Not much tatting done

Obviously!

But I did attend all 3 online tatting classes and it was fun to watch different people's reaction to doing the "false plait". It will be even more fun to see what kinds of projects will result from it.

Oh yes, I kept forgetting to mention in the classes that Jane Eborall has used this technique in some of her projects too.....sigh.....even after I reminded myself to do that.

Saturday my lace group met, an informal meeting, no business though I did try to get volunteer time nailed down. Dagmar went through the Bison pattern with me and we more or less got it figured out. She had trouble understanding the abbreviations too but it appears I was following along pretty close.

We also had a surprise visit from member Carolyn Regnier who is usually too busy with her dogs to come. At one point I showed her some of the false plait cord samples and asked if she had seen tatting done like that before. Wow, did she! She said she was in York in 1993 at gathering with tatters and they were informally discussing various techniques. One of the techniques was this "false plait", which didn't have a name that she knew of then, and they talked about different things to do with it. My impression was that they weren't manipulated together yet - that was one of the suggestions, I think from Carolyn. Carolyn said on the flight home, she played around with it, using 4 shuttles and 4 colors. In her email to me later after I had asked for more information, she looked for her samples from then and "found 2 red/green/white/gold wreaths with gold beads, one wreath in the 4 colors; and a candy cane in red and white." So it sounds like at least she and Jean played with the technique after their gathering and each came up with their own unique versions. I'd love to see Carolyn's samples. Maybe I'll get a chance one of these days. In the meantime, I think it's a hoot that one of the early players in this technique lives in my hometown!

I spent a frustrated hour last night looking for some directions I had printed off the web. Finally, I found another project that I knew was from the same site and used the name of it to find the site again. I had not bookmarked it at home. While searching through everything, I pulled out a few of the Italian tatting magazines to look at before I went to bed. I was reminded that I still want to make some tatted motifs as inserts on clothing or small window curtains. My time vanishes like a night's sleep.

I found this page by Tammy Rodgers for a paperclip picot gauge from one of the links on Bellaonline. This is nice if you want to make very small uniform picots. I usually just eyeball them but sometimes you need a tool like this.

And last but not least, here's the bison so far. I cut the picots at the side and bottom of the face, but I won't cut the others or trim them until I am done.