their own theme.  Ours bedroom’s theme was birds/birdhouses.  

I didn’t get a good picture of it, but there was a picket fence all around the room.

The Lodge is not on any of the lakes but on the canal that goes between Lake Granby and Shadow Mountain Lake.  They – the locals and the proprietors – say there is usually good fishing in the canal but there wasn’t while we were there.  In fact, there weren’t very many people catching anything that week, but we didn’t go there just for the fishing so it wasn’t too much of a problem.  We just found other things to do, like admire the trees and watch for wildlife.

“Keep close to Nature’s heart… and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods.  Wash your spirit clean.”
John Muir
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Vacation tatting

We just got back from a wonderful vacation to Colorado.  This year we went to the Granby area instead of the Buean Vista area where we have gone for the last several years. 
It was wonderful!  And the trees were absolutely gorgeous while we were there!
I, of course, took tatting with me.  I didn’t have a tatting plan when we left home so I took a variety of threads with me, including Lizbeth #136, Autumn Spice in size 20.  I thought it was a perfect choice for making zipper pulls for my purse.  I lost the last original pull on my purse just after we got there, so it was a needful project. I had also taken split rings and hooks, which came in very handy.
The pull on the right is the first one I made, the others are similar but with a few differences.  I thought they came out well, and look great on my purse.

I actually made four pulls, all in the same colorway.  This one went to a friend who needed a pull for a light jacket.  This one is the only duplicate I made, I guess because it was the easiest and I liked it the best. 
My husband snapped a picture of me tatting by the shore of Grand Lake, where he was fishing.  We had just finished hiking to Adams Falls and were enjoying the beautiful area.  There were picnic tables available to sit at but they were in the sun.  It was much warmer there than usual, so sitting in the shade was much more preferable.
The hike to Adams Falls is very easy and beautiful. The following pictures are from our hike there. There are not that many aspens here, having more pines than anything, so the colors from the aspens really stand out.  If you are in the area I highly recommend this hike.

“In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.”
Aristotle
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Framed for Flying

I finally got the dragon framed.  I tried it in four different frames before I settled on this one – it was not too dark or too bright for the tatting.  And it doesn’t leave the dragon lost in a too-big frame, either.  I finally came up with a background I like, too.  It looks pretty yellow here though it’s not, it’s more of a green/blue with a bit of a pattern in it.  Even in this smaller frame it kind of looked bare there all by itself. To fill it up a bit I printed ‘How To Fly’, a short excerpt from Hitchhiker’s Guide To the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, on the background paper.  The print is a light blue so it’s just barely there.  Black print overwhelmed the tatting.
It came out pretty well, didn’t it?
It’s all boxed up and ready to be sent – a birthday gift ready to fly to its new home. 
It’s only a couple of weeks late.
“The time to worry about flying is when you’re on the ground.  When you’re up in the air, it’s too late.  No point in worrying about it then.”
Denzel Washington
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Oops

Cross in Lizbeth  #605 and Manuela #019, both in size 20
This is all I’ve accomplished in the last two weeks.  I’d finished it off and then noticed that I’d made a very noticeable boo-boo, making a ring in the wrong place.  I’m thinking I’ll give it a try to tuck in the ends and touch it up with glue then keep it for myself, a reminder to PAY ATTENTION!  If it still comes out awful I suppose I could cut back both threads to the mistake and redo that last arm.  I’m not sure I like the rings on the chains anyway, so maybe it’s just the way it is.
I’ve been working 10 to 12 hours days for the last week on a different shift than normal, so there hasn’t been time or energy to do very much of anything.  I’m finally back to the usual hours but have a lot of things going on at the house so I’m not sure how much tatting will get done any time soon.  This is why it’s carried with me at all times, to grab a moment here and there when free moments present themselves.  Here’s hoping to many free moments!
“If you don’t want to work you have to work to earn enough money so that you won’t have to work.”
Ogden Nash
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Dragon done

Flying Minor Norwegian Dragon © Anne Bruvold
Lizbeth Twirlz Winter Ice #403 size 20
I finally finished the dragon, but not using SSSRs.  Jeff Hamilton left a comment about using regular Split Rings to make it instead of SSSRs, which I’ve also used when making one of these dragons, and I decided it was a great idea for this one, too!  A tail made with SSSRs can be manipulated a bit more than one with regular SRs but it still comes out looking right.
And it was so much less frustrating!  It came out right the first time.
Now I need to figure out what to do with it, as in what background? what frame? And should I add flames? The picture shows it in an 8×10 inch frame with a glimmery black background, which may or may not be used.  The dragon shows up really well but, no matter the background color, I think it needs a little bit of something with it.
“Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.”
Auguste Rodin
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A Sorry Tail

I haven’t been tatting much this week, instead doing a lot on our house project. This has de-railed me a bit from my tatting to-do list but I did finally decide to start one of AnneB’s dragons for my son-in-law.  A dark blue had been suggested but I thought a dragon would look good in one of the Lizbeth Twirlz threads, so I ordered the Winter Ice #403.
As I don’t do Single Shuttle Split Rings (SSSR) very often I re-watched AnneB’s YouTube video to refresh my memory, using a shuttle filled with a random thread.  It came back pretty quickly, so on to the dragon!
Four starts later (it might have been five) I have some semblance a decent tail.  I think it must be the way the thread is colored that it makes it hard to work with doing SSSRs.  
  
