Graceful threads

2011-12-24T18:31:00.000-08:00

The current project is huge – a quilt our tatting group began as a fund-raiser. 28 quilt squares were given out for embroidery at last April’s Tatting Conference – these are either strawberries or flowers, pre-printed on pink fabric, which seemed to be perfect for our upcoming heart-themed conference in April of 2012. Seemed straightforward – the embroidered squares were to be returned by late August. Which was when most of them did come back. The plan was to take the finished quilt top to the machine quilter before the end of September.

Fast forward to December when we had a total of 18 – count’em, and we did, many times, and couldn’t come up with more than 18 finished squares, plus a few around still in progress, including several not yet returned.

So Sally, one of our members, took two squares to work on, I took three more, and last week, two more partially finished squares were returned. I’ve been spending quite a lot of time listening to books on tape and embroidering. I just read on-line that the most skilled “factory’ embroiderers can only work 5 hours a day because of the intense concentration and the potential for hand injuries. I can understand why. After about 16 hours, I’ve got the two partially-completed squares finished now, three more still to go. Then all the squares need to be washed, ironed and trimmed to size before being laid out and assembled into a quilt. (Stay tuned – it will be absolutely gorgeous when it’s complete!)

In the meantime, still have one more end-of-the-year article to complete; and of course the final Christmas present, which I put the finishing stitches into today. These are Bill’s annual Christmas socks. They’re red, because as anyone who’s been in my knitting class can recite, tongue-in-cheek, RED IS WARMER. Or so Bill is convinced. These are particularly nice, made of washable merino and sock yarn, two strands held together. This was an intensive sock year, in the holiday season alone I made five pairs – luckily three of those pairs were for kids.

I’m taking off Christmas Day to do some different needlework.

resolutions...

2011-12-19T07:31:00.000-08:00

It’s not the new year yet, but this seems like a perfect time to make resolutions anyway… Maybe because I’ve finished almost all of my holiday projects, including a few extras that got added in “just because.”
And having resolved, I’ve started… sort of, anyway. Resolution 1 – to use my stashes of stuff, [particularly the stuff I’ve been holding onto forever for no particular reason]. Okay, some of the things I held onto were because they seemed good and useful; some were given to me, some followed me home. I particularly like cotton, and I wouldn’t mind having more of it… No! No! Down girl! For now I’m going to work on having just a little less of it. So I began Saturday by crocheting dishcloths… I made a few. I also finished a few projects that can’t be shown yet – or ever, come to think of it, since they’re already wrapped up and put in the boxes of those who will open them on Christmas. But here’s a hat (sort of seen at the top of the photo) made from three interesting strands comprising mohair, nylon, metallic, wool, acrylic and, of all things, linen.

Here’s the plan – by this time next year, I will have used up, sold or given away at least four of those large Rubbermaid tubs filled with stuff. This does not include Seneca Santa yarn (I’ve got seven tubs of that) which is given away free for the asking, to those who will knit and crochet mitten and hat sets for Seneca Santa. (We’re starting to work towards 2012 now).

Looking for other things, I came across this yarn, which is available to (an) other home(s) – temporarily. It’s mostly Lion Brand “Jiffy” – a bulky acrylic yarn great for quick projects and kids’ stuff. There are 12 balls of “Midnight blues” – enough for a good-sized throw, I’d think; 6 of “taupe” (I see teddy bears, amigurumi and otherwise) 4 “Springfield” (green and purples), 2 of Duluth (that’s the pink/red/magenta blend) and 5 skeins of a much lighter weight lavender acrylic + 2 more of the same where the skeins were partly started.. anyone interested may have any of these for $1 a ball plus shipping – whole groups only. Anyone who wants the light lavender gets all 7 balls for the cost of 5. Want all of it? Then shipping is free… I will be advertising elsewhere, too. After December 30, I’ll be turning the yarn into that throw, those teddy bears, and other good stuff – unless someone stops me. I'll update as I go, with more stash-busting/ and as things disappear.

UPDATE: The 12 skeins of Midnight blues have a new home and a new purpose - the other yarn remains available. If anyone wants all of what's left, the shipping is still free for the remainder.

2011-12-12T07:52:00.001-08:00

Santa’s workshop continues busy with all kinds of knitting and “stuff” I can’t show here. Our tatting group met here on Saturday and tatted snowflakes – mine was tatted in size 60, but I gave it away before photographing it. Possibly I’ll do a few more and next time I’ll take photos.

Then our spinning group met Sunday, and our sweet mother-to-be (Jen, are you reading this? You really ARE sweet!) who’s also a tatter was able to unwrap her gift. The hearts on the quilt were tatted, knitted and crocheted (including one butterfly) by Neil, Ruth, Dani, Karey, Ginny, Sally, and Nancy. I made the quilt and sewed the hearts on. Everyone please take note of the middle heart in the second row up from the bottom. It’s the most complicated one and was tatted by Sally who always says she can’t tat – and also had to adapt the pattern because the joins as written were difficult for a left-handed tatter.

We think even the baby was pleased – there even seemed to be a little applause (or at any rate, movement) from the as-yet unborn “T.” Then the spinning group went on to explore llama fiber, removing guard hairs as we spun some amazingly soft stuff. The llama fleece came from Jen, whose father-in-law raises them. I bought a llama blanket (whole fleece) I’ll start processing after the holidays, if I can wait that long.

2011-12-05T07:42:00.000-08:00

The garden is done, but here’s the tribble harvest (so far). They were perfect Thanksgiving knitting. No one actually asked “what are you doing?” because I was obviously knitting something with a great sense of purpose, even if it was little. Each time I finished one, I started right in on another. I need them for giving to members of my exercise class (at least a dozen there) and to various other people for presents (at least a dozen more.) I brought them to work with me, I took them with me to a crafts fair, where I knit them standing up. They’re wonderfully addictive – like potato chips, you simply can’t stop with one!

And what are they good for? These double-sided, knitted powder-puff-sized objects can be used for washing faces or dishes (choose one or make several tribbles). the pattern is someone else’s brainchild and can be found here. There are still tribbles going on…and um...other things. (Don't ask me what, I've been wrapping all morning.)

