I have been tatting!

But it has mostly been turned into scraps.. I have done some work in my Etsy shop which makes me proud. My photos are a lot better than they were. Damn white balance. One of the pieces that I love and will have a hard time parting with is my Floppy Flower Pendant, only it isn't very floppy. But the name stuck.

I've been exchanging threads still, but that has slowed down due too, not having time to tat with all the new threads.

I've also have started the college hunt again. Right now I am attending a Community College and hope to be away at a four year university in fall 2011. With this, I have been counting down the days until classes start again. Lesson learned, I NEED to take at least one summer class from now on. My brain just feels lazy. This fall is going to be intense, I'm only taking 12 credit hours, but the courses themselves..

General Anthropology               M W F      9-9:50
American History 1                   M W F      10-10:50
Argument Based Research        M W F      11-11:50
Humanties: The Holocaust        M              12:30 - 3:15

I prefer history that is more than 200 years old, I do not love the idea of a class on essay writing, and my humanities class is going to be very emotionally draining.

Other awesome things coming up, Tat Days! My mom and I are going. And I'll be missing a day of classes to go. >.>

I bought some of krystledawne's test HDT batches and have made to bracelets out of it. She warned possible white spots but there have been very few with this one. So, one more plug for my Etsy and to show off these bracelets...

I've done it! Part two

I would like to introduce you to my Etsy shop. So far I have posted 3 necklaces and one necklace/earring set.

I would like to thank everyone for their encouragement.

I did it!!!

I did a split chain!!! Pictures to follow.. Once I can get the stitch within my 5 first tries, before the thread is turning to fuzz.

Motif #6 and 7

It's been so long since my last post.. I promise I've been tatting! I went to a triangle tatters meeting the end of June. My mom and I got "lost" on the way and found ourselves in this awesome little shop called Shuttles, Needles, and Hooks.

Then the following week we were invited to come tat at this lady's house. It was quite the experience... I'm not too sure if I mean that in a good way or not. I kind of had shuttle tatting shoved at me. I had tried to shuttle tat before but I just couldn't figure it out. I got it this time. I wasn't flipping the stitches before. However, after a week of not putting the shuttles down and not being able to do a simple ring chain ring chain pattern I was at the point of completely giving up. This is the extent of my shuttle tatting. Both patterns are by Yarnplayer.

Luckily for me, the guy in my life knocked some sense into me when he went into my bags and found my needles and took the shuttles from me. I've tatted a few snowflakes recently and started working on these floppy flower pendants. They're tatted around a cabone ring. And in between each picot I have a bead. Having to unthread and rethread my needle  to put a bead on made this process take a long time. Then, I realized, I could do this with a shuttle easily! I was able to do ring chain chain chain chain chain flowers... So my floppy flower pendants are in process of being shuttle tatted! This is a round motif out of Tatting with Anne Orr. It was taking me a tremendous amount of time to tat and I wasn't in the mood for it so it has been set aside. On the right is another pattern from Tatting with Anne Orr. I was testing out some of my exchange thread.

Even though I messed this one up, this is motif #6. This pattern can be found here. I accidently added an extra chain and ring to this piece. This was supposed to turn into a pendant but the beads were just too large for the piece, still it has a nice weight to it. Might get turned into a little bag if I could figure out a way. I made another pendant like from my last post. But in attaching the flowers together it now feels a little mushed. I sewed them together. I'm not too sure how to attach them and keep the 3 dimensional look to them.

The Floppy Flower Pendants are best wound CTM (continuous thread method) with 2 shuttles and beads on both shuttles. I might eventually post the pattern, but I'm sure many other people have tatted similar items. I haven't seen any patterns though. After my first try I had to cut the thread so I am covering the ring by shuttle (which was the most time consuming part with needle anyways) and needle tatting the petals.

This was the first attempt at the pendant.  This was the second, it's just fine but the picots are too long.

This is motif #7. I was just goofing off and trying to tat around these beads individually but, I saw this starting to happen and I let it. I'm not too sure what I am going to use it for yet. I was thinking a bracelet but I'm afraid that it feels very flimsy and would not want it to break. 

While taking all of these photos today, we had a very curious cat that wanted to play with my strings. I present to you Enzi.

Until next time happy tatting!