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Saturday, July 10, 2010

County Fair Doily

Round five is complete and round six is in progress. The square doily is past the half-way point & now measures 11 cm. (4.3 inches) from corner to corner.



Rows 5 and 6 of Purple and Teal Square Doily
Debbie Arnold © 2002

It is tatted in size 40 Lizbeth Linen (color #693) and size 50 Treebeard HDT from LadyShuttleMaker.

I stopped halfway through round six to show you how the scallop from round four turns into a square.

Sw4nkyL4c3r is right, though. I obsess over trivial things when it comes to lace. I am still distracted by the difference in thread sizes. Nobody else seems to notice!

As I tat, the refrain from this Queen song is buzzing in the back of my brain.



Under pressure! It must be from all the obsessing.  ツ

Bali Fever
In spite of the need to focus on the square doily for the fair, Bali fever continues. It's all Heather's fault for dying such an alluring colorway. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it!)

But some of the blame must also go to Mary Konior (may she rest in peace among a choir of tatting angels). The two-row repeat of her spinning wheel glass mat is positively addicting. "Just one more ring," or "just until the next color change" eat up the tatting time.

And I am equally, if not more, to blame for allowing myself to get distracted by thread and things such as this:


WPlus9 Mehndi Medallions
Lookie what came in the mail – clear stamps that look like tatting. I saw these on one of my obscure, late-night blog crawls. Another crafter had made a gorgeous card featuring one of the stamps and it just leaped off the screen and said, "Don't I look like tatting?"

I was powerless to resist the impulse (Wouldn't you have been? Okay, maybe not.) and bought a set the next day. Late night blog crawling makes you weak.

But what fun I will have creating labels and cards with tatting-like stamps. Already a small, but creative corner of my brain is buzzing with images of tatted teapots affixed to pretty papers with tatting designs stamped, maybe even embossed, on them.


More Beguiling Stamps
Last week I shared a striking stamp from Australia that arrived with samples from The Thread Exchange site Fox launched several weeks ago.  Here are some from the bonny shores of Ireland.

The sender had me at "Eire". Aren't the flowers pretty and inviting? Something about them just says come see our bonny shores for yourself. The sight of them made Ciarrán homesick.

More Love from Postie
As if the stamps, threads and songs weren't enough of a distraction, a book search that I set up several years ago turned up a hardback copy of Cathy Bryant's "Tatting" for a reasonable price. Usually when I find it online it is being sold for some astronomical sum! So I purchased it used from a library in Iowa for $15.00. It is in excellent condition.  Une bonne affaire!

8 comments:

  1. Your post has cheered up an awful rain sodden day. Ciarrán would not like it at all. So glad I made the most of the sunshine, now I have no excuse not to blog....except so much still to do!
    Doiley looking great, can't see the difference in thread size.

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  2. PS the tatting stamps are really fab.

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  3. Your doily is looking terrific! I would also obsess over thread sizes. Choosing two different thread sizes could cause a complete disaster!

    I'm not into stamping, but I can see why you jumped on these! My web crawling this week sucked me into the world of pin cushions... more on that later!

    Congrautlations on your book find! I was able to find a library copy of Cathy's book also. It's a keeper!

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  4. Under Pressure - I love it! A great theme song for tatting :) I love Queen and David Bowie too . . .

    Your doily looks great - I love the colors. When is the fair?

    The stamps are a great find! In the height of my stamping madness, I always looked for stamps with crochet or tatting or shuttles on them - to no avail. Now that there ARE some, I have given up stamping for quilting.

    Distractions, distractions!

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  5. Dia dhuit!

    What a great post!

    Your tatting is, as always impeccable. It is a beautiful pattern as well.

    I would have sported for the stamps in a NY minute. That are terrific.

    Ahhh Freddie! What a marvellous edit! Made my day! No pressure watching that!

    Fox : )

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  6. Dum dum dum da da dum dum... dang now it's in my head!!!! Thanks a lot Aunt Karen.. >=(
    Those stamps ARE amazing!!!
    And what is this I see??? Is that a photo that I held the background up for?? IT IS!!!! Ahhhh Mama's pictures. =P

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  7. Your doily is looking very nice! Where did you get your stamps! I collect stamps and make cards and stuff! You didn't share that in your post!
    ~TattingChic ♥

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  8. TattingChic, thank you for your kind compliment. You are right! I forgot to mention where I bought the rubber stamps -- I ordered them online direct from the manufacturer. Here is a link:
    http://www.wplus9.com/products/Mehndi-Medallions-%252d-4-x-6-set.html

    I will add the link into the body of the post to make it easy for others to find the source.

    Thanks again!

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