When I finally got home last night, I found Karey's latest publication in the mail:

Included was a very thin bangle, which I honestly prefer to wear than to tat on but it's for tatting. I didn't even get to read the papers enclosed but it's the last issue for the year so I know it's for renewing the subscription and instructions about the bangle. I seem to have a growing collection of these gifts since I never seem to get around to tatting with them, no matter how strong my intentions. I saw a bookmark I may try in the future.

For the past year or so, I've been very interested in combining tatting with other media - you've probably seen some of my efforts with ric rac, macrame cord, and metal objects. Last night I finished this little pansy from a vintage doily pattern:

It's been around a long time and one I always wanted to crochet without doing the whole doily. I used one of my dyed threads. It looks BIG here but it's only about an inch square. My only thought was this would need something in the center if I were to attach it to something. It was easy to crochet, but I'm not likely to make anymore soon. At least now I have a sort of prototype. I was also wanting to get the feel of it and see if any tatting additions might be inspired in the process.

Something else I did last night was continue my skimming of needleart magazines and mixed in the bunch was the Spring 2010 issue of the Bulletin. I tend to skim these very fast when I get them and then maybe...later....I'll read them more thoroughly. Bina Madden of Paradise Treasures is on my blog list but since there's no blog update feed, it never shows at the top. You have to open my list and scroll down to find it. Bina is currently writing the tatting column of the I.O.L.I.Bulletin.

In this issue, I found her article about crocheting clusters within the tatted motif. I have the thread wound...hopefully I can try it out TONIGHT! I'm using variegated but I'll bet a solid might look better. I might have time to do that too and see which works best in appearance. Assuming I get the hang of it. This is the photo in the newsletter by Bina.

I don't know how many people caught the Spulni-Blog yesterday but if you didn't, you really should take a look. This Hungarian tatter has tatted the pieces to create a lace top for a jacket. She showed the tatted pieces in an earlier post and said she had to reconstruct the top to put the lace on. It's STUNNING!

And lastly, I just wanted to show a pattern I picked up at Trader Buck's Flea Market.
I go to this one booth every so often because months ago I happened upon it as the husband and wife were adding to their inventory. There were tons of craft books at only a dime or quarter each. Seems they belonged to her mother and I got the impression the mother had passed on. I mentioned I tatted and she said she would be bringing in some shuttles her mother had. So....I keep going back but no shuttles to be seen. It kind of bothers me in a way that they have devalued her belongings so much. I got this vintage pattern for a quarter. Almost everything of hers is only a quarter. I also picked up several embroidery booklets and transfers that I put on my lace blog. They sell these cheap plastic paintings and bags of socks and t-shirts for more than they sell these vintage treasures. Oh well...their loss, my gain.

When I was at JoAnn Fabrics the other day, I noticed they had all their Lizbeth thread on clearance for $1.97/ball. Since I've gotten bad balls from both JoAnn's and Hobby Lobby, I'm suspicious of these particular lots but I didn't have Caribbean and it's pretty so I bought it. It split on me once as I finished one motif, but otherwise, so far, no problems. But I'm less than 10 yards into the ball too. LOL! I hate being so skeptical but I've had NO problems with the ones I got from ZigZag Corner. Only the ones I've picked up more recently from local outlets.

(Update! Thank you Marty! The snowflake is from Mike and the pattern is HERE!)
Anyway, I tatted two motifs last night. One is from a vintage publication and I'll rewrite the pattern and offer that at some point later. The swirly snowflake was from a printout I had, and I'm pretty sure the designer is a guy and I think his name is Bob (maybe Biker Bob?) but it's not anywhere on the printout. It used to be that when I printed something from the computer, the website, at least, printed at the bottom. That doesn't happen much lately as so many websites are "print-friendly" and it's possible I copied and pasted the instructions onto a blank word document to avoid all the "extra" stuff. So...if someone, including the designer, will let me know who they are, I will be happy to add his information here!(Thanks again to Marty from Tat's All She Wrote.)

That said, I really like the Caribbean in the swirly snowflake pattern, but not the vintage snowflake pattern. See how the colors work out in the swirly but are disjointed in the vintage one? I had tons of thread on the shuttle after the swirly so that's why I tatted the vintage one. I'll do it again in white or a solid since it's for a project. The colorway repeat was good for one design but not another and this is the pitfall with colorful threads.

The other thing I wanted to demonstrate here was how the motif looks on different backgrounds. I actually have them on white too, but in my editing, I accidently saved one motif and lost the other so I didn't include it in the collage. I have lots of small cardstock that I use for background scans, especially for white pieces that don't show up. I put the motif on several shades of blue but it fades away into the darker blue so I didn't even scan that one. The gray is actually a gray-blue. The green and peach made the motif stand out better, but sometimes odd colors pull out shades you really don't want to see.

I actually like the swirly on the sky blue background. The vintage motif didn't look good on any of them but it's because of the imbalance of color distribution in the motif, not the background so much.

And that's my experiment of the day!