She made herself known to me in a rampage of emails full of questions and comments. She was a challenge to my high school Spanish lessons. I spent hours pouring over grammar books, a Spanish/English dictionary, and various versions of the online translator. I made scan after scan showing each step of a technique. I sent patterns and pictures and she sent me double what I sent her. Everything I featured on this blog instigated a comment or a question. She was intense and talented and energetic. Estefania Zuliman allegedly* passed away a week ago. I received a package from her just a few days before and emailed her, thanking her, telling her the monkey was a cutie. She told me it was her valentine gift to me and her daughter had picked the monkey.

I often felt slightly embarrassed with Estefania's praise of me. She loved everything I did and told me in every email, which was nearly daily, how much she loved tatting and how wonderful I was. It's hard to keep the ego-swelling down when you hear that so much. I'll miss her energy more than I will miss her praise however. She and her family competed in a grueling sports event that involved kayaking, bicycling, and rock climbing. I know that from the photos she sent me. She was esctatic last year when they won. She sent me photos of quilts she made and tatted projects and the result of any new technique she was learning. I couldn't keep up with her emails.


She told me the yarn shown with the monkey above is hand-dyed. There were no labels so I don't know the fiber content. I've decided I'll make a shawl for the Feast of the Hunter's Moon from it. I found a pattern at the Lion Brand webpage, a tea and sympathy shawl. The story behind it is sweet and it seems a fitting pattern for this gift. I'll remember Estefania every time I wear it.

*There is some controversy over whether the personality known as Estefania died or not. There is evidence that this is a person who uses multiple names as a way to avoid responsibility. However it pans out, I'm still saddened by it.





Moving right along with the macrame crochet lace.....I decided to practice the filling stitches before I made an actual project. Here is the cord couched on muslin. There are 16 fillings for an oval shape in the book I'm using. I'm going to do every one of them. LOL!


It's going faster than I expected. The 1st three from the right have mistakes. I wasn't counting the rows correctly. I'm using a variety of threads just to see how they work. The last 4 are done in size 12 DMC pearl cotton and those look the best...partly because I'm getting the hang of it now. Varigateds don't show well...perhaps if I was repeating the thread in each one it would look better. The one on the far right has the row count wrong but I thought it looked good until I figured that out. The 4th one is in size 8 pearl cotton - which is too big for this particular motif. I'm anxious to take it off the muslin and see what it looks like but I have 8 more fillings to do. Then there are fillings for circles and for leaf shapes. THEN I'll work a project. The shaping is not the best but I'm having fun. The precision will come along later.