Of COURSE I’ve been involved in other creative endeavors, most of which I can’t show yet - a monster amount of hats and mittens, some for craft shows, some for Seneca Santa- these all left home before I could photograph them. Also work, but that's another matter. Suffice it to say the tatting shuttles have been laid aside for the moment – but the knitting needles are smokin’!

Here’s a closeup - the yarn used was Bernat Handicrafter cotton in a color called "Psychedelic" and a link to the pattern http://1870pearl.typepad.com/TRIBBLE2.pdf
And now, to wrap these beauties ...

2011-11-06T08:42:00.001-08:00

This morning I picked up my friend June for breakfast. We drank tea, ate lots of pancakes, talked about all the important fibery things in life, and then after I wrote all the names on pieces of paper, folded them and put them in a box, June pulled two winners, first asking me whether the pieces were identical in size and fold. Of course, they were.

Then we did a quick fiber tour of the studio and the barn and came up with three bags of yarn June could take home, and one I’ve got to wash before she’ll touch it. The “gotta wash” pile is part of a larger stash I inherited from a neighborhood knitter with an old dog, non-opening windows, a smoker in the family and some other issues compounded with the birch pollen it acquired while it was being aired this spring. Most of the stash is in five large tubs in the barn, also in three double-bagged black plastic trash bags, with dryer sheets and mothballs, which didn’t improve it much. The freshly-washed yarn gets mailed to her when she returns to her winter home.

Robert asked about the lime marmalade. I started with 9 limes, a grapefruit and a lemon. Sliced it all very, very thin – 1/16 inch strips are ideal, but most of them were a shade thicker. Put it all in a 6 quart pot with about 2 cups of water and started to cook it. After about 15 minutes, I checked the recipe on the Sure-Jell light box – nothing like doing things in the right order. However, as luck would have it, I did begin with the 6 cups of prepared fruit (they suggested 5 ½) but because I was doing a Seville-style marmalade, I hadn’t done the fancy stuff about separating fruit and rind, peeling off the pith and boiling it separately and so forth. I just went ahead with the directions. As soon as the Sure-Jell entered the mix, it began jelling beautifully. I added the sugar, brought it back up to boil as directed, and it was done. The jars are mostly olive jars- one held jam, about 12 years ago; another once held maraschino cherries, which we couldn't quite bring ourselves to eat. I washed them in the dishwasher, then sterilized jars and tops in boiling water. They all sealed… though I had my doubts about one of them, so I suppose I’ll make the ultimate sacrifice and keep it. It’s very, very good.

Oh yes, the winners are Jennifer and Martha. Congratulations! I’ll be doing this again, by the way. Thank you all for reading and also for the nice things you-all said.

2011-11-02T10:20:00.000-07:00

As of today, the last issues of the November Tatting Times are in the mail. Every issue, I’ve got a favorite pattern, and this “Christmas cookies” design is the current fave. It uses the ‘wandering wheel’ technique and was simply a pleasure to tat. I’m thinking I’ll do it again in a variegated, just for the fun of it. It looks smaller than it actually is because it’s sitting on a large dinner plate – it’s actually a little more than 6” across.

The magazine went out in three increments – this is the batch that went out Friday.

And here’s what I was doing when I wasn’t tatting or knitting (or working) - the jam is on the top shelf, then heading downwards, tomatoes and peaches, more peaches, more tomatoes, plums and the last two jars of last year’s sauerkraut, then a full (unseen) shelf of sauerkraut beneath that. You also can’t see the six market baskets with more canned tomatoes, applesauce, Catawba grape jam (though it might remain as a sort of sauce)… and no one can see the lime marmalade I’m planning to make on Friday.

Back to tatting and Tatting Times – I’m starting a major winter de-stash. If you are a Tatting Times reader, add a comment below and you have one of two chances to win a batch of tatting goodies including (among the goodies) a skein of my hand dyed thread. Winner will be chosen at random November 6 in the early morning.

2011-10-23T05:08:00.000-07:00

Nervous knitting is the thing to do when you can’t think of anything else you want to do, ort he knitting is happening when there’s other things going on, or any other time one wants to knit without paying close attention to what’s happening on the needles.

When the weather is iffy and the sort of in-between weather we have now, too chill in the morning to go out with uncovered hands but not-yet-ready-for-gloves weather. In the chill depths of winter, they’re great over magic gloves. As you can see, I made a dozen pairs by the time the photo was taken. I then made four more pairs; took them to the work… and brought only 10 pairs home. Or maybe I should say 10 ¾, because I was knitting in the quiet spaces and almost got another pair done.

Want to make your own? You’ll need a quartet of double pointed knitting needles, sizes 9 to 10 ½, depending on whether the thread used is super bulky, really bulky or simply sort-of chunky. Actually, I pay less and less attention to the size of knitting needles if they’re sort of in range. Using the same considerations, you’d begin by casting on 24-30 stitches on three needles, knit around in a K1, P1 rib for about 20-26 rounds, then bind off 7 stitches, immediately casting on 9 more. That’s the thumb opening, and you’ll knit the first and last cast-on stitch with the first and last stitch of the original group on the needle. Continue knitting around for 8 more rows, bind off and sew in all ends. Make another exactly like the first.

Actually, I’m not only knitting right now, I’m also tatting the final designs for the November issue of Tatting Times… but tatting does not come to work with me on a busy day!

And really, you don't want to know all the other things I did in September and the first part of October - it would just make you tired! But, okay, here's a little of what I did since I last posted - attended two conferences, one teaching tatting, one learning more about writing. Bought a lot of yarn, some for the shop, a slightly embarrassing amount for me. (But hey, a lot of it is turning into fingerless gloves!) Sang with the band, Mayhem, at various religious services... and rehearsed. Wrote a batch of articles. Picked apples and made applesauce and bought cabbage and made sauerkraut (not yet finished fermenting). And, oh yes, work - welcome extra work because it's the busy harvest season, which is followed by a long winter of less employment.

2011-09-04T07:42:00.001-07:00

Friend Julia gave me this gorgeous and useful creation, initiating me into the Sisterhood of the Basket. Acceptance of this beautiful basket also heavily implies (according to Julia) a dedication to Finishing Projects. I’m all over that. In fact, I was already dedicating this pre-fall time to heavy-duty finishing of all kinds of things.

