Tatman's Chatline

For those that celebrate it, I hope everyone had a happy and safe Labor Day weekend! And I hope you took in some tat time for yourself. I DID!!

I had been designing some bobbin lace inspired designs again. I tend to design in white thread and maybe later venture with colored thread. But I like to see how the texture of the design works out without color or beads blocking my vision. In these three pieces that I made over the weekend I used Coron Cotton size 160(finest I have so far) with DMC Cebelia cotton 30 for the core thread of the pearl tatting. The base of the design is in pearl tatting with rings thrown off both sides.

This is an 8 petal Bruges style flower that measures 4.5 cm…..

This is a leaf done in pearl tatting on the outside and then tatted clunies(leaf tallies) to fill in the space. The leaf measures 4cm and each of the clunies measure 1cm in length. The core of the cluny is the Cebelia cotton size 3 with the weaving thread in the Coron cotton size 160. Quite the challenge, but after a bit, was no problem. The thicker thread helped create a padded look.

In this leaf I wanted to convey the cloth stitch and half stitch elements in bobbinlace using tatted elements, of course. To represent the cloth stitch I used closely joined rings, turned the corner at the tip and the half stitch was represented by criss crossing long picots using the picot lock join. This leaf measures 4 cm.

I started another 8 petal flower with more solid looking petals and they will be overlapping to give a 3-D look. But in the meantime, I will be continuing my Honiton lace lessons.

I have always pondered what the difference is. They share the lark’s head knot or double half hitch. You can do multi-stranded tatting just like macrame. Could it be the tools that makes the difference? Here is a picture of something I am working on that could be tatted or could be macrame

I am working this with brown hemp cord and each strand is 2 yards long. I am using the pearl tatting technique. There are 6 center cores and each has their own pair of threads to make stitches on either side and they are woven together by the picots as you work along the line. Because it is worked only in strands with nothing weighing it down or attached to the end, does this make it macrame with lark’s head knot done in a certain fashion. I am sure this has been worked before in macrame. Could this be considered finger tatting ? ? ? ?

OR……if I had attached a shuttle to the long strands of each of the pairs(not necessarily on the center cores), does this entitle it to be considered tatting ? ? ? Yes, that would be tatting with twelve shuttles. Been done before. Just unruly sometimes. Here is a closeup of the stitches.

You can see that I have used two double stitches on each side of the core thread, alternating. And then I weave in the picot before starting the next set of 3 strands. Wondering what this could be? My leather watchband desintegrated and the watch part is still good. So it gave me an opportunity to make my own. It was a cheap watch and I could just get another $10 model. But the watch still works and why spend the money. Plus I get the satisfaction of making another project! So what say you ? ? ? Would like your opinion. ============================================= On another project that I completed I was commissioned to paint a wooden placque of an old school house in Missouri for a family that will present it to the birthday girl who turns 90 and she attended this school.

Back view with my signature…….

I like trains!!!! One day we took a scenic tour on the Hocking Valley Scenic Railway that took us to Logan and back. About a 2 hour tour.

The engine is making a switchback to take us back the other direction…..

Our final destination on the railway was to visit the histoical town of Robbins Crossing outside of Nelsonville, OH and associated with Hocking College. Students and volunteers demonstrate on the grounds. This is one of the residences…..

A tatted sighting!!!!! It is a tatted edging on the mantel cloth.

Close up view….

These few pictures are still part of the same room as the fireplace. They loaded what they could in one room!

The day was really hot, so there weren’t many demonstrators, unfortunately. But this brave soul was out on the porch making corn husk dolls….

Another residence that has a awesome kitchen. And they must have had money since there is a second floor!

The kitchen inside….

Inside the school house….

The cooper shop…..

The potter. Again, no demonstrators

Yet the hottest occupation, blacksmithing, and there were four students working(not in period clothing I might add, HURRUMPH)

The apothecary….

The General Store….

I created some fun puzzles(since lacemakers have stated recently they tend
to be puzzle enthusiasts) that are lace related.  There is a lace terms
wordsearch, lace types wordsearch, lace related crossword, tatting
wordsearch and tatting related crossword puzzle.  They are linked from my
website homepage, but here are the direct links to their pages:

The crossword puzzles have a solution link at the bottom in case you run
into troubles.  But no cheating!   Unfortunately I wasn’t able to make a
solution link to the wordsearches.  But that just adds to the challenge!

