Alrighty folks! I'm moving on to the ELEPHANT!

I had one small moment of panic this evening when I couldn't find the threads and what I had already tatted..............followed by another teensy moment when I couldn't find Pam Palmer's book. Rest easy though, all was found and is resting at my tatting nest in the living room. While I'm tatting away on what I've already started, I need some help figuring out what to do with the ear. My daughter likes the African elephants with the flared ear so that square thingie-ma-bob isn't gonna do it! I was kinda thinking about the butterfly wing from Lindsay Rogers book, Tatting Miscellany, but decided it will end up too big in comparison with the thread I am using. I might be able to adapt it but first I wanted to explore other possibilities. After much hurried thumbing through about 4 books that had shapes I recalled vaguely elephant-ear like, I found one in New Dimensions in Tatting by To De Haan-Van Beek. It's the upper wing of butterfly 1 or 2, on page 69. If you turn the book upside down, the upper wing makes a perfect elephant ear! I have no idea, however, what size this will tat out to. I'm using 2 strands of rayon embroidery floss which is probably close to most size 20 thread, if I remember right. Maybe between 20 and 30. I'll have a better idea once I back in the flow of it. But if there are any tatters out there who have done this butterfly, regardless of thread size, please let me know! I've also never tatted a single thing from this book. I keep picking it up and looking through it, admiring the critters and flowers, but I've yet to actually make something so I don't know how easy the directions are to follow. Another thing I would like to do is use gray on the outside and as I move to the inside of the ear, change to pink. The color range in rayon thread is limited and I don't think I can even do dark gray to light gray, but I'll look next time I'm in Hobby Lobby.

Color range reminds me, I noticed a crocheted doily in a recent Annie's Attic catalog. It's titled Painted Doilies and has 5 designs for doilies in size from 11 1/2" to 26" and they are crocheted from sewing thread, evidently Coats Dual Duty Plus since it's featured right below the doilies. It says they are crocheted with 3 threads at a time to achieve the gradual color change. I don't have a clue how they do this, so I'm probably going to have to buy the pattern even if I never use it, just to understand the technique. It's on page 12 if you have the catalog. Isn't it gorgeous?


Oh, I forgot to mention yesterday that I tatted the heart baskets in size 30 thread and they were only about 1" - 1 1/2" wide. I could barely put a hershey kiss in there, in fact, it kept falling out because I put it pointed end in and it was top-heavy that way, but if you used a larger thread, it would probably be big enough. The link I provided automatically opens a blank email to Witt but here's the email in case it didn't work for you: wittsc@virtual1.net

Well, I'm going to try to get back into the elephant swing of tatting now. Wish me luck and do email me if you have any experience tatting the butterfly wing in New Dimensions... Just click on the link over to the right where it says "email tatting goddess".