Installment # 1 – three pairs of socks. The center pair is one I started some time ago and decided to finish differently, thinking I had only the single ball of sock yarn. Then, when I was looking for another small bit of yarn to finish the dark socks on the left – made from handspun yarn, by the way – I discovered the primary-colored socks. The knitting required to finish them clued me in on why the yarn hadn’t sold – by the time I finished knitting them, I couldn’t stand the cutesy brightness. “But they’re so YOU!” someone said – mercifully, I’ve forgotten who uttered this. So yesterday I dyed them green – a little too enthusiastically – meaning I used way too much dye for a project that small. Which meant I rinsed them about 40 times, then put them through the wash.

So here they are now. Please note the woodpile posing in the distance behind the socks. I was pretty quiet for a few weeks because I was stacking it – it started out about the size of a small schoolbus and ended up also about the size of a small schoolbus – only slightly more organized now. Not shown is the newly weeded garden – the removed weeds completely fill the compost pile. Nor do you see the results of days of tomato canning and pickle –making. You didn’t think I was sitting on my hands, did you?

book publication!

2011-08-29T06:25:00.000-07:00

Here it is, for the culmination of my summer. I worked on it a bit more in the past few months in preparation for publication. There's always a little more tinkering and fine-tuning. “Voices Like the Sound of Water” was officially released last Saturday. It’s my first collection of poems.

I read from the book on Monday night at the Harvest Café in Montour Falls, and if you were there, thank you! There were too many people present to hug and thank you all individually, but it’s a gift to be heard, and I appreciated all the people who turned out to listen (and buy books).

In answer to some of the questions people asked later… Even though poems are short, the collection took about 15 years to write and assemble. They take a lot of editing, rewriting, sometimes re-thinking. There’s humor in them because life is funny, even the serious parts. At least, sometimes. No, I didn’t pay to have them published, nor did I print them myself. The publisher did the design, then invited me to select the cover and end-paper color.

Will there be another poetry book sometime? I hope so. No immediate plans for one, though.

And, most important, Bill does sing off-key, but not in the shower; and he stays – that poem wasn’t about him. Those who know us well, know this has been a pretty difficult summer for Bill, health-wise - so whether he sings or not, I'm extremely grateful he's part of the shower landscape!

Second in importance – the book is available from me or from the publisher. Find information and a sample poem here. http://www.foothillspublishing.com/2011/id28.htm

2011-06-30T13:57:00.000-07:00

Here is what a lot of love looks like - 33 hat and mitten sets ready to go to needy children. This summer’s weather, so far, has been a great reminder of winter. 30 of the mittens were made by June; hats were made by Judith, Calina, me – and some came from the estate of marathon knitter-and-hat-maker Dianne (two ns) G. Tomorrow these go into Seneca Santa storage in Watkins Glen.

2011-06-30T03:34:00.000-07:00

This is the time of year when everything slowly accelerates. Thanks to the weather and some of Bill’s health-problems like his new not-yet-fully-installed pacemaker, hospital trips and doctors’ visits took up time we needed for gardening, so the garden is a weed paradise without its full complement of veggies. What’s in is getting munched on – by something that’s enjoying it instead of us. Today’s supposed to be a nice day but once again, it looks like rain. But that’s okay, we’ve got one last doctor’s visit – the third this week – to amuse us. Maybe we should call these our new hobby?
However.
Doctors’ visits are good for the production of Seneca Santa hats. I can do one per office visit, two per “short” medical test. My stock of hats, to match a boatload of beautiful mittens sent by June, is rising. Fortunately – for Seneca Santa, at least – we’ve got more visits next week.
And wet weather is good for tatting. I’ve been working on the projects I’m teaching for the Fringe Element tatting group in September. The theme is My Favorite Things - being Canadian, they put a “u” into favorite . Because my own favorite things include books and paperweights, I decided to revise the marble cosy paperweight from my book ‘Baubles, Bangles and Beads” to accommodate a larger marble. And then I went for one even larger. I’ve found a vendor who sells even larger ones, so I plan to look for more next week. I’m supposed to have a poetry book coming out this August - wow! A book I’m not publishing and printing myself! – and I’ve got to meet with the editor, who lives vaguely near the marble guy. Between doctors’ visits, of course.

The other thing I’m teaching is an ornament for a book cover – in this case, a creative journal whose interfacing pages can be personalized with writing and sewn in samples. The idea came to me in a brainstorm. I couldn't take a good picture, because between the sheen of the velvet on the cover and the sparkle of the beads, my poor attempt was more shine than book.
By the way, the folks who organize the Fringe element event are a wonderful group who manage to be well organized and informal at the same time. This event often has room for a few more, too. Find out more at
http://fringetatters.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/2011-tat-days-registration-form.pdf
And because I couldn’t garden, I created a tatted one. This is one of the projects I’m teaching at the IOLI conference in early August. I’ve been sketching and tatting these for a full year; here is the final version.

2011-06-10T16:57:00.000-07:00

I haven’t been sitting on my hands, honestly. I’ve been tatting quite a lot, and I’ll have something to show for it soon. I’ve also been doing a whole lot of work of various sorts. A bunch of writing, and a new venture – acting in a melodrama. It came about that at the end of May, I was asked to write an article about the Old Havana Theatre. http://www.oldhavanatheatre.com (The Schuyler County village currently known as Montour Falls was once known as Havana) This brave new enterprise brings another dimension of fun and culture to the area, and I was so taken with the spirit of things that, interview concluded, I blurted out that I’d be happy to help this venture get off the ground, ushering, promoting, whatever… which is how I found myself singing and dancing onstage, playing the train whistle and spooning cool-whip into a pie tin for the obligatory pie-in-the-face conclusion to the entertainment. It was a wonderful distraction from Bill’s medical woes, and in these days of truly offensive political revelations, it’s been wonderful to know that at least someplace virtue triumphs and villains get what they deserve (tastefully)!

Then my friend Laurie came to visit… and we spent a bunch of time together between work and the other friends she also needed to see. On the hottest day of the year - so far - we sat and spun wool in the shop… because the downstairs atmosphere is pleasant and cool. Now I’ve got to figure out what to do with this lovely art yarn Laurie made. Wool is one of our connections; we met in the 1970s at a spinning guild, and over the years, the threads of connection have multiplied.

