I returned Jazz to his owners today. Elena had Cold Soup for me when I arrived. It's a common Russian dish served on hot days. It's made up of finely cut radishes, cucumbers, boiled egg, and green onion. Separately, she makes a huge amount of beet juice. There is probably a formal name for it, but it's like a broth with a bit of garlic and onion flavoring in the cooking and also some citric acid to give it a bit of whang. The cold chopped veggies are placed into a bowl and then the cold beet juice spooned over it. She added some organic salt and some sour cream. There were hot boiled potaoes on the side, covered with dill...oh, and there is lots of dill in the veggie mixture too. You put the potatoes in last - a hot added to cold. some people add meat but she doesn't. It was quite tasty! She also added some lovely rolls, apologizing for not having the typical brown bread that is usually served with this soup. Then she plied me with hot strawberry green tea and some chocolate mint thingie.....I had no idea I was going to be fed!

I tried sewing the tatted inserts into a sample of the fabric. I need to find a neater way to do it but mostly I was looking to see how the thread looked with the fabric. The purple definitely looks better than the ecru but I don't think I will use either one. I think instead, that I will tat a hen and chicks edging and be done with it.






I couldn't believe how fast I got those placemats! They were here on Friday. There are 12 here and they look perfectly matched.








Here's a close-up so you can see the perfect tension. How do they do that? They look machine made but we know tatting has not been perfected on machine. There are embroidery programs for digital machines that mimic tatting but these are definitely tatted with crochet. I did notice the ends are simply tied and cut short. I think the separate elements are tatted individually and then joined together by a crocheted chain between each element. I brought them to my tatting guild on Saturday mornting. "made by machine" kept coming up, but we know that isn't so. I'm disappointed because it devalues tatting. Can you imagine the beautiful tatting that could be done by the maker if they had a free license to do so?