It's been awhile......

I was up early this morning. Picked up Katie and we were off to Greenfield. I hoped to miss much of the race traffic - I think I missed ALL of it. There wasn't near as much traffic as there usually is on a tatting guild day, even coming home! In fact, I was early for a change.

There were quite a few of us - 10, not counting Kaye. There was show and tell.....with Mary leading the group...(pssst! She's been practicing the fan tat-off for Palmettos) Helen was wearing a top trimmed with tatting. Jennifer showed us her tatted teapot that she is putting on a quilt piece. Nicole featured tatting in a school presentation. I showed my decorated shuttles. Then we went to work on Kaye's Shooting Star. We did the star last month and this month she had the shooting streamers worked out for it. I actually got mine done in class! Mostly because Kaye was helping Katie, who didn't know how to make a picot, let alone a double picot, and (YIKES!) a split ring, a lop-sided split ring at that! Unfortunately, Katie didn't feel good with a sore throat and was tired from being up a good part of the night with her cold. She's is usually very bouncy but not today. She did say it was fun and she wished she had felt better. I have to say my Shooting Star is not nearly as effective as Kaye's was in solid bright yellow. And I'll bet some sparkly filament in there would really set it off. But for what it's worth, here it is. Did you know you could use a hairdryer to dry something you wanted blocked NOW? LOL! That's how I ended up with those pointy ends......it dried faster than I expected.



After I droppped Katie back at home, I went on downtown to Lafayette to see the 'Round the Fountain Art Fair. Lots of nice artwork, pottery, glass work, and of course, the Frog Follies which you can learn more about here.

I'll bet you didn't know you could go to an art fair and come home with antique shuttles, did you? LOL! I was parked at the library so on my way back to the car, I stopped at a little antique store - lots of stores were having sidewalk sales, and lo and behold, I found these 2 shuttles together for $6. There was some nice vintage clothing too, from the early 1900's, at a very reasonable price, but I'm kind of pinching pennies right now. The black shuttle isn't unusual and it looks like something was glued to it at one time - I wondered if it was a label or something. The other shuttle though, appears to be aluminum. It's very light and has scratches that show the bright metal underneath that sort of grayish/green coating. It has a very coarse thread left on it...so I unwound it and find it has a huge knot on one side of the post hole. Let me see if I can scan it.




I think that's unusual Typically, people loop the thread around the whole post and tie it or thread it through the hole and then loop around and tie. Ever since I learned to do the slipknot and just loop it around the post and tighten enough to keep from having a long tail, that's what I do. Sure saves having to cut the thread and fish the end out. It just pulls loose when you get to the end.

Here's the project I'm doing for the chain-link cord. The thread is size 80.


I wanted to show one of the methods in a tiny thread as well as the larger ones. It took me 2 hours to get the little bit of it that I have done. The other cords go way faster. I'm sure I won't have it done by next weekend, but at least there is a start to show as a sample.



I just realized I have 8 shuttles tied up in 2 samples-in-progress with this one. I better get busy and see what I have available.