Labor Day Weekend

Ha! I plan to labor this weekend alright!

Not getting an early start though. In fact, my breakfast/lunch is in the oven right now....blueberry muffins.

I was tired yesterday after my segment with Global Fest. I can't imagine how tired Cathy and Bette are. Both also demonstrated at other booths there plus they did the set-up and take-down. Someone else may be helping with the take-down. I was up quite late the night before tatting spiders and making the cards. There were very few left when I was done at 4:00 p.m. I think we stirred up interest in at least a few potential members. One of the potential members is from Italy and had her mother with her. The mother did not speak English so the daughter was translating. The mother is visiting but the daughter lives here and is interested in the group. I learned how to pronounce chiacchierino...sort of...LOL! I'm amazed I even recognized the word as she spoke it.

I took a nap at 8:30 p.m.....woke up at 11:00 p.m. I really didn't think I would be up very long but then I really woke up. and I couldn't get to sleep again. My mind was racing and I finally decided to get up and try to do something to calm my mind...like tatting. I got my CD's from Palmettos in the mail and had watched them between coming home and taking my nap. I think it was too much stimulation. LOL!

After my nap and before I tried to sleep for the night, I'd been looking through some old I.O.L.I. Bulletins I got from a fellow lace member a few years ago. That was some of my over-stimulation too. I found a column by Kate Plummer who had published Kate's Kritters, where I got the alligator pattern from. I've posted the finished item here a few times if you want to use the search engine at the right. That prompted me to make a few inquiries to others as a result of that article. 1992....still a long time ago. Anyway, I found several things about tatting that piqued my interest. One was an article by Judi Banashek about "Multi-Color Split Rings" in the Spring 1994-95 issue, Volume 15, number 3. You use 6 shuttles or 3 pairs of colors. She talked about Tatter's Helper Mini-Shuttles which I assume are a specific kind of shuttle. I'm not familiar with them but they sound like they are flatter than the typical post/bobbin shuttle. I just used my regular Clover shuttles. The technique is actually what I've come to know as Encapsulated Tatting, as described in this lesson from Georgia's online class. I had some big thread on shuttles that I wanted to get off so I decided to give it a go in the wee hours of the morning. Tatting relaxes me and I figured that would get me sleepy. I used Blue Tac to hold the shuttles together and it was a little awkward but I got the hang of it. The article said to make even rings and uneven rings and then when you are good with those, throw rings off the rings in different colors. I didn't go that far, but it is a fascinating technique. The thing is - I don't like the look of padded tatting. The charm of tatting for me is the delicate lacy look of it. If I start doing the padded tatting, I might as well crochet. Much faster and much less trouble. Still...if you want a variety of texture and color in your design, this would be the ideal solution.

I also found another method for filet tatting described by Bobbie Demmer. That one makes use of long picots to create the bars between blocks. I'm going to give it a try but it sounds iffy to me. So...this just dawned on me...why aren't we using block tatting to create the filet mesh look? Oh...I may have to look into this further...later....

REMINDER TO SELF...fix craft/sewing room TODAY if you ever want to find anything again.