One thing we did together a very long time ago was to take a dyeing class together. For a while this was Laurie's livelihood; now it's part of mine. Wednesday I mixed up a batch of dye to "revise" some alpaca I'd been gifted with - I was trying for a dark blue-purple but came out with a grayish dusty-grape. I did get wool roving and silk yarn to achieve the wished-for color - it was only the alpaca that wouldn't cooperate!

This morning I found out that I’d gotten into a fiber fest I’d been wait-listed for (as a vendor); mostly because I was too distracted by other work and Bill’s stuff to get my application in on time. So I spent the first part of the day dyeing roving and silk – here’s what my clothesline looked like for a while. Fortunately it was a perfect drying day; so I got the rest of my stuff assembled and packed the car to its gills for a 5:30 am start tomorrow.

2011-05-22T18:47:00.000-07:00

I think I may have come up with something. Which is always so much better than coming DOWN with something, right? But I haven’t seen this anywhere before and I find it intriguing.

Finalizing bookmark designs for my IOLI classes in early August, I was finishing a bookmark in pearl tatting and that “what if” intuition kicked in. What if… I used two threads in the pearl tatting method to tat a Josephine chain? I started with one color… hmmm… I could already see it looked intriguing. So I tried two.

Pearl tatting is also sometimes called Maltese tatting. Maltese in cats means gray, so I’m not sure how this form of tatting got dubbed Maltese. Maybe someone will tell me. Particularly because the Maltese ring, while similar to a Maltese (pearl tatted) chain is also quite different. Here is a started bookmark in three colors. I’ll be playing with this design a while longer, but in three colors, you can really see what this chain looks like.

Or almost. What you can’t quite see is the texture head-on. I can’t quite see it either unless I take off my glasses and regard it cross-eyed. (Easy for me, probably more difficult for you. But you can FEEL it.) Using two threads to tat the Josephine, you end up with something that looks more like rick-rack – it’s flatter than the usual Josephine or spiral chain. Which definitely makes it nicer for a bookmark.
Here’s how I tatted it –
Using one thread, I made five of the second half of the stitch, and then a sort of roll(not a stitch but a passing the shuttle over the thread to set the spiral; drop that first thread, pick up the second and repeat.

Try it and let me know what you think?

2011-05-04T16:11:00.000-07:00

April was a totally wonderful month – but looking back, it seems to have gone by in a total blur. After a brief recovery from our Finger Lakes Tatting Seminars I was off to Spokane for the Shuttlebirds.

As always, it was totally wonderful! I’m always impressed when a large group of people work together like a beautifully choreographed dance, everyone moving quickly without bumping into anyone else and getting a lot done in a brief amount of time. Because I had the good fortune to be staying with Lillian D., who was this year’s food captain, I know how much pre-Tat Days work went into making the food look effortless, but there was also lots more to do in the kitchen once people started to arrive and it all happened smoothly. Patti Duff is the presiding genius behind this conference, and she manages to do it all, including answering a zillion different questions, without once losing her cool. Here's a photo of one of the projects I taught - tatted mittens. (They'll be in the November Tatting Times.)

Then I had a couple of weeks before the next big thing... and one of the things that happened was having the chance to get one of my favorite knitters started on spinning. Like vampires, spinners (and tatters) always want to get others bit by the same fiber obsessions. Most of the identifying features have been cropped out to protect the innocent... but look! She's very definitely spinning! This picture was taken weeks ago, by now she's probably got everything spun.

I’d been asked to teach at the end of April for the Blue Ridge Mountain lacemakers and tatters from the Keystone Lace Guild. I already knew a few of these ladies – world class tatters. I was also intrigued by the location – Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, a place I’ve always wanted to visit.

So, combining two interests, I spent a lot of time researching tatting at the time of America’s Civil War and it was fascinating. Most of us know that at the beginning of the 1860s, tatting had not progressed beyond the ring and the false chain (a bare thread over which button-hole stitches looking like double stitches were made with a sewing needle). By the end of the War, Madame Riego had introduced the true chain; the proliferation of home sewing machines had encouraged the manufacture of smoother threads - and tatting was off and running.
For this event I created a tatter’s adaptation of the “housewives” soldiers took off with them to war. A real one looks like this http://www.civilwarantiqueshop.com/pi43.htm

It gave me food for thought.

The great day arrived and Bill and I, fortified with months of historical reading, packed the car and left for Gettysburg. Because my time was short, once we arrived we went to the Gettysburg National Cemetery, where we took an interpreted walk with a park ranger, listened to a gaggle of embarrassed teenagers recite the Gettysburg Address under a bust of Lincoln. There was a lot of side-poking, giggling, toe-scraping and other recognizable fidgets of teens under duress – but the speech was incredibly moving anyway.

We also went to the top of Little Round Top, a Union stronghold, and drove around to various memorials, including the “Bloody Angle” where charging Confederate troops were slaughtered as they tried unsuccessfully to breach Union lines. We met a lot of people in costume or uniform, well-prepared for at least five years of high-intensity re-enactment.

The following day, I went to Needle and Thread http://www.woodedhamlet.com/about_us/index.html who hosted the group. This is a beautiful fabric store near Gettysburg, specializing in Civil War era reproduction fabrics. Actually, I’d gone the day before to shop a bit, because I knew I’d be tempted. And I was! And knowing that fiber stuff makes the best souvenirs, I gave into temptation. Darlene and Carl, the owners, were wonderfully welcoming, and their selection of goodies made me think about making one of those Civil War reproduction quilts. Just thinking…. Only thinking! Carl told Bill the wool they stock for re-enactors' uniforms is made by the same mill in England that wove the wool worn by the soldiers 150 years ago. Bill went back to the battlefields and walked around looking at things from the Confederate viewpoint while we had our class.

But I'm not sewing quilts for fun yet, because there’s a lot more tatting to do. I’ve got patterns to proof tat for the next set/s of classes, and a bit of everyday sewing to work on – for example, I’ve got a lot of fabric and a kind of hybrid quilt-batting/foam rubber stuff to turn into chair-pads. And knitting – I did finish two pairs of socks-in-progress, and a good thing too, it’s been cold enough to need them. In the photo, they're being inspected by our "invisible" cat.

