Whoops.  Well, I finished my entry for the fair, but didn’t realize I needed to get it registered by Wednesday.  I had it down as Friday.  So, instead, that means that I’ve got my bit fair entry for next year done.

Bummed I’m missing this year’s fair.  Mostly because last year there weren’t many tatted lace pieces for show at the fair and there’s talk of them canceling the categories.  Hopefully it sticks around another year and I’ll be able to help the tatters make a good showing then.

In the meantime, this means that I get another year to sew something to the center of this piece.  This piece is from the Priscilla Tatting Book #3.  They suggest a piece of linen in the center and I’ll do something like that, but I haven’t quite figured out yet how to do the sewing. I guess that with a year to do it, I have some time to do some practice pieces.  Also gives me time to write up the pattern.

This piece was done in size 20.  I’ll take some close-up pictures sometime soon too.

I woke up this morning to two pattern sales!  It may not seem like much, but this is the first time I’ve ever had two customers on the same day so I was rather excited.  Both sales were on Craftsy and for the same pattern (the fingerless gloves) so I suspect they must have been mentioned on someone’s blog or something.  Maybe someone else who had made them earlier?  Or maybe mentioned on InTatters?  I have no idea.  Craftsy doesn’t track incoming links so I can’t actually tell.  If someone else saw it, I’d love to know.

This week I finally got the veil pattern posted up on Craftsy and listed both versions as finished pieces on Etsy.  I realized while I was listing it that I didn’t pay any attention to how long it takes me to make them so I listed them rather cheap and when one sells that will give me a chance to time it and get the price correct.  That means the first person to buy one gets quite a steep discount!  

This is my first attempt at a new motif from Priscilla Tatting #3.  I started off tatting it exactly as written, but it became very clear very quickly that it wasn’t going to stay flat using that pattern.  It always amazes me.  They must have seriously blocked the wrinkles out of their pieces in the early 1900s.

Half way through I made a couple adjustments and you can sort of see that one side is flatter than the other.  I’m going to tat it again with a couple other changes and see if I can get it to lay flat.  My plan is for this to be a necklace pendant so it’s going to need to be able to get by without any blocking.

I’ve been AWOL here on the blog and I’m sorry for it.  There’s been a lot going on in both my tatting and non-tatting life.  In my tatting life, I’ve been very busy teaching classes and preparing for teaching.  (Next beginner class is this Saturday at Bird Tail Beads in Bellevue.)  In my non-tatting life, I have my last CPA exam on Friday the 23rd so I’ve been trying to stay pretty focused on studying.  Hopefully, once the exam is done I’ll have a bit of a chance to catch my breath and you’ll hear from me more!

I have finally gotten around to updating and posting the pattern for my mini veil on Craftsy.  Tomorrow I’ll get it up in my Etsy shop.  Hope everyone else likes the pattern.  It’s fun to tat and wear.  I’m working on making a whole collection of veils in many colors.

I was inspired last weekend to play around with dyes again.  This time I pulled out the regular bottles fabric dye and got two little tubs of colors going.  (I use old cottage cheese containers.)  The colors are actually a little brighter than they’re coming out in these pictures.  I had one tub of green going and one of blue and then at the end I added a dash of red to each of the tubs.  I thought that with those combos I would get some more brown, but I guess it was more red than I intended because I came out with some nice maroons.  One of the things that I like about dyeing thread is that I’m not actually trying to get anything specific so I’m always happy with what I get.

The thread I used was mostly all size 20 DMC.  There are a couple smaller skeins of Lizbeth size 10.  A while back I decided that there was no point in holding on to any white DMC because it wasn’t actually a true white like the snow white Lizbeth thread.  I had about nine or ten balls of it so I wound half of it into skeins and they sit in a draw in the kitchen with the dyes.  Now whenever I feel like playing around I can just grab some and go without any prep.  It’s a lot of fun.  I’ll get around to winding the rest of the DMC stuff at some point as well.

I’ll leave with a picture that I think shows a little more the variety of colors I got out of my two little tubs.  I mostly stuck to solids since that’s what I like to tat with, and did a mix of light and dark, but also did one mild variegate in each of the colors as well.  I’m looking forward to playing around with them.  First though, I’ll have to get them wound onto bobbins so they’re useable…  We’ll see when I get around to that…

In cleaning up my computer I found this picture of an attempt at dying thread with turmeric.  It worked out better than I expected and was pretty easy.  I used hot water and soaked it for a few minutes.  I put it in a fixer for a bit before rinsing.  I’m not super excited about the color since I prefer darker colors to the lighter colors, but it was nice to do a bit of dying with natural dyes.

After this batch I try doing a bit with beets, but it rinsed right out.  Unfortunately, I had tossed out the beet water out before I rinsed it and so couldn’t try another batch with fixer.

I wound a couple balls of DMC thread into skeins so that I’m ready to dye a few whenever the feeling hits me without it being a big production.

As I do every time I play around with dying thread I end up being more and more impressed with people like KrystleDawne and LadyShuttlemaker who make such gorgeous hand-dyed thread.  I’m always especially impressed with the consistency of their dyeing and how they’re able to do the same variation lot after lot.

I’ll keep playing around with dyeing threads occasionally, but for the most part I’m going to leave it to the expects!

