Thursday, November 28, 2013

Tatting a Jan Stawasz Design: Doily V

Wow! It's over a month since I last posted. I really hadn't planned on that. I guess between work and life, I never got around to posting till now. I still haven't made a PDF file of the football pattern I posted in my last post yet. You did see it right? You can find the pattern here. You may have noticed that my pattern links are gone from the top left sidebar. Keep & Share closed my account for some reason, and didn't tell me. I'm assuming the account was closed because I hadn't logged in for quite a while. I made a new account, but, um, forgot the password and just haven't dealt with it yet. Don't worry, I'll get them back up soon. Onward to the tatting! I have been tatting, honest!

I'm sure many of you may have heard that Jan Stawasz recently passed away. I only have his second book, though I have wanted his first book for a while. I do hope his publisher continues with the re-release of the first book. I started one of his designs a few weeks ago when I went out of town for the weekend. I chose Doily V, on page 35, as it didn't seem to use "Jan's Method" much.



I had to start the centre square over as I neglected to make the joining picots really small as Jan suggests. It cupped because of the larger picots. It still cups a bit, due to the joining picots on the corners, but I didn't really want to start over. I am hoping blocking it when it's finished will help it. I am currently working on the final round, or Part III as it is written in the book. Unfortunately, this round has some inconsistencies with the stitch counts. I'll talk about them when I'm done the round. I did try Jan's Method on a few rings, and it is pretty easy to do once you start doing it. It's basically a form of frontside/backside tatting. I had to cut off the round shortly after I started as I got mixed up with the stitch count inconsistencies. I didn't use Jan's Method, but I do see the difference now and am looking forward to tatting some of his other designs. I'm using Lizbeth 20, #601 White.

That's about it for now. I bought a couple more Pop-a-Bobbin shuttles from the latest batch that Jane posted last Saturday. I had to; I haven't bought one for a while. I also placed a small order from Bestitched as I wanted one of the new Aerlit shuttle colours, and matching bobbins. There was also a few new Lizbeth colours I wanted. Of course, I ordered a week early, and will miss the Black Friday sale they are having all weekend. Which reminds me, I'm having a sale too!

Starting at midnight (my time) everything is 25% off. This includes the already deeply discounted Sterling Silver. And that's not all! The coupon code located on the right sidebar can be used too. The sale will last all weekend, including Monday.

I had to buy a new battery for my truck a week ago so I would love to get some sales this weekend. Sales have been slow, though I know it's not just me. I'm not trying to guilt anyone by the way. Feel free to pass this on to other people who may be interested. I hope all my US tatting friends are having/had a great Thanksgiving. Till next time.