Joining the 25 Motif Challenge and so much more

There is a film on Jan Stawasz's website which features not only his tatting but his instructions. Jan incorporates frontside/backside tatting in his designs, which I don't do and yes, it does make it hard for me to read his diagrams, but I manage. They're so beautiful.

I'm very unhappy with the knitted mitten. It turned out huge! I haven't done the finger flap yet and have decided I will rip it out and start over. I think I will go back to the first pattern I used.

There were a few more finds during my bargain shopping Friday. I found this wooden teapot box for $1.00. Perfect for storing some teabags or other tea paraphanelia in - sweetener or tea caddys, etc.
Opened up, it's about 3 1/2 inches square. Years ago, when I was a very young bride in her first owned home, I wanted a blue onion theme in my kitchen. I never got it before we sold the house, but over the years, blue onion stuff keeps showing up. This is not the blue onion motif but it would blend in well. I do have a tea-for-one with a blue onion design. Even so, I wouldn't mind painting this a different color.

I got this vase for 75¢. Not a very big opening but it will work for a few stunning blossoms, fresh or tatted. I might have to try out those pansy designs I keep seeing. I have yet to see a tatted pansy that I loved. There are some I like, but I'm not dying to make them. Maybe I should come up with one of my own. I used to paint pansies all the time so the way I visualize them is not how I've seen them tatted.

No response from anyone about the 100,000th visitor. Ah well...it is hard to capture that.

Here's the rescued doily after 2 days of soaking. I rinsed it and then laid it on the blocking board but didn't pin it. Looks much nicer, doesn't it? but there are still some rust stains on the back side. This is topside.

On the backside, I've laid a letter opener along a line of the rust spots. You can see there are more. I do have some stuff that takes rust stains out and I may try that next. I haven't really had time to tackle that today. It measures a little over 10 inches (25.4 cm) and has the tinest picots. Once I get the rust stains out and block it again, I may try to define the picots more, but I rather like it this way too. Does anyone recognize this specific pattern?


I decided to join the 25 motif challenge. I knew I made more than 25 motifs in a year so hadn't thought about joining before but today I was thinking how I've never gone through a tatting book from beginning to end, reading it let alone tatting it. It just happened that the book I had in hand was Tatting for Beginners which has 25 motifs in it. It occured to me that joining the challenge would be one way to motivate me to go through the entire book. I've made maybe 4 or 5 motifs from the book at one time or another.

So...motif #1 from the book...I'm pretty sure I've done this one before but for some reason did not write in the corrections. The author has it written as 2 separate rounds but I decided to climb out of the first ring with a long mock picot and split ring. The count on the larger rings was wrong and I just guessed at what it should be. It's given as 4 ds, p with 2 ds between each (no number of picots named) 5ds, clr. From the photo, I can tell it's 5 picots, so I think the ending 5 ds should be 4 ds as it is in the beginning. I wonder how many beginners have been frustrated by the very first motif?
This wasn't going well for ME at all. I couldn't figure out if the bare thread was too long or the large outer rings too small or what but it was definitely cupping. It makes a nice hat for a ball of size 70 thread. Seriously, maybe this is why I've not used this book much. I read in the beginning that the author passed away in 1988, before common usage of split rings and split chains. I hope if they ever reprint this book they will correct the errors in stitch counts. The designs are too lovely not to.

So here's the second draft of my first motif. I made the center picots shorter and the length between rings shorter. I used a thread I dyed a few years ago and it's probably size 70 or 80. "Noo" used size 40 so it stands to reason that with a smaller thread, I should make the lengths shorter. This one did lay flat. I really don't like this kind of motif. It's next to impossible for me to get all those rings perfectly uniform in size.


And last but not least of this very long post - Day 7 of Jane Eborall's TIAS. Somehow I missed a day. I thought today was the day she wasn't going to send out a reminder but it must have been yesterday. Anyway...I tatted that up this morning. I ventured a guess to her by email of what it will be.