Of course, I started another pair, I had a bout of dental work and I was expecting a lot of time in the waiting room. This incidentally didn’t happen, so the new socks are still on my needles. As is – on a different set of needles – a summer sweater I’ve begun for whatever summer festivities arise requiring an interesting shell. I’m not very far along with it, but then again, neither is the season. (Is it ever going to be summer this year? I have my doubts.)

So… back to the tatted housewives. I made bunches (and still have a few left) wide enough to hold tatting needles. This is mine – I’ve been learning needle tatting which is a challenge after the speed of shuttle-tatting. (The motif on the cover will be in the August Tatting Times.)

I take my hat off to those who shuttle tat, particularly those who shuttle tat beautifully and swiftly. Like Carolyn, who was in the class and already finished the project. Here’s Carolyn’s beautiful work. The thread was my HDT in the “Sunset” colorway. Way to go, Carolyn!

I had a wonderful time with the Blue Mountain lace group, multi-talented people who are terrific tatters as well.

2011-04-06T16:20:00.001-07:00

Shhh…. Can you keep a secret? If you can, keep reading, and you’ll find a heartful shawl down a bit in this entry. First – be kind to me – I gave birth this past week. The newest book, “Wandering Wheels,” came back from the printers and was introduced at the Finger Lakes Tatting Group’s Tatting Seminars in Lodi, New York. Handy Hands has it now, as do I and I’ll have the booklet with me in Spokane next week.
I’m excited about the design possibilities in continuous Catherine Wheels in tatting and I can’t wait to see what other folks do with it!

I taught two classes at this year's Finger Lakes Tatting Group conference in Lodi this past weekend – the Rose Garden Pincushion, which uses floating chains, and the Pick o’the Bunch grapes class using the wandering wheels technique. If you weren’t there, it’s hard to explain how wonderful the weekend is – even for its organizers! There’s a lot of learning and sharing going on, a great chance to catch up with friends and make new ones, amazing food, eye-candy every direction you look, treats of all descriptions. Once again, Bunny Baker surpassed herself in the culinary arts department… and Bunny herself is such a sweetie that people tend to naturally gravitate toward the kitchen. We had a talented wood-turner who made our commemorative shuttles – she calls herself the Naked Woodworker but she does, actually, wear clothes. I wish I’d taken photos, but luckily, I didn’t have to – Sheryl Coleman did, and describes the event beautifully in her own blog http://www.crunchybanana.com/2011/04/finger-lakes-tatting-conference-2011.html As for me, after I came home from taking Nina to the airport… I went to sleep. Until yesterday, I fell asleep at any time I wasn’t actually in motion.

Here’s the secret part. I’m whispering.
Today, feeling slightly more human, I finished sewing tatted heart motifs on a shawl I’d proposed for Kay Foster, sister-in-law of Barbara Foster of Handy Hands. There were 39 or so motifs, from many different states and I think four different countries, many of them with millions of picots. The hearts, I mean, not the countries. Believing as I do in sewing down every picot, that was more hand-sewing than I’d budgeted time for before the conference. (Doesn’t that sound amazingly professional? Like I actually budget my time? Yeah, right.) But today was the day to sit down and finish sewing-on the latest arrivals. I hung the shawl out in the drizzle to freshen it; tomorrow I’ll put it in the dryer on low to fluff it out and hopefully get off some of the surface fuzzies… and then off it goes. That’s why it’s a secret… Kay doesn’t know yet. Many, many thanks to all those who contributed one or more hearts!

2011-03-18T18:09:00.000-07:00

Unveiled at last – the cover tattings from my new booklet, “Wandering Wheels.” The grapes and the flower cart are two examples of what can be done with “floating” or joined Catherine wheels – everything tatted from a single color was made with one continuous thread – no cut and ties until I was done with that color. The idea arose after a tatter came to my house and demanded that I design a bunch of grapes for her. (Marcia, I love you hugs and hugs worth!) This led me to experiment with ideas – tatting each grape separately, which Marcia did before I came up with this method, seemed like too much work – as she herself will tell you. When I came up with this method, I knew it was something I’d never seen before, which felt truly exciting.

I really like the flower cart and I’m thinking of tatting it again to put on a t-shirt. The HDT (mine – colorway is called “Oil Slick”) worked well for the flowers and doesn’t truly look like oil at all. This has just been so much fun! Can you tell I’m really jazzed about it? The booklet comes back from the printer next week (some copies are already sold) when I take in the pattern book for the next Tatting in the Finger Lakes conference, which is just two weeks away. I’ll have it there and in Spokane.

After the masters went to the printer, I knitted 7 pairs of Seneca Santa mittens, which the Thursday knitting circle helped sew together. (Thank you!) And worked on cleaning up the black hole… I mean, the studio. Not done yet, of course, but progress has been made.

2011-03-06T13:51:00.000-08:00

We’re snowed in again – which frankly, I love (or would if it didn’t feel like the flu has returned for an encore). Nevertheless, I’ve been having a blast. Today I wrote an article that I feel politically much in tune with. As a journalist, my job is to present information without expressing the merest shred of personal opinion, but when I get a chance to write about something I really believe in – which fortunately happens often – I feel particularly optimistic about life in general.

My friend June is in town, and brought some Seneca Santa mittens with her. We had an opportunity for a nice long visit and sort through the yarn bins. I’ve been doing a few hats now and then when I have time. The yellow ones, incidentally, were mostly made by my friend Jennifer, who knitted a long, tubular scarf that had no home. She gave it to me, and because I had some of the same yarn, through the magic of crochet turned the scarf into 8 hats on a different wintry morning. They matched well with many of June’s mittens.

We drank a lot of tea, she made a pair of mittens while I crocheted 7 more hats – hats go so much more quickly than mittens. And voila! We now have 14 finished sets. June, who every year makes dozens of mittens, stubbornly refuses to dedicate her entire life to this project – she really does have a life completely apart from knitting. I think I’m going to have to spend some time in the next weeks making some myself. I’m hoping that if I can do some on the knitting machine, maybe the Thursday knitting circle could sew them up. The idea is always to get the first batch of mittens out the door and into summer storage before the tatting conference and - yikes! It’s only four weeks away. I’d like to have a bit more than 14 sets to send off. Each year I pledge myself to make or facilitate at least 100 sets, so any way you look at it, I’m a bit behind.

