More Christmas Tatting, New Years, and Other Stuff

I think the title covers everything I'm going to talk about. First of all, Happy New Years! I hope the start of 2010 is being good to everyone. I would have posted earlier, but I haven't been feeling good since New Year's Eve. Right now, I'm in the middle of a full blown cold, which has left me pretty much drained of energy for the past few days. Lately, my daily routine seems to be go to work, come home, sleep. But enough about me, let's move on to the tatting.

I think I mentioned in my last post that I had one motif left to show you from the tatting I did over Christmas. However, I forgot about one, so I actually have two motifs. The first motif is a "snowflake". I put the word snowflake in quotation marks because I don't think Mary Konior intended the motif to be used that way. The motif in question is Mary's Windmills motif:


I used Lizbeth size 20 in colour number 128 (March Breeze). Before anyone says anything about my colour choice, let me explain. I though it would look good. OK, I'm now ready to hear your comments. Honestly, I don't hate the way it turned out, but I'm not sure I'm lovin' it either. It kinda grows on you after a while. Except for the six rings in the middle, the patterns consists of all chains. I will be making this again-in white. This is motif 13 of my Third 25 Motif Challenge. And before I forget, the pattern is from MK's Tatting with Visual Patterns.

The next motif is also from Tatting with Visual Patterns. It is the Masquerade Motif.

This was tatted with Lizbeth size 40 colour number 100 (Falling Leaves). I like the way this motif turned out. This is another of Mary's motifs that would make an awesome bookmark when several are joined together in a strip. Which I plan to do sometime. This will be motif 14 of my 25 Motif Challenge.

Recently (ie: last weekend) I began to tat from my newest tatting book. That book would be Ruth Perry's Celtic Tatted Leaves and Flowers. There are a number of really interesting designs in this book. Some pretty easy, to a few that are substantially harder. All beautiful. I have tatted three different leaf patterns for your (and my) enjoyment.

The first leaf that I tatted is an Arrowhead or heart shaped leaf. This is probably the simplest design in the book. Ruth has a picture in the book showing several leaves and a couple curly tendrils attached to a stem. I think this is a really cool way of using this pattern. One could tat several long (and short) lengths of leaves and stems and display them in a decorative pot.

The next leaf that I tatted is the Elm or Rose leaf. It is slightly more difficult design than the previous one, but not by much. As you can see, Ruth used what she calls the Celtic Twist to make the centre of the leaf. She uses this type of Celtic knot in a number of her designs, most notably the Celtic Snowflake that she shared with us last year, and the Celtic Maple Leaf that many of you probably have seen before. And speaking of the Celtic Maple Leaf:

You knew I had to tat this pattern, didn't you? Like many, I have been waiting for the pattern to be available. Despite its looks, it isn't terribly hard. There is one small section that uses the same technique as split chains, and I'm sure you can use a regular chain if you want to instead. I really like this leaf and I plan of making it again. In case you are wondering I used Lizbeth size 20 thread in colour # 684 (Light Medium Green) for all three leaves. I am also going to count all three motifs as Motif #15 for my 25 Motif Challenge.

There, I'm finally done writing this post. Its taken me almost three days to write it due to my cold. Right now, my heads all stuffed up and I am contantly getting a sensation that I am going to sneeze, but I don't, which is getting really annoying. I'm not sure if I will get much tatting done this weekend. I did a little bit this afternoon, and I'm also tatting Jane's TIAS (which I need to scan before moving on to the next part). I received a request for a chainmaille necklace through Etsy, which I plan on working on tomorrow. I'll show you pictures once I'm done. Well, that's all for now. Till next time.



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