Isn't that a beautiful rose? My youngest son and his fiance gave me flowers for Mother's Day. It was a bouquet of assorted flowers and they are still going strong more than a week later! I took several photos at the weekend and this is one of them.

In spite of being behind in just about everything I'm doing at the moment (but catching up fast!) I tatted the ornament from Vida Sunderman's book, Tatting for Tomorrow, on page 41. I just happened to have these two colors sitting on the table next to me (both Altin Basak, size 50) and decided to try using both to see the effect on the motif. I really like it. I decided to make it into a bookmark but had trouble deciding how I wanted to make the tail. I made about three false starts before I settled on this one - a set stitch of 5-5 (5 1st halves, 5 2nd halves) in series of 6 sets, I think, before changing colors. It felt like a weak ending though so I switched to split rings, increasing the size of each ring as I went down and switching the sides of the colors in the split rings. I was really pleased with how it turned out.

I returned a purchase to Walmart this evening and got to talking to the young man processing my refund. I noticed on the board that they cashed checks, sold money orders (only 46¢) and transferred funds up to $500 internationally. That last one surprised me so I asked him if they did much business with that and he said yes. Then he went on to say that a lot of money went to Africa. Scams. I looked at him and grinned - yeah? He got this mischevious look and said, oh, did I say that? LOL! I was just floored. We laughed and talked about how obvious they were. Or at least it seemed that way to me. He said they are mostly women. They go online (the personals, I'm sure) and think they get a boyfriend and that they are getting married.

Now...I know this is off topic, but it's something that really pushes my buttons. I've done my share of online personals. It's not hard to be careful. It's not hard to screen the duds and the scams. So what is the deal here? I hate seeing people who are lonely hearts, usually desperate and suffering low self-esteem, being targeted and taken advantage of. So if you or anyone you know frequents the online singles, take note of this. IT'S A SCAM! Most of it comes out of S. Africa. They target men and women alike. They claim to be trapped there, without money or friends. Or they are trying to finish school and need money. I don't care what the story is, DO NOT SEND MONEY. Or anything that can be sold for money. DON'T.

There are lots of perfectly wonderful people who use the online personals. I've met some good people. But I'm pretty good at sorting them out too. Use common sense. Don't give out personal information that identifies where you live. Take the time to get to know them. Get to know their friends. I belong to a lot of yahoo groups. I've met a lot of people I got to know through those groups, but in every case, other people had also met them and talked about them and we all talked for months, often years, before meeting. They were not people I met last week. I knew them pretty well by the time I met them face to face.

Okay...off my soapbox.

Hiding Ends

Hiding ends is such a bug-a-boo for most people. For some reason I decided early on to hide my ends as I went. I think it was seeing some doilies in process in the round robins. Some had threads hanging out all over and it could be....seeing all those dangling threads turned me off to making doilies...but I really don't have much reason to make them anyway.

Most of my early tatting was from what few publications I could find locally - my collection of workbaskets mainly. Very few instructions mentioned split rings and split chains and even when they did, I didn't get around to learning them until I'd been tatting 3 or 4 years and was ..ahem..getting strung out on threads to hide.

The first time I met Jane Eborall in person was at Palmettos the first time I went. She mentioned hiding an end when starting a ring but I didn't see her do it. It was some time later that I saw the instructions on her website that I gave it a try. It's nice for a rings-only project although if I'm tatting a wheel, I usually want to tie the first and last threads together to look the same as the rest of the motif.

Anyway..Jane has started a new TIAS and one of the techniques is using a 2nd color thread for the split rings which start after a regular ring. I decided to practice a bit before I tackle the project and thought you all might benefit too.

At one point, I said I pinched the thread between my thumb and my pinky but it's actually my thumb and my index finger. I'm also experimenting with my camera. A 3 minute video easily consumes over 300 MG and uploading to YouTube, even with a fast connection, takes 1-5 minutes for each MG so it literally takes hours to upload just a few minutes worth of video. I discovered my camera has a "compact mode" so I tried that which substantially reduced the number of MG, but the quality is not quite as good. I tried zooming in, but it's kind of fuzzy, as you'll see. For some reason, they also looked yellowish. I played around with the camera a bit more this evening while these were uploading and used my OTT light. It's not anything I'll put here, but I'm hoping when I get to check it that it will look much better. In that case, I might end up doing these over, but for now....this is what I have to offer.

I have 3 videos. The first one is just about hiding the tail as you tat the first ring. The other 2 are 2 different ways of hiding the tail of the 2nd thread that is added for the 2nd half of the split ring. In one, it is hidden in the first half of the split ring and in the other one, it is hidden in the second half of the split ring.

May Mystery Motif Revealed!

What a nice collection, eh? Everyone got it right. I turned them all in the same direction but there is no up/down that it is supposed to be. I am so impressed at how much better we tat compared to the original motif but perhaps the tatter was making a deadline and didn't block it?

This is again from the January 1921 Needlcraft magazine on page 26 by Alice A. Brackett. The collar is made with 9 medallions joined to a double row of rings that were 3-3-3-3 and alternated back and forth.



Finally! I got Bob's amulet bag done. (later) He called and really liked it - kept asking how many beads were in there. LOL! 560 in case you are wondering.