Next on the agenda – look at the sage wool shawl whose ends you see behind the mittens. It began its life as a beautiful piece of wool whose remnant was given to me by a talented needlewoman who was purging her fabric stash. What it needs is an array of tatted hearts so it may be sent to a tatter who was the unlucky passenger in a car hit by another car and is now recovering from this serious accident. I hope to send this, too, on its way before our April tatting conference.

I’m also at work on a new tatting book, hinted at in the last Tatting Times. I’m really excited about these new patterns – I’ll show a few of the results when I’ve got more of them tatted… and after I tat a few hearts.

2011-02-19T19:13:00.001-08:00

Working like mad on too many projects to admit to… (with fever breaks in bed with the cat and a lot of hot tea). I’ve been cleaning my studio, an ongoing project that will probably take the rest of my life. I found a humiliating number of knitted socks in progress, but in several cases, I was embarrassingly convinced that I only found half the project, so I did the only logical thing – set them aside and began another pair of knitted socks. The new pair has a chance of getting finished…. Sometime in March, I’m absolutely sure.
For several weeks I’ve been tatting a lace edging for a tablecloth. I was astounded to learn it would be 13 feet of edging before I was done. Now I’m done. Ginny W has the tablecloth; her mom did the embroidery and we’re all adding tatted flowers to the ornamentation. This is going to be auctioned – and it’s already a beauty (even without the edging). The auction proceeds will help support our annual convention. Somewhere along the line, I realized I could keep things from tangling by winding the edging around a piece of cardboard, measuring here and there for the corners. The edging is the simple one everyone learns at the beginning of tatting:
R: 5-5-5-5 CH: 5-5 Repeat until you’re crazy. For some of us this doesn’t take long.

This is what 13 feet of edging looks like. Ginny’s so smart, I’ll let her do the final joins after she inveigles her mother into sewing it on.
The homeless quilts are now in Kansas City, to be given away during the homelessness marathon, February 23-24 (public radio stations and several public TV stations as well – if you can get Pacifica, tune in between 6 pm central time and 8 am the following morning). Sixteen quilts, in case anyone wants to know, filled 4 large black plastic garbage bags. I was told they’d cushion a lot of the broadcast equipment on the ride out.
I made 14 of those quilts, and would you believe the cat came downstairs in the middle of the night and tossed fabric scraps hither and yon? Clearly the only thing to do was to work some of them into quilt squares, which takes more time than I would have believed possible. I need those elves when the shoemaker is finished with them – at least to keep the cat in line. A week’s worth of sewing while I’ve had the flu resulted in enough squares for one quilt - but a mountain more was discovered - I'm sure the cat did it just to frustrate me. I couldn't have quite THAT much around, could I?

Here’s the culprit, resting from her labors. On Bill, who has a slight fever. We’ve been flu-ish. When I went to the clinic Friday, the nurse said brightly, “Oh! Real flu! We haven’t seen much flu this year.” I think what she meant was, “Everyone else was smart enough to get flu shots, you suffering from stupidity as well as bronchitis?” But being a trained health professional, she was much too kind to say so.

2011-02-02T17:18:00.000-08:00

I've now completed 10 homeless quilts - the three most recent are festooned artlessly around the messy studio in front of a leaning tower of completed ones in my messy studio. I haven't been cleaning up, just cutting, sewing, tying - and then on to the next one. I figure I've got enough materials and enough energy to make maybe four more. In my "spare" time - this being a snowed-in day without other work - I also completed 8 Seneca Santa hats and worked on a totally pedestrian tatting project - tatting 13 yards of edging for a tablecloth. It may be pedestrian but it's also quite inspiring... that is, I'm very inspired to finish it and move on to something else, but alas, it is not the work of a moment!

2011-01-30T18:29:00.000-08:00

Not knowing who was reading this in the lead-up to the holidays, I kept my head down, with four major sewing projects going, as well as some knitting. I'm not as enthused about sewing - though I've sure got to do a lot of it! - so I kept my nose to the grindstone, meaning to photograph all these projects when they were done. Then I got excited about wrapping them and getting them to their recipients – and then it was too late. Since nearly everyone now has their presents in hand, I can explain them, even if I can't show them. Take my word for it, they did come out rather nicely! They included potato-baking bags, made from cotton fabric and batting, for baking potatoes in the microwave; patchwork pot-holders with fairly complicated patterns, and for my sweetie, wool socks - red of course, because as everyone in our Thursday night knitting group could recite in chorus, red is WARMER.

Now, in January, things have moved on… a bit. We’ve weathered the holidays, a touch of flu, a snowy Roc Day. The lambs we began three spinning meetings ago (this is a Lion Brand KAL pattern) got finished. Mary’s is the pink one on the left, mine, using some roving I was presented with by a visitor from England on the right I changed the pattern to do the whole thing in the round and minimize sewing – a lot of parts were knitted-on instead. When I finished, I had used 13 knitting needles. Not quite sure how that happened. Also, because of the variegation, some beholders thought the lambie was really a piglet. Then we gave ourselves a winter challenge – spinning a set of wild batts we each made from various bits of fleece we all threw into the center of the room, divided, then carded. We each ended up with about 7 ounces in two colorways – one was a sort of green/blue/white blend, the other was an orange/brown set that spun up looking like a dog’s breakfast. More on those later.

I’ve undertaken some reorganization in the studio – but the “before” photo was so horrendous, I don’t dare show it. Can we take it as read that it was awful? The still-disorganized progress might be nothing to write home about, but it is a whole lot better! I produced a tatting booklet called “Baubles, Bangles and Beads,” – here’s a photo of some of the projects. Anyone who’s done design work can well imagine the amounts of time, thread, dropped beads, projects that got scrapped because they didn’t turn out and bad words this entailed. But I was really, really pleased with the results. One project that didn’t get in because I misplaced it three times led me to think I needed to design something different – and I liked that a whole lot better.

