Oh, Canada...

OK, the title may be a couple weeks late, but it seems appropriate for what I made, finally. I'll made this post short as I really can't wait to share.

As I think I mentioned in my last post, I've been wanting to make this for a while, but I never got around to it. Till now. And here it is:

Yup. It's the Canadian Flag. It measures 3 inches by about 6 1/4 inches. Not quite the proper 2:1 proportions, but close enough. Except for the 6 regular rings, the flag part is made solely using split rings. Lots of split rings. The maple leaf was designed by Frivole. It's in her free pattern section. Though, I found in on intatters. I hope she doesn't mind I used it for my flag. I did make a few small changes. She used Josephine knots on the points of the leaf, and since I'm not particularly fond of JKs, I made small regular rings instead. Thread stats: the white thread is DMC Cordonnet size 20, the leaf was made using DMC Perle cotton size 5 and the red part of the flag is DMC Perle cotton size 8-both colour #321. Despite being the same colour, the leaf is a bit brighter in colour.

In order to get the leaf sizing right, I had to make a few leaves.

The top leaf is the first one I tatted. The small red leaf is the second one I made. I experimented a bit with the points and made small rings with a picot instead of the JKs. The large red leaf is the final version. I might remove the maple leaf from the flag and resew it back on. I'm not entirely happy with how I sewed it on. I had thought of joining the leaf to the flag as I tatted it, and I could make another one and try it. Other than that, I've very happy with my Tatted Canadian Flag.

That's it for now. Well, I did have one idea that I thought would be cool:

Hope you like it! Till next time.

Still Tatting

Yeah, I'm still here. I just haven't been inspired to tat anything lately. At least until last week. I am waiting for some yarn and wire for a crochet project I've been wanting to do. This is going to be a fairly short post. I just want to do a quick teaser post. I'm actually almost done, then I have another idea I want to try. Before I forget, my German Triangle Motif Doily was featured in a blog post at Ancora Crafts. The post in question is here.

As I said above, I haven't felt like tatting until early last week. An idea came last Monday evening and I just had to start working on it. I managed to tat the following by the end of last Tuesday:

The thread looks kinda creamy in the photo, but I used white. The next part needed red thread. I now I have some, but I couldn't find it. I still can't. I went out, figuring I could easily buy another ball. Boy, was I wrong. Apparently, I forgot how hard it is to find size 20 thread in any colour besides white and ecru, after being able to buy Lizbeth (and Flora) easily online. I ended up buying some size 8 perle cotton that worked out pretty well, as well as some size 5 perle cotton from my Temari thread stash when I found that I needed a thicker thread in a matching red. Sorry, I'm not sharing a photo of the result yet. Feel free to make a guess though. If you dare.

I was going to share the third part of my mystery idea, but I'm pretty sure it will give it away. So that'll have to wait until my next post. If it helps, it involves one of Frivole's patterns. So instead, I'll share a quick photo of my Industrial Piercing. So if you don't want to see it, you may leave now without fear of missing any more tatting.

The photo is from a few weeks ago. As of this Thursday, I'll have had it for almost seven weeks. It hardly hurts now, compared to when I first got it. As to why I got it, well, simply, because. I think it's a phase I'm going through. I don't think I'm finished either.

That's about it. I hope to post again either Friday or Saturday, maybe sooner.