 I’m not exactly pleased with this tail but I might – might- use it.  Or I might start over – again.
When pulling out my copy of the dragon pattern I found the pattern for Ringtrim, which AnneB says is for practicing SSSRs for the larger dragon, so I made one.  I certainly could use the practice!

Ringtrim came out well, with very little problems.  Before starting I was thinking to make him a zipper pull for my purse then forgot to add the lobster claw hook, so I just made an extra ring for it.
You can see that Ringtrim is on the lobster claw, which is on another hook, which is on a ring, which is on the zipper. I’ve lost several zipper pulls (not tatted) and have just left the hooks and rings there.  Attaching Ringtrim like this leaves plenty of hook to grab and pull without actually pulling on him.  I’m hoping he’ll stay awhile this way.
Ringtrim turned out okay, now I’m ready to get back to the larger dragon.  The fifth (or is it sixth?) time could be the charm.
“It’s never okay to give up on yourself.
Fall seven times, stand up eight.
Failure isn’t falling down, 
it’s refusing to get back up.  The reason why
people give up so fast is because
they tend to look at how far they still
have to go, instead of how far they 
have gotten.
If plan A didn’t work,
the alphabet has 25 more letters,
stay cool.”
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Bad Boyes

By now most of you have probably heard about the “bad Boye” shuttles. Marilee Rockley and Lace-lovin’ Librarian Diane have both mentioned them, and I’m sure I’ve read about them in a few other places as well.   I ordered some from Overstock.com some time back at a bag of 50 shuttles for something like $16.  When you think of how much you pay for a pack of one or two this price seems too good to be true.  I figured that they would be seconds (not in perfect condition) but thought for that price I wouldn’t need a whole lot of the them to be usable to be worth the cost.  I’d go through them to see what could be fixed, maybe bling a few of them, and have them ready to hand out to potential students. For that price they sounded like a good deal.
Almost all of the shuttles looked like they haven’t been ‘finished’: the sides aren’t sanded down, lots of rough places here and there.  That is easily taken care of with a little fine grit sand paper.  Besides that the most notable problem are the tips are crooked to each other, but usually close enough together to keep thread from unwinding when dropped to untwist thread.  The picture below doesn’t show well some of these faults.  The one on the left actually has a finger print in the plastic. I think I can get this out with sand paper and elbow grease.
The red shuttle is one I’ve had for years, a Boye showing it was made in Chicago; the other is one of the bad Boyes.  They are similar in shape though the tip on the new one looks like it hasn’t been finished nicely (all of them in the bag have tips like this). They also feel different when holding them; they don’t have as much “heft” as the old ones, feeling lighter and, well, cheaper. 
I have sanded and decorated a few of these shuttles .  Once the rough edges are sanded off they work okay, and once they’ve been blinged they don’t look too bad, either.  The top two have material on them, the other four have paper and all work pretty well.

Now I had a different technique I wanted to try.
First I removed the tips and sanded down all the edges as well as removing all the writing on them. Next I put a coat of black spray paint on to cover the two shuttles inside and out, then painted them with metallic paint, one gold and one silver.  While they were still wet I wiped some of the metallic paint off to give them an antiqued look – I hoped.  They looked pretty cool.  Then I sprayed them with an acrylic sealer – and the paint crackled.  They actually look pretty good.  The crackling isn’t bad to feel, just giving the shuttles a bit of grip. No flakes or anything like that.
 
The problem with these two shuttles are the tips.  I like having a point on shuttles, usually using Clover shuttles, but not the big, wide tips these Boyes have.  For my next experiment I decided to sand down the point to be more inline with what I like to work with as well as the edges and words again.   This time I used Rub N’ Buff in Spanish Copper.
I love the look of this!  It definitely has to have a sealer coat on it or the thread gets dirty and the finish will come off.  But it looks and feels good!  
Reformed bad Boyes.  They look, and work, much better now.
There are a few other colors I plan on trying and possibly another technique or two.   Why not?  I have a whole bag of shuttles to play with.  Maybe I can reform a few more ‘bad’ Boyes.
“Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgement.”
Will Rogers
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