I’m looking for a test tatter or two for the earrings I posted earlier this week.  I plan to send the pattern to the IOLI who are looking for lace patterns to include in their CD for this year’s convention.  Don’t know if they’ll choose it, but it would be awesome if they did.

Submitting them means that I would need feedback on the pattern in the next day or two.  Anyone interested?  I’m pretty sure the pattern is free from any mistakes, but would like to have someone else tat it to be sure and to check for any wording that is awkward or unclear.  They earrings should take under an hour to make, I think.  I’m not always a good judge of that, but they’re not very complicated.  The pattern does include split rings and shuttle joins.

I’m going to make this the free pattern pulled out of the book of other patterns inspired by this edging from the Priscilla Tatting Book, so if you can’t get to it in the next couple days, don’t worry, this will not be your last opportunity.

Leave a comment with your email, or send me an email at jessica@snapdragonlace.com.  Thanks!

Tax season is over and I’m excited to be getting in to the summer.  (For those that don’t know, when I’m not tatting I’m an accountant.)  It was a very busy tax season and I’m looking forward to having a bit of time to catch my breath and get some tatting projects done.

I had a wonderful time at the Shuttlebirds Tatting Workshop in Spokane this April.  It’s hard to believe it was just two and a half weeks ago.  I miss it already.  My classes went well and I think my students learned a lot.  I’ve already got a couple ideas for what I will teach next year and have even gotten the handout ready for one already.  How’s that for staying on top of things?

I have a number of patterns I want to get put together and published, so I think that will be my focus for the summer.  One booklet will be a series of variations on a pattern from Priscilla (two of which I taught at Shuttlebirds) and the other will be one of some easy bracelet patterns.  For the second, I’d like to come with about 12 or so designs and so far I’m at about 5.  It may be a bit of time before I get that one done, but it will be a nice summer project.

The earrings here are part of the series of patterns that are variations on a Priscilla edging.  I want to sell the booklet with all the patterns, but release one as a free pattern.  I’m currently thinking it will be for these earrings, but I have another one that I might do instead that I have to write up still.

I also have a couple of beginning tatting classes coming up so if you’re in the Seattle area and interested in learning how to tat, please let me know.

All my mentioning of summer should probably come with an asterisk since it’s currently a typically cloudy Seattle day, but we had a couple of nice days in the last week and hopefully that will pick up again.

Last year I picked up these little red ornaments and I’m finally getting around to playing with them.  I should have included something in the picture to show the size, but they’re about an inch at the widest.  There’s 27 in the set, but so far I’ve only covered 3 of them.  I think I’m just going to do this same basic pattern on all of them.  They’re way too small to put on a normal sized tree, but would look nice on a little tabletop-sized tree.

I also got two other sizes, but I expect I’ll end up leaving those for next year.

Hope everyone is having a good holiday season!

The good news is that I got my score back on my latest CPA exam and I passed!  2 down and 2 to go.  I’ve started studying for the next one, but am, of course, a bit behind from where I wanted to be at this point.  That fact and the fact that I have a lot of things to finish up at work before heading off on our Christmas/New Years vacation leads to the not unexpected news.  I don’t expect to have a lot of time for tatting in the next week.  Still grabbing at whatever I can get, but not making any big plans for what I want to tackle and am just going to take whatever I can get.

I DID get in some tatting at yesterday’s meeting of the Lacemakers of Puget Sound.  The group has a brand new website and I highly recommend that you check it out.  If you’re in the Seattle/Puget Sound area you should come to our meetings.  We have monthly meetings in Kent, Everrett and Bellevue.  It’s a great way to learn new things or just get a chance to hang out and enjoy the company of others who are just as fascinated by making things with thread.

As we’re getting near the end of the year I’ve been thinking a bit about the goal I set a few months ago of finishing an unfinished project every month.  I’m proud to say that I’ve actually kept up with it!   I haven’t reported here on the last two because they”re gifts and while I don’t think the recipients are following my website, I figured it was better to stay on the safe side.  I did, however finish two other garlands that end up on “our” Christmas tree.  The “our” is in quotes because we’ll be out of town for Christmas so we decided to set a tree up at my partner’s office instead.  We went over with his brother and set it up over the weekend as a surprise for his employees to find on Monday morning so we still got the fun of setting up and decorating, but without any rearranging needed at our house.  Since last Christmas we’ve acquired a piano and a new couch and are not sure where to put a tree.

The two garlands didn’t take long to finish.  I had the tatting done for them, and really just needed to go back to hide and clip the ends.  Didn’t take long to do, but they were unfinished objects and now they’re finished so they still cover two weeks of my goal.

Included on the tree are a couple dozen snowflakes I made years ago when I worked in radio and spent a lot of time in the studio sitting around, waiting to press buttons between songs/speaking breaks.  It was the sort of job that was perfect for a crafter and I got a lot of snowflakes made.  My only wish now is that I had used better thread.  I used the Royal brand thread that was easily available to me at Michaels and JoAnns and there’s nothing wrong with it, but since those days I’ve switched over to better thread and it makes me a little sad to see all my hard work and worry that it won’t hold up over the long (40 years) run.  One day maybe I’ll have the time to replace them with better thread.  If I did this they would also be made with much better tatting since making dozens and dozens of snowflakes is one of the things I did to really practice my tatting and get better.  I look fondly of them for that aspect and love the way we literarily fling them on to the tree and let them lay there rather than hanging each one individually.