Bed Beginnings & Leprechaun Trap

Precious little tatting to report this week. Late-winter/early-spring viruses and allergies kept the whole family down in varying degrees.  As for me, allergy-onset + a 24-hour vomiting spell = several days lost productivity. 

Sprout went to a girl's birthday party last weekend which had a kitten adoption theme, so he came home with a blue beanie-kitten, a crafty ball of yarn, a plastic mouse toy and Swedish Fish candy as take-away goodies.

Sprout & Wilbur

"Wilbur (adopted kitty's name) needs a tatted bed to sleep in, Mama, " Sprout informed me.

So I decided to follow Fox's lead (see her links from March1: Jivin' with Jan and March 7: Delightful Doilies Dominate) and begin with part one of Doily VI from Tatted Treasures by Jan Stawasz,

Lace-lovin' Librarian Diane gets credit too, as her lacework (February 24: Doily VI, Round 1 and March 18: Round V...done!) inspired Fox.  Bravo ladies for enabling me so successfully.  LOL!

My blind stab at Part I of Doily VI
Lizbeth^® 20 # 111 Cotton Candy

For some strange reason I thought that the central motif from Jan Stawasz' Doily VI was published sans stitch counts. (Indeed, the motif in my copy of his first book omits them.)

After a few days I got wise and double checked both Stawasz books to discover that book two does include stitch counts. Mine are not at all close to his!

Sprout insists Wilbur's bed be lined, padded, decorated with tatting (the kid thinks big, doesn't he?) and have a door. I'm hoping this version of the motif will work as an inner round.

How to Catch a Leprechaun

Yesterday was a snow day so I had Sprout home with me. We colored a pot o' gold, shamrocks and told each other tales of leprechaun mischief. Before long he decided it was time to build a leprechaun trap!


We agreed to stage these trap photos using Ciarrán before actually setting the trap. (Yes, that is a light saber toy in the background.)

Note the yellow "o" made to look like a gold coin and the big arrow pointing toward the entrance.  He asked me how to spell gold and thought I had said "e" instead of "g," but promptly corrected his error. He is still perfecting his spacing (runs out of room for all of his letters) but I love it all!

At periodic intervals Sprout would "hear a sound" and rush to examine his trap. Surely he would find a captured pixie!  Here he is peering in to see what he had caught...

He had placed a pirate doubloon inside the box as well as a hand-drawn shamrock as bait.  Sadly, no leprechauns fell prey to his ingenious trap. But all in all, it was great snow day fun!

TIAS Day 6

Not a lot of tatting has taken place this week. What with "da boyz" (hubby and kidlet) having a snow day on Friday, kidlet's busy social calendar on Saturday, I-don't-remember-what on Sunday and a two-hour ice delay Monday morning; oh, and hubby's second attack of gout Monday evening, the long weekend was seemingly over before it began.

I did complete TIAS Day 6 yesterday afternoon.  I have been enjoying the TIAS tatting immensely! The early stages of this game are the most fun, since I can let my imagination run wild with crazy guesses.  I always try to work in a camel guess (or a Loch Ness monster) early on. 

Is'Dihara's TIAS 2013, Day 6, progress

By the time we get to the halfway point, I am usually influenced by ingenious guesses posted on Jane's TIAS blog. For example, Valerie Ho's hunch that it might be a Viking ship!  Hmmm, don't think it will turn out to be a Viking ship at this stage, but who knows?

Now I am swayed by another excellent bit of deductive guesswork: the pram/baby buggy probability. It could be a flowerpot or even a hot air balloon. But all I see is the carriage of a pram.

Anita M Adamson's shopping cart prediction was featured on Jane Eborall's Facebook page promoting TIAS. Hurray for Anita!  Don't cha just love all the shuttles loaded up in the cart?

Day 7 will reveal another clue to the puzzle and our tatting imaginations will race ahead once more. How did I ever make it through the long, cold, January stretch before TIAS came along?

Merci mille fois, Jane, for giving us this delightful game to play.

Tatting Tea Tuesday - New Books
Today's tea is decaf green flavored with Powell & Mahoney Cosmopolitan cocktail mixer.  Tatting while sipping a warmed concoction of cranberry, lime and orange is a very tasty prospect. The cocktail mixer was left over from New year's Eve and I couldn't let it go to waste, now could I? 

Instead of tatting during cosmopoli-tea time, I opted to leaf through my two new tatting books!  First is a reprint of Judith Connor's 2006 book, "Contemporary Tatting - New Designs from an Old Art."  It contains lovely color photos and hand-drawn diagrams of "a galaxy of patterns."

The second addition to my tatting library is Jan Stawasz' second publication, "Tatted Treasures."  Owning his first book made buying this one an absolute must. Mr. Stawasz' method is very "front-side/back-side" centric.  His patterns have a stately elegance that I find very appealing.

Both books are wonderful and I can recommend them to any tatter.