Sharon, over at Pin Tangle, (formerly from In A Minute Ago) has issued a Blogger's Challenge - why do you blog???

About six years ago, I made a friend who wrote a blog which has now evolved into a website with all the same stuff. He was on a yahoo group I was on and always had his url in the sig line. That's the first I ever heard of blogs. I used to follow his links to more interesting blogs and Ooooh...what an easy way to waste a lot of time! LOL! I looked for tatting blogs - surely there were some out there. I don't even remember if google was a search engine then but whatever I used only brought up one and it wasn't really focused on tatting - it just had some tatting on it.

Well, I like to write. I always have, in one form or another. I wrote the local Singles Newsletter for three years before I got bored with it. I wrote personal journals, dream journals, wish lists, plans, strategies, fiction, family history, letters, articles for various work publications, and a chapter here and there that I hope someday will grow into a book. I'd kept a few small journals as I tried to document my tatting but I just couldn't make myself sit down with every piece and write it all out. I had ideas too, that didn't fit in with the "documentation".

My first blog was just a place to write randomly. Within days, I knew I wanted to record my thoughts about tatting separately from the other blog. The other blog eventually turned into a rant blog. It embarassed me to read it later on and I deleted it. I created another blog for my more esoteric side, as a way to sort out the questions I had and the personal discoveries I made. But the one I wrote the most in was my tatting blog. I couldn't wait to figure out how to put photos on there. I spent the money that made it possible for me to upload photos and then spent many frustrating weeks learning how to do that. My previously-mentioned blog friend and I helped each other figure it out online. Up til then, the majority of blogs were text-only as the process was so complicated if you didn't have your own server or host. Then google ended up with blogger and things changed a lot after that.

As time went by and I looked back at what I had written, I was amazed sometimes at how much I tatted and then forgot I tatted. Most pieces go away, either to a new home or a black hole here that gives up the goods only sporadically. I found the blog a great way to keep track of little changes I made at the time in a pattern or my thoughts in the way certain threads behaved. The blog is probably my only record of the shuttles I've purchased over the years. It tells me who I met and where. When did I learn the split ring and the split chain? Where did I get that one thread? Which class and which teacher? What did I put in the fair and how did it place? Who gave me what in which exchange? - something I thought I would never forget...but I do sometimes. Where did my inspiration come from? And links....when I can't find the link in my favorites or remember what I named it, I do a search on my blog and find it that way.

I blog for all of those reasons but I also have to say it has become especially meaningful to me as more and more other people blog about tatting too. It connects us in ways that we never imagined. Tatters have always been generous, in my experience, but I have especially noticed it now that I've seen knitting blogs and crochet blogs and other craft blogs. Few other crafts share as much as tatters. Oh, they share a little...but it's mostly to entice you to buy something else. LOL! Nothing wrong with that, but I did notice the difference. Other crafts tend to have more tutorials though. Tatting blogs are relatively new, compared to say, knitting. I think there are thousands of knitting blogs so there are bound to be more tutorials.

But maybe, with the help of blogging, someday there will be as many tatters in the world as there are knitters!

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Still no tatting to show. I've been crash-cleaning tonight since the insurance adjuster is coming tomorrow. I'll tackle the kitchen in the morning. Part of my cleaning involved going through some books and magazines in a box that I had stored over by the sofa. There were a lot of old Stitch & Sew and they have Myrtle Hamilton's patterns in there. I wanted to jump up and scan a few photos to show here, but I was good....I kept at task!

hmmm...wait I'll go scan one photo of something else and see if it inspires anyone.


I'm intrigued by the shape of this crocheted collar. I keep visualizing it tatted - not in the all-chains that it appears it would be with this same design, but with this shape where it comes to a point in the center. I like the contrast of dense and open spaces. Beaded? I see it fastening at the back with a button or large bead or even necklace findings.

What do YOU think??


One of my mantras this month is "See it differently, Feel it differently" and I think that was part of what led me to look at this collar in a different way.