I'm finally tatting again. Joined the 25 motif challenge in August. Then needed to take 2 intense college courses, one an ENG 303 Essay class, the other an EDU 263 Teaching and Learning Online Class, to strengthen my job security (at least hopefully this will!). By the time these were done, the Holidays were here. It was just too much for me to multi-task so much so the tatting got left behind for awhile.

Here's the portion of a motif I began designing this month for the Tatter's Calendar but never made it! I'm putting it on now so because we've been talking about "joins" on the "Here-Be-Tatters" list. The arrows point to shuttle joins where I think I had to count the join as part of the next ds chain (I usually don't when making shuttle joins to a chain below) but because the join tilted to slant upward when joined to the long picot below I had to count it. I'm going to work some sample pieces of joins of heavier thread to compare, and see exactly what I did. Unfortunately I was working fast, didn't write everything down that I did and should have know I'd forget the details. Have to go to work soon so can't get these samples made today!

I was intrigued and loved the the "double daisy picot" pattern by Riet the B-engel from Holland on the Tatting Calendar, I had never seen or heard of this before. So I went to her site and followed her directions to make the one at left.

I love it and tried to put it on one point of the snowflake, but ran out of thread-you can see the broken spot in it at the upper right of the photo. I think it's too heavy of a design anyway for this flake, and I want to study it's construction compared to using a mock ring with rings on it and also I think the other clover style point at the left is better for the snowflake. This snowflake will not make it for the January calendar, but I will be using it as a "Process of Design" sample in. I was out of the tatting world so long that I'm not familiar with all the designs out now so please let me know if this resembles someone else's snowflake!

Bye for now,

Sue F (Susan K Fuller)