Came up with three projects for the Finger Lakes Tatting Seminars in April – Marcia will teach one of them (the carrots). And take a look at these grapes – I believe I may have invented a new technique for making Catherine Wheels with a continuous thread.

We’ve had a bunch of snow, so there’s been a lot of creative time. The current focus, between tatting and tatting, is making homeless quilts. (These would have looked a lot better if I'd photographed them from further away.) That is, the quilts are for homeless people, though since they’re not yet currently connected to the individuals who need them, I suppose the quilts are themselves homeless. I was gifted with a godsend – bags of gorgeous fabric from a hobby seamstress with elegant taste, which helped a lot. Thanks, Edna! Her stash even included a length of fleece I could use as a warm layer. That quilt is the only one that’s not a “quillow” – the rest are, because you know how personal your pillow is, and it seemed like a good thing to combine warmth with a pillow. So far, I’ve made 7, and my friend Jean J. has made one. I want to keep going on this project for at least another week, but I seem to be running out of quilt insides....

2010-11-15T06:05:00.000-08:00

Tatting up a storm? Oh, I really, really dislike that phrase. It’s generally said by people with no imagination who simply want to convey their understanding that I’ve been tatting quite a bit. I like watching storms – from inside – but I wouldn’t like to think I’m the cause of all that sound and fury.
But here’s some of what I’ve been doing. I’ve got to prepare this month and next for about five teaching occasions, which means I absolutely have to engage in one of my favorite activities for extended periods of time. Next year, Tatting Times is celebrating its 20th Anniversary, and I want to celebrate by going to as many tatting gatherings as possible!
This is part of a proposal for next spring – the blue at 12 o’clock is a button-based bag; at 3 o’clock is a gingko leaf from my book “Tatting Turns Over a New Leaf.” This past Saturday, the Finger Lakes Tatting Group got together at Graceful Arts (here) and people found at least four ways of tatting this leaf, including the way I wrote it down, which had an error, but works anyway. At the bottom is the whirligig ornament from my “Tatting With Buttons 2.” I forgot how pretty it can be until Hopie showed me last August her versions in the colors of the Southwest. I decided to go for secondary primaries here and a bit of contrast. I think I’ll be making this a few more times for presents this coming season. Lastly, at 9 o’clock is a tatted mitten. I found a new way to tat a foundation chain for Scharf-style leaves. Instead of using paper clips to hold a space, I now tat part of a lock chain, which leaves a small picot in the middle of a chain that may be accessed from both sides.

Read this blog over the years and you may think I’m obsessed with firewood. Certainly, it forms a big part of our lives this part of the year. Carrying in wood, stoking the stove, carrying out ashes, cleaning up around the fireplace – it can all keep you pretty busy. After the big purple machines finished in October, there were about24 small and medium-sized tree trunks piled on the lawn, yesterday my friend’s husband Nate brought his chain saw and buzzed through them. I saw there’s real skill and strategy in cutting up logs. Because most of these are red pine, they’re going to have to season for a very long time before they’re safe to burn. I worked with Nate to pile them up – we think it’s something over a cord of wood, since the logs took up three pallets plus a bit more. It was good exercise – now I’ve just got to figure out how to get pine tar off a good sweater.

So that’s where I’ve been and here’s where I’m going – in addition to more tatting. I was gifted with about 2 pounds of lovely Jacob’s fleece roving by Bill’s daughter Margaret, and I’ve been itching to get my fingers on it. Unfortunately work and other deadlines intervened – and I’ve had to wait a bit. And I’m off to work now, so the wait goes on.

2010-11-06T05:39:00.000-07:00

I am not a quilter. I’m a fiberholic, and that’s different. The result of my fiber acquisition/stash-taming efforts – it toggles back and forth between them – is this quilt show, which was a feeble effort to use up fabric stash and impose a little order. The total silliness of this effort was brought home to by the obvious need to buy more fabric in order to use up some stash… so the total amount of fabric left is only slightly depleted. I don’t like sewing, but I seem to be engaged to my sewing machine… if not actually wedded to it for long periods of time.

Last Monday was the day to hang everything on the winery walls. My boss kindly gave me a light day’s work to accomplish this. Bill came and helped, mostly standing on the ground saying helpful things like “higher on the left. No, HIGHER!” while I teetered on a ladder, reaching for areas I really should have gotten down and moved the ladder to first. Fortunately, it was all quickly hung, without disaster. Eighteen pieces.

The opening was officially on Thursday. I did a bunch of cooking, went to work, came home, changed clothes, came back and paced nervously. I think this opening set a record for being among the smallest. But I sold three pieces, including the two big ones on the back wall. Those are the ones on the top photo. One other quilt has now left – I didn’t get a chance to photograph it, but it will be given to a new mother to welcome her new baby. I’ve got a new quilt to put up in its place, one that didn’t make it into the show.

Moving the season right along, I’ve done little to tame the mess in the studio. This is why. I signed up, kinda last minute, to vend at a crafts fair tomorrow that’s supposed to be the largest one in the region. Went into gear knitting mittens with this great local wool – rather, the sheep whose wool this is graze about a mile uphill from my house. Here are mittens in progress – they take a lot of finishing before they become double-thick reversible mitts. There’s a lot of stages in knitting these mittens, including knitting, sewing, fulling, shaping, putting one mitten inside the other….

And voila! Here are 11 finished sets, atop one corner of a newly re-covered couch. For those who know me, this fabric was carefully chosen to match the coloration of our invisible cat. In case of an unexpected instance of extroversion, she can sit here and remain more or less invisible. Not with the mittens, though. They’re leaving town.

2010-10-26T04:58:00.001-07:00

Last year, I challenged Tatting Times readers to see how many shuttles they could empty (by tatting the small ends. Of course, I was, as usual, trying to pack too many things into too short a time to take the dare myself, though several people discovered several hundred shuttles occupied with forgotten bits of thread. Knowing I, too, had to do something about this situation, in the August Tatting Times, I offered this small and easy pattern - which quickly went viral! I almost think we need a support group of people working on it. Yes, it does leave you with a lot of ends – but sewing them in truly doesn’t take long, and it’s a wonderful take-along meditative experience. Here’s how far I’ve gotten. Pam Freck made hers a bit more organized – she groups her flowers into sevens and tats a border of solid-colored flowers around each group.
Here’s the pattern – the center ring is R: 5-5-5-5-5-5 (five picots, plus the start and end of the ring; then CH around: 6-6+ (six times). You need a little more than a meter of thread per flower. You can keep going forever… Or stop whenever you’ve reached something of a recognizable shape.
When the big purple tractor was finished clearing scrub and trees, this lovely maple was revealed in its fall splendor… it was almost worth all the trouble and expense of having the junk hauled away to see this beauty!

