Big promises!

Some time ago I found a marvelous little book from 1915 hidden away in our Royal Library, in the Medicin / Science department. How on earth a tatting book ended there would probably make a great story. I imagine a tatting secretary in the late 1920'ies secretly giving it the wrong label so she could keep it for herself for the next decades. :D

But the weird, handwritten label isn't what make this book so fun. It's the titel itself:  "BOGEN OM ORKIS - Regler for at komponere et uendeligt antal mønstre på den hurtigste måde". My best translation (bear with me): "The book about tatting - rules for composing an unlimited amount of patterns in the quickest possible way". I must say the dear Esther didn't lack self confidence. :D

I must confess I eagerly grabbed the book when it came to my hands. Imagine: Here I had the book that would reveal to me how I could design an unlimited amount of patterns and then be quick about it too! It was almost like when Indy could hold the Holy Grail in his hands for the first time!!


Sadly, I think the book had more to reveal in the 1920'ies than today. Her best advise is to change the numbers of picots and size of rings and chains, and take one motif and entangle another / tat another one around it 'for endless possibilities'. I guess it wasn't this book that was supposed to start my design career. :P Apart from that bitter disappointment :D I really like the book. There is just something about old / older books. The looks, the texture, the smell, the way they used the words...I wish I could keep it, but sadly I have to hand it back in today. Bye bye Esther, it was fun.

A leap into the seventy thousand fathoms of water :-o

When I started this blog I knew that I someday wanted to make it a public blog. How ever I am so very much a chicken so until now only a few select people have had access. Now I finally managed to get the courage to publish it, thus taking my own grand leap of uncertainty (yes, I always favored drama \o/) and make it yet another tiny drop in the big ocean of blogs. :P With a bit of luck I might even get someone to browse past it at some point. :D

Yet another star and some design sighs

Lots of things has happened lately, so I haven't found the time to scan this star I made a while ago, when I was staying a couple of days at my parents place.
I still haven't found out whether I dare iron this metallic yarn or not, so if it looks sloppy I hope that's the reason. :P
I need to make many more, if I want to keep the promise I made to myself.
How ever it's a lot more fun to work on a new pattern for the design class. I'm very proud of the looks of it *beaming with pride*, there is just one "slight" detail that is troubling me at the moment. How on earth am I supposed to find the right number of stitches for the design? It looks so nice on paper, but I'm quite sure it won't look anything like it at all, if I try tatting it with the numbers I've tried so far. Making your own patterns is indeed a lot harder than one should think, and I didn't expect it to be easy.

Bits of this and that

It turns out the bag was very well received, which makes me so happy. I've never made a bag like this before, and I had no pattern for it (couldn't find one I liked), so I build it in normal paper first and then made my own. The thing she liked best was apparently the pentagram, so good thing I ended up putting it where I did. :D

And I have to post how a good girl I've been! I stuck to my promise and made a Christmas Star / Snowflake yesterday, before I started anything new. I'll see if I can post a picture of it soon.

New book!! \o/

There isn't anything like getting a big, brown parcel, knowing it's one or more books that you have been waiting for for weeks. This time I got Jan Stavasz's "Tatting theory and patterns."

The book is really a joy. It's hardback, which is always a plus, and full of wonderful patterns. I really don't know where to start...And tbh. I ought not to have ordered it all now, since I promised myself I would start on some Christmas decoration IN GOOD TIME this year. But...eh...maybe it would be wrong of me to break my long tradition of finishing everything in the absolute last second? It might turn over the whole world order, and we do not want that to happen, right?!! So I guess it's my duty to try out one of those beautiful necklaces first. And after all there are still many days (and late nights) until December. :D

Procrastination ftw :P

Why start working on something straight away, when you can procrastinate and wait an extra day or even a few hours? :P

Again I managed to wait too long to start on the last bit of the bag, but again I did actually manage to be done just in the last second. How ever there wasn't enough time to get a proper photo of the finished bag, so here are some work in progress ones: [deleted].

The first is how it looks from the front - only the finished one actually did close properly. :P And eh...it did not have a pin stuck through it.

And this is the inside [deleted]. For a long time I didn't really know whether to use the pentagram at all. Originally, I planned it to be on the front, above the flower edge, but it turned out to be far too crowded. Then I thought about putting it on the backside of the bag, but it would just get messy, since it would rub against the coat all the time. Finally, I decided to put it on the inside. When the lining was sewn to it's place (it's not even pinned in place on the photo) and the pentagram as well, it turned out ok, I think. Now I just hope the girl will end up liking the finished bag.

Stars and flowers on my mind

Well....turns out I wasn't really on my feet again, but hopefully I am now.
I haven't had much tatting time the last couple of weeks. I've been trying to figure out how to draw patterns (thanks so much to Sharon's design course! :D), and I've been working on a gift to the daughter of a friend of mine. She is a young wiccan and I promised to make (yet another) bag, this time for her. I've been working on how to create a nice looking pentagram. It took some tries but I am happy with the end result now.



I'm nearly done with a matching edge (same green / pink flowers), but haven't decided on the bag design yet. :( I would really like to do something different than the usual pouch, and I can't wait much longer to decide. The bag needs to be done thursday at the latest! =:-o