Tatting Tea TuesdayRound 6 Finished

Row 6 of Purple and Teal Square Doily
Debbie Arnold © 2002
Round six (6) of the County Fair doily is complete.

Less than four weeks remain before the fair opens. Four more rows to tat. The pressure is on! Maybe I should stop here until after the fair judging?

The next three rounds build the beautiful bracketed square shape. If I forge ahead and don't get all 10 rows done, I risk it looking unfinished. If I leave it as is, it looks like a nice glass mat.

Speaking of which, progress on the spinning wheel glass mat continues slow but steady. It occurs to me that instead of a doily, I could submit multiple coasters for the county fair. But how to present them?

FYI - both mats are the same size.

4 repeats of Mary Konior's Spinning
Wheel Glass Mat in Bali HDT, size 30
Every Time a Bell Rings...
...an angel gets his wings, or so goes the quote from "It's a Wonderful Life."

I snapped this partial shot of the glass mat because it looked like one half of a pair of angel wings. Has anyone else used this pattern to tat angel wings?

Lastly, I attempted to make a birthday card using rubber stamps, scrapbooking papers and a few embellishments. It started out simple, but exploded into a three-trip-to-Michaels event fairly quickly. Why?

I purchased the wrong kind of inkpad for the coated cardstock used to craft the lotus blossom and the ink never fully dried. Not with help from a hair dryer or a heat gun. Even after sitting out to air dry in a well air-conditioned house for a week, the ink rubbed off easily on my fingers. Live and learn!

People like Etha Schuette make it look easy. That just goes to show you how talented they are.

Whether it is a card, a bit of lace or something else, here's hoping you all find time time to create something beautiful. See you next Tuesday for more communi-tea!

Note: This post was scheduled in advance, but I took along fresh spearmint leaves from my backyard mint patch to brew a refreshing tea before departing home to Silly Hat Central. Hoping your tea was tasty today!

RIP Genevieve Gesin

Genevieve Gesin with a 3-month-old Sprout
(photo taken in 2007)
Gentle tatters, some sad news today.

My grandmother's fragile health has been failing for the past few weeks. This great, elegant lady died five minutes before midnight last night. She was 101. (Her 102 birthday was coming up - August 20, 2010.)

There is no doubt in my mind that she will be greeted by throngs of family and friends who have gone before her. Once she has reunited with them, the tatting angels will gather to welcome her home.

You can read more about her in my tatting ancestry.

Here is a photo of the three of us together.

Genevieve, Is'Dihara and Sprout
(photo taken in 2007)
Goodness, look at those glasses, I am glad I don't wear those anymore.  ツ

Gran was the one who taught me to tat. She out-lived every member of her immediate family. Hers was a life well and fully lived, and she was ready to go.

So while my heart is heavy today, I take heart in the many fond memories I have of her. And I proudly carry the lace legacy into the future.

Funeral arrangements are being made for Monday, so I will be out of town for Tatting Tea Tuesday on July 20th. I beg your indulgence as my parent's home does not have Internet access.

In lieu of condolences, it would make my heart glad if you spend a few moments tatting and celebrating the tatters in your life whoever or where ever they may be.

Rest peacefully and tat with the angels, my beloved mentor, elder and friend. You will be sorely missed.

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!

Lizbeth's New Fall Colors

Sneak Peek
Imagine my surprise when a sneak peek of the Lizbeth's Eight New Fall Colors dropped into my inbox:

Solids

Color 696 – Autumn Orange Med

Color 615 – Yellow Lt

Color 619 – Baby Pink

Color 649 – Baby Blue

Variegated Colors
Color 136 – Autumn Spice

Mocha brown dk and med, terra cotta dk, harvest orange dk and lt, olive dk and med.

Color 137 – Berry Burst

Violet dk, boysenberry dk, cornflower blue med, country turquoise dk.

Color 138 – Leafy Greens

Leaf green med, pine green, olive med, leaf green lt.

Color 139 – Fruit Fizz

Raspberry pink med, autumn orange med, melon lt, purple med.

Plus, two more colors that do not yet have scans:

Color 153 – Rainbow Taffy
– Pink lt, autumn orange med, yellow lt, avocado green very lt, electric blue lt, purple med.

Color 154 – Wildflower Garden
– Lilac med, Purple lt, autumn orange med, pink coral med, blossom pink med, olive dk

Wow, that makes 121 colors available in three sizes. To borrow phrasing from Charlotte the barn spider (Charlotte's Web by E. B. White), that's "Some Selection." Terrific!

Have Your Say
Barbara Foster is also asking for your feedback to help her choose which new solid colors and variegated combos to release in December.

This is your chance to choose the colors to get you through those dreary winter days. Or to spice up your sizzlin' hot winter days, depending on which side of the equator you happen to live.

So, what colors would you like to see that are missing from the Lizbeth line?

Leave a comment with your color suggestion(s) on THIS POST or email Barbara Foster directly at staff@hhtatting.com. 


Lizbeth 80
If you're waiting for the latest release information, the following notice went out on Monday, July 5th:

The Lizbeth size 80 thread will not be in stock until the end of August.

If you haven't already heard, the color spacing for the size 80 is shorter, as short as 2.5-3 inches long for some colorways. Others are a little longer. No more tatting (and tatting and tatting) to get to the next color change.