2010-10-24T08:39:00.001-07:00

It’s impossible to pick up and summarize everything that’s happened since I last blogged. Life moved on, of course. These socks (right) got finished – so did a few others. Other projects got started and finished.
These socks, (above, really blurry, but really, they are socks) for instance, were dyed in the same dye-lot as sock yarn I special-dyed for my friend Phyllis. I dyed mine using sport-weight sock yarn, which struck me as a great idea. A lot of Seneca Santa hat and mitten sets, for which I made a lot of hats (I think I’ve done more than 50 this year) and also a batch of mittens. More will happen later this year. I made this bag (below)
for an exchange and got even more into the idea of combining tatting and crazy quilting, something I later taught at the International Old Lacer’s gathering in Portland, Oregon this past summer. I did a batch of traveling, all of it fun. One of the nicest results of a trip – one to the Palmetto Tatters Guild conference in late August, was that Sue Hanson came to visit for a week. Unfortunately, it was a really busy week in September, including the work season in full bloom, a primary election and Rosh Hashonah, but we did manage to have a get together with a larger group of tatters. It was our third informal tatting gathering this year and a whole lot of fun. Here are Sue Hanson (on the left) and Sherry Townsend, in front of one of our smaller flower gardens, wearing each others’ hats. I tried Sue's hat on too, and liked it so much, I decided to keep it - at least, in my photo! Also a lot of people, not seen, sitting on the porch egging them on and applauding. Also not imaged at this moment is the tremendous job Sue did of organizing my studio. She claimed it was fun for her, and it was amazing, I learned a lot. I've still got a distance to go... when things calm down a bit around here. Which is not yet. Just to make life more interesting, we’ve been having a lot of work done around the house and the shop – a lot of trees cut and brush removed from the edge of the woods so we could get more sunshine and more lawn to mow (which always sounds like fun in the fall when lawn-mowing season is over) and as I write on Sunday morning, a drainage ditch is being cut to one side of the shop entry, to pull water away from the foundation of the house on that side. The person who's doing it is absolutely wonderful - smart and logical, and I expect it will make a great difference. And, in the “What was I thinking?” department, a few years ago I signed up to do a solo quilt show - so when my nose hasn’t been to the grindstone, it’s been pressed up against the sewing machine. I’m stopping now to work on finishing yet another quilt… more later!

2010-02-25T12:45:00.000-08:00

I’m ready for the big blizzard allegedly coming our way tonight. We’ve got plenty of food, wood in the house and… umm… How did I suddenly find myself knitting seven sweaters simultaneously? We could blame this on one of the sweet ladies of the spinning group who suggested a knit-along on the topic of Elizabeth Zimmerman’s baby surprise jacket. So I began one out of handspun, another out of some yarn in the shop, thinking it might go to a friend, and on second thought, not knowing the size of the friend’s baby, decided to begin a third one with some very neat green yarn from my stash, with the second one staying in the shop as an example of what may be done with that yarn Here’s the pink sweater I began at least a year ago, with some shop yarn I wanted to show off, because I thought it would make a neat sweater, and the sweater I started for another baby (who has probably by now long outgrown said sweater) and the one I’ve begun for myself using last fall’s indigo dyed handspun, spun with intentional irregularities. Oh no – there’s another that got put aside so long I forgot to count it! There’s two pairs of socks in progress too (can’t find one of them, so could we call that inactive?) And two scarves I’ve been knitting as shop examples. Oh, and also a pair of cashmere/wool mittens-in progress, around somewhere. And the plan of using up some of my extra stash as Seneca Santa hats – I found inexpensive magic gloves yesterday and got 10 pairs for this project. I thought I’d try making one hat a day for a while. It’s embarrassing, it’s crazy, it’s much too much – it’s winter.

2010-02-16T18:02:00.001-08:00

Here’s Kyle and Shannon on their wedding day, after opening their quilt. Outside it was snowy – in fact, snow had stopped several expected guests from attending. We made it to the wedding only in our 4WD truck – everything in the truck-bad wrapped in layers of plastic. It took an extra hour to drive there, though the roads were clear and we made it home in better time.
As weddings go, this one was high on my list of the ones I’ve most enjoyed. The young couple was joyful, as were all the spectators, all of us happy to see them together; the reception was elegant and homey – it was the sort of beautiful event that happily becomes a lovely memory to remember ever after with a smile.

Today I drove off in yet another snow squall to collect two more afghans for the homelessness marathon. (It starts February 23, 7 pm eastern time on many public radio stations across the county and in Canada; then continues through the night until 9 am the following morning.) The two I got aren’t pictured, but they’re gorgeous bright colors; these were mostly made from squares kind people sent. In all, 11 people will be warmer this winter.
Last of my errands today was a trip to the post office where I collected this mysterious package. One foot was coyly peeking out from the wrapping. It took quite a while to unpack…

Many minutes later, I was one layer down.

Then a lot of cleaning, oiling, tinkering. This was a rash e-Bay purchase; Nagy wheels are highly-thought-of and it was calling me. It was built in 1971, and the wood is beautifully finished. But it’s missing a few pieces, like the footman, replaced with a broken and splintery piece of wood; the peg for the orifice hook (and the orifice hook itself); and the crankshaft was bent. It’s been partly straightened now, but the wheel still has a wobble. It needs more love and attention than I’ve got time or skill to give it today; it also has this strange, large cup-hook screwed into the front. I think that might be to weight it down so it wobbles less? Still, it’s a nice, lightweight wheel, pretty for the living room and useful – or might be eventually.

2010-02-10T05:48:00.001-08:00

Photo-gallery time – for a sampling of some of the things I’ve been working on and occasionally talking about. I took a quick inventory of works-in-progress today and it