I also wasn’t able to create these so you can work them online. I am not
that adept at javascript. You will have to print them off and hope that
all goes well.  You may have to download the image of the puzzle and copy
and paste the text into a document if you are wanting to share these puzzles
with anyone.

I can’t take full credit.  These puzzles were generated by
http://puzzlemaker.discoveryeducation.com.  Some of you may have run across
this wonderful resource.

=======================================================

After visiting Gma in Mt. Vernon for a couple of days, we headed on to finish our vacation.  We drove through the wonderful hills of Ohio south to Hocking Hills State Park.  This is a beautiful area filled with lucious valleys and rock formations and craggy deep chasms.  We set up camp at the campground.  The weather was getting warmer by this time. Unlike our other campsite fully in the trees, you can see how the sun blazes down on our camper mid day and it stays there until early evening.  Not a good spot!  .  But it was all that was available.  And we pulled our camper in the trees as much as possible.  We had a hard time keeping cool.  Guy our cat didn’t enjoy it either.  But we muddle through!

And a lovely view of the water tower at the end of the cul-de-sac

And the vultures on top of it waiting for us to die from the heat……….

A couple more lovely views of the rolling hills and farms in the Ohio valley…………

Last night was parade night and the last day of the fair! Stifling hot and humid, but we suffered through it watching the parade and kids got lots of candy and frisbies and mardi gras beads. We sat in the A/C building doing our demonstrating while watching the area. I brought my bobbin lace back to see if I could finish the project. There were lots of people mulling around because it was parade night and importantly we are of two buildings that have A/C. I had lots of questions this time, both kids, teens, and adults. One family knew what I was doing because they had seen someone demo at another fair. That is good!! My great niece and her family came too. Even though they live just a few blocks from us, we don’t get to see them often. She asked the typical questions of what I was working on. I stated that I am working with two pairs like you would work a four strand braid, like braiding your hair. She said “I don’t know how to braid hair. Even with 3 strands.” OK…… She is 11. Never met a girl who didn’t know how to braid hair! Later on she came back and asked me if I would teach her so that she could learn to braid hair. Not the statement I was looking for! I am sure her intentions are good. But I will have to work on her to find that learning bobbin lace is more than just a means to braid hair. It is to acquire a love for the art and what you make. But since I rarely see her, I won’t be looking to teach her too soon. Plus she doesn’t have “stick-to-it-iveness”. Short attention span. We tried teaching her sewing and tatting and other things. Gets into it and doesn’t continue with the interest. Maybe later in her life. But I know that she is the right age to teach. Just wish her mind was more secure. I may have to approach it differently to entice her to want to keep coming back for more lessons.

OK……on to showing you more vacation pictures!!!

A wonderful country scene that I admire

Such clean and organized farms the Amish have!

We stopped off at historic Swiss town of Guggisburg, OH(tourist trap, but fun) to get some cheese and other wares.

We ate lunch at the Chalet in the Valley Restaurant for some good Swiss/German cooking.

Inside was a nice mural of a particular national park in the Swiss area.

I am a big fan of Swiss/German clocks. Love the craftsmenship!

Cool light hanging from the ceiling!

These past two evenings my wife and I do our annual sitting at the Community Building at the county fair watching over the building. While we sit we can’t be idle. So we bring projects. Sunday afternoon I brought my bobbin lace. I brought my big bolster with a tape lace project that is half done.
I am most known for my tatting in my area. So I would get the usual comments of “Is that tatting??” then I go into my usual dialog explaining what I am doing and how it works. Not too many kids stopped by to ask questions. Mostly adults asking questions.
Last night I decided to bring my spinning wheel and work out my ongoing roving. This time the adults just watched me or just passed by with a glance. I concluded they either knew what I was doing and didn’t ask questions or decided to just pass by. The kids(of all ages) however came right up to me asking me all types of questions about my wheel, they liked to handle the wool.
I don’t know if it is the apparatus that I am working with(ie. Pillow and bobbins, or massive wheel that looks like a machine) or could it be the project that I am working on, or the tedium of the task. Most adults say about my bobbin lace, “that is too tedious, I could never do that” or “you have to have good eyesight to do that”. Kids don’t say that. No convictions. But when I am at my wheel, I am just sitting in a relaxed position a good distance from the machine. Less stressful looking??? Less inhibiting?? Not that I am stressed or inhibited by all means when working my bobbin lace. I find both lacemaking and spinning relaxing. Sometimes to the point of almost falling asleep LOL!
Spinning I assume is most recognizable in most areas and bobbin lace is not. And the “machine” you work on can also play a role in that. Most adults know what a spinning wheel is, but I find that kids may not if not exposed to that part of life history. Harder is it to find the familiarity in bobbin lace and its tools. I get the same wonder from passer-bys but the clientelle is different.

Tonight is our last night for bringing our projects to work on while we sit at the building demonstrating. I plan on bringing my bobbin lace and see if I can finish that project. Doubt it, but I will see what more questions are asked and from whom and what will happen

I just uploaded into my Etsy Shop two pairs of bobbin lace earrings that I made not long ago.  You can click on their pictures to go to their individual listings.

They are fairly quick and fun to make.

This past Sunday(11 July) I took my nephew with me to dig up some Queen Anne’s lace from a neighbor’s yard so I can transplant it into my butterfly garden.  If I can’t get hybrid flowers to grow, and only weeds, then might as well try growing pretty weeds!  Besides, we like Queen Anne’s Lace.

I have quite a bit planted in my garden, along with the perennials that decided to come up.

And with our little adventure into the weed patch, I brought back with me and unwanted present

POISON IVY!!!!

BEASTIE!!!!  Can’t remember the last time I had poison ivy.  But whenever I DO get it, it always is around the eyes.  I think it has to do with my allergies.

For prettier pictures than that, here are a couple of the lilies in my garden that are bloomed.

I just added more items to Tatman’s Etsy Shop. CHECK IT OUT!!!
And also added two more designs with my CafePress.com shop. Go to the Magic Thread Shop and scroll down to the t-shirts and click on the two right images with the new designs.

Or you can click on these two shirts images to get to their respective shops.

Let’s go Shopping!!!!

I decided to make a few simple things with the tencel to see how it tatted up. It works up nice and smooth and forms stitches really well. It is a type of rayon but has a tooth like silk thread. I did find that you can fiddle with the stitches or retrotat too often as it gets fuzzy easily. It is a two ply thread and you have to be careful not to untwist it. Since I only had several strands of 18 inches, I could only get out little doodles.
Top left is a little butterfly. Was really running down to the end of the strand to get this closed. Bottom left is a shoo fly, simple two rings. There was maybe enough of the strand to do another. Bottom right was an experiment to see how many stitches I could do with the whole strand. 40 stitches! Of course some of that is taken up with the core thread. You can see how much thread I had left and was attached to my leader thread on the shuttle. I suppose if I did a chain with a second strand for the core thread I would get closer to 50 stitches. Top right I decided to use two strands and make a split ring motif and worked out nicely with 6 completed rings in a circle. This was better because I could switch shuttles when one strand was taken up as the core thread. And I really ran down to the last bit. Had only 6 inches left on one shuttle and .5(that is half) and inch left on the other!! The knot from the leader thread kept getting caught, but I got it done!

So there you have my assessment of this hand dyed rayon tencel thread. Would be nice to find it in huge amounts. Will have to ask my spinning/weaving instructor where she got it.

My spinning instructor who is also a weaver had these left over tencel threads from a project. They are so soft and it is hand dyed cotton 2 ply that she hated to throw them away. So she gave me one of the bundles that was tied together to do something with it. They are 18 inches in length. They are comparable to size 12 perle coton.

I told my instructor that it could work for bobbinlace since you don’t need too much on each bobbin, unlike tatting where it requires more thread to do a substantial project. Unless you want to make little butterflies. But I decided to try it with bobbinlace. I made up this design to share with you. I intended it to be a pendent for a necklace. Could be anything.

I loaded 3 passive pairs, 2 edge pairs with the tencel. Since I needed much more for the worker thread, I found a comparable hand dyed thread in green. As I worked on it, I realized I didn’t have quite the right amount of length to finish the tail of the swirl design. So had to cut it short. This is what it looks like worked up and I am still pleased with the results

I think this design would work up nice with 4-5 passives in much smaller thread. Hope you give it a try.