Sweet Enough to Eat —Raspberry Ripple with Real Vanilla HDT

Ooh, this motif looks so scrumptious in Tatskool's HDT. The creamy vanilla...the warm raspberry ripple...it looks sweet enough to eat.

Tatting with this thread is an irresistible treat. Rings hold their shape and chains don't go all floppy like three-plies sometimes can. This is a six-cord thread and yessirree, is it ever smmooooooth.

But it is a bit hard to see on a light-colored background, so here it on some purple silk.

Isn't it just lovely stuff? Tatting with it gives me the sweetest taboo. (Apologies to Sade Adu for using her song title.)

Now on to more murky technique analysis. If you're not in the mood, you may want to stop reading now.

From the start I suspected this round might not lie flat. Sure enough, the final repeat is ³⁄₁₆ -inch too narrow to complete the pattern. So close! Would blocking fix it? Dunno, really.

A few days ago I received the instructor's critique on this motif. It was a thorough and thoughtful review, and I'm grateful for her suggestions. It's just that my design wasn't constructed very well. It was pretty and a nice design effort, but unstable.

Here is what I have learned: chains are a good means of traveling up and out, but they need built-in structure to avoid "wet spaghetti syndrome." Rings are great stabilizers, but can devour precious negative space.

Another thing I learned is that retrofitting stability into a motif is like forcing a square peg into a round hole.

Looks like I have a long way to go to whip this doily-size wet noodle into shape. It makes my heart ache because I pored my creative soul into the lesson. But the class isn't even half done, so there are many, many more things to learn and lots of room to grow.

Witness the genesis of a design. Who knows? Maybe even a designer.

That wince? It's nothing. Just shrugging off a growing pain and getting down to business.