Tatman's Chatline

I have talked about my spinning that I do occasionally, but haven’t shown you any results. About time I do! Click on the pictures for a larger view and then you can click on them to zoom in for even closer view

Below is my first attempt at spinning on the wheel. It has Merino wool and some other fiber. It spin up kind of spongy.

My next attempt was spinning with one of the colorful rovings I purchased at the AQS show from one of the wool suppliers. It has Merino and a few other cool fibers in there to make it nubbly looking.

And this is what I am currently spinning. Straight Merino wool and it is wonderful to spin. It is long staple and soft.

Soon I will have to ply these. I do have a tight twist on them, so they could stand alone. They are slightly heavier than a lace weight yarn which is my goal. I hope to use them to make bobbin lace scarves or something sculptural.

Here are the other tatting projects I did over the long weekend. I am trying to get some stock up for the heritage shows we will be doing in June and Sept-Oct.
The first is a cluny cross bookmark made out of size 12 #4043 varigated Sulky Blendables thread. I worked a row of 7 clunies(leaf tallies) and then crossed it with 4 more at the top. Then split ring to the outer row and did ring and chain all around.

These earrings are made of the same thread as the cluny cross. It features split rings coming out of the bottom part of the top clover motif. These will have some bling added when I turn them into earrings. I don’t have beads on hand or know what I will want to do when I design by “just tatting”.

I had some of the metallic thread on a couple of bobbins that I bought at the AQS Show earlier last month. It is from Marathon Thread Co.. The scan doesn’t do it justice. This thread works up nice and is very halographic and shiny. These two pair will make nice earrings. I will add Swarvsky crystals to the centers for that special BLING!

We travelled down to Nashville, TN area to take part in my wife’s nephew’s HS graduation and spent the weekend there. Of course I took some tatting to work on. Pondered about taking my bobbinlace, but didn’t want to pack anything more. So just took my small tatting bag with some unfinished projects. Below is one of the projects I finished while there. It started out as a pattern for a fan which you can see and download HERE

But I couldn’t let it alone. I wanted to finish it off as a rosette. So I did!! I can see making several of these connected to make a good sized cloth with some filler motifs

It is tatted with Lizbeth size 20 thread in a rusty orange color.

I had some left over thread on my shuttles and came up with this squarish design using only one shuttle that turned up to be diamond shaped. I intended it to be square but looked at it differently and makes for a nice diamond pendent to be hung on a chain. I know! NO BEADS!! I don’t design with beads. They are an afterthought. But to make this diamond truly glitzy as jewelry, I would tat it with a metallic and ADD BEADS! May just do that!

I have a few other things I will show you that I tatted up during the weekend. Tomorrow!

I just got in the mail a few accessories for my camera. This is a Phoenix 500mm Telephoto Lens with 2x Teleconverter (=1000mm) + 67-Inch
with a Monopod. That means zooming to view things from 16.4 feet is doubled when you add the teleconverter 33 feet away. That means a really close up view for wildlife photography! And that is why I got it. This all came in a nice package deal. The monopod is great for steadying the camera, but not for this monster of a lens. I used a tripod. I will use the monopod for normal camera use. Takes the strain off of my arms holding the camera and also to keep the camera still.

Here is the telephoto lens

I took some pics from my back patio where you see in the above photos and in the background you might see the bird feeder to the right of the lens. I was lucky to catch a gold finch at the feeder and shot him with my new lens. Here you can see how close I can get. Still have some struggle with keeping the camera still even with the tripod.

It took me several tries to get the settings right to get a decent picture. This is just 3 pics out of many. The others are too blurry to show. But I am learning!

The staff emailed me a picture of me demonstrating bobbin lace in the Lincoln Cabin on the rainy Sunday this past weekend. I was working on a Bruges Flower Lace doily. It is something showy for the public. Doesn’t require too many bobbins and get the work done fast so the public can see progress.

Here is a close up of the lace I was working on

That is what it did all weekend while we demonstrated at the Lincoln Log Cabin. YUCKY!! MESSY!! Saturday wasn’t too bad. There were some breaks in the spitting rain. No real downpours. And we did have some visitors. We were set up at the Thomas and Sara Lincoln’s log cabin grounds. There was even an encampment down the hill from the Sargent farm. It got flooded on Sunday so much you could canoe your way out. I never made it down there to see it. Too busy trying to stay dry! It was great to see Georgia and the River City Tatting club. They demonstrated tatting of course while I demonstrated bobbinlace in the tent next to them.
Sunday was a total mess and they thought about cancelling, but we demonstrators are tough and we just closed our tents and gathered in the cabin and had a good time working on our projects, chatting by a fire. Occasionally there would be some brave visitors coming out in this rain.

Below is a slideshow of pictures I took of the event we did at Lincoln Log Cabin near Lerna, IL. ENJOY!

This is where we visited on Mother’s Day. We decided to make a day trip into Missouri. Fenton area to be exact. We found it by accident while driving in the country. The first few pics are of Rockwoods Reservation that we happen to see a sign while travelling and enjoyed our visit there. Then we followed the windy hilly roads and found Shaw Nature Preserve. We knew about the place but forgot how to get to it. NOW we know! Then on our way home we found another sign for Lone Elk State Park and found this gem in the middle of nowhere. Will have to return to these places again!!!

Here are some pics of our kitties just lying around the house

And here is some pics of flowers that are in full bloom in our garden right now.

A church buddy of mine took pics of me while running on the Family Fun 5K Run and I requested copies. The expressions says it all! Not that I was totally winded, but I hadn’t really ran much until this event. 5K is 3.1 miles. Just a drop in the bucket for me usually when I am running. Now I do a 5-6 mile run with some exersion but still feels good afterwards.

This picture says it all!! I look like I am about to collapse! LOL! But not just yet.

Hope I didn’t make you too tired looking at those pics HAHA

Here is a slide show of the pictures that I took with my new Canon D30 SLR digital camera. I didn’t take them into photoshop to alter anything. Just to show you my originals and how I have a lot to learn about this camera. I only selected ones that look fairly good. Still a lot of under/over exposed, shaky/blurry pics. Gonna be quite the challenge!!!