No More Lizbeth at JoAnn's?

On Monday, the Lizbeth 20 display at my local JoAnn Fabric & Crafts store was completely EMPTY. What stock they once had had been put on sale for $1.97 per ball.

When asked if they had discontinued carrying Lizbeth cotton threads, a manager said, "If we have, you might still be able to find some online."

So instead of searching online, I went to the source. Barbara Foster at Handy Hands responded with this information:

No worry, they still have it in some stores, also Hobby Lobby carries 40 colors in all their stores.

Barbara (and a JoAnn customer service representative) explained further.

JoAnn F&C first conducts a 300-store test market sampling to see how a new product sells. Lizbeth sold well in the test markets, so JoAnn has added Lizbeth size 20 thread to its warehouse.

So why the empty display? JoAnn F&C will only stock Lizbeth size 20 thread in 225 of its stores.

JoAnn's has 750 locations in 48 states. That means only 30% of the company's retail locations will stock Lizbeth thread on a regular basis.

The raw data I received from JoAnn's lists 291 locations, not 225. I must presume this is the list of test stores. The CS rep said that some stores may be closing or changing locations, and to expect this data to be "fluid," meaning that the statistics could change frequently.

If you want to see the store data listing which locations (as of today) will continue to carry Lizbeth thread in your state, I am happy to drop the data into a spreadsheet, save it as a PDF file and post the link. Heck, I don't mind tracking the data through September, if it is valuable to tatters.

Do you want to see it?

Gone, flitted away.

June has slipped through my fingers.

Remember when we were desperate for the first signs of Spring? It seemed like old man winter would never loosen his grip. Then Spring arrived and left again in a rush of adolescent heat.

Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote the words "Gone, flitted away" in a poem titled simply, "Gone." The poem is often used in memorials but the words also suit slippery days like today.

Tatting Tea Tuesday
What tea befits a Tuesday that is gone, flitted away in procrastination and minutiae?

Sun tea! A homemade infusion of green and Lady Grey with a fresh slice of lemon.

I have had a paisley design on my mind, but it turned out to be more leafy than paisley. Here is a sketch.

It can be tatted all in one pass, but to do it I had to start with a chain. And beads (or Josephine knots) may be added, especially around the edges.

If anyone thinks this looks too similar to a leaf design they have seen elsewhere, please let me know.

This is as far as I got on the test tat before Bali fever took over. More on that later.

County Fair
Have you noticed that county fair season is upon us? Batatter finished her county fair project this week, and her Bellaluna Bat is a work of art!

Instead of buckling down to work on my fair doily, I spent several days winding off exchange threads and receiving lovely notes with coveted samples tucked inside. These tantalizing new threads have been calling, begging to be tried.

Envelopes have arrived from near and far.

This striking stamp from Australia caught The Sprout's eye as soon as I pulled the letter from the post box.

"Is that one for ME, mommy?" he asked. "See? It has a TRAIN on it!" And so it did.

Bali Ha'i
Then I heard the siren song of Heather, The Tarnished Tatter's Bali HDT in size 50. It beckoned, luring me like a sailor, calling me away to start Mary Konior's spinning wheel glass mat.

So many others have made this spectacular glass mat. The pattern can be found in "Tatting with Visual Patterns" on page 72. While I'm not that far along, I completely understand why people are so fond of this pattern. (Why is it called a glass mat and not a coaster?)

Bali colorway has a lush quality that reminds me of exotic sunsets. The thread has a bit of a soft hand, but so long as you don't unpick (retrotat, tonk) too often, rings close smoothly and hold their shape.

Goodness, for a post about time racing by, I have blathered on, haven't I? Time to put this post to bed.

Wishing you all more me-time to create something beautiful.

See you in July for more communi-tea!

Slow Lace

Interweave Press newsletters are great for inspiring provocative thinking.

The latest Handwoven newsletter, for example, got me thinking about "slow cloth" and consequently "slow lace."

It explains the slow cloth concept as being "a lot like the slow food movement. The point is not to do it fast, the point is a deeper, better, richer, fuller experience. Plus a better product."

Machines can, and do, churn out laces at a cheap price point. Computerized sewing machines are even making headway at turning out lace that vaguely resembles tatting.

But handmade lace is by nature slow, and therein lies the joy.

I find making lace to be gratifying and pleasurable. Winding shuttles allows me time to dream about the end product I have pictured in my mind. Passing the shuttle back and forth to form stitches and watching the lace grow is a rhythmic, meditative, and aethetically pleasing process.

My fledgling knowledge of needle tatting suggests that it also fits the model for "slow lace."

So to all those who shrug off tatting as impractical and old-fashioned, I would ask, "what do you do for pleasure?"

Hobbies take many forms. Potters throw clay onto a wheel and mold it under their hands. Painters use color and brushes and canvas to interpret what they see. Dancers interpret music and emotions visually with their bodies.

Manipulating fiber (in this case, making lace) by hand gives me many hours of pleasure and a marvelous, zen-like calm. It also exercises my mind.

Tatting is my Calgon. When a long soak in a warm bath is impractical, the rhythm, the pace and the pleasure of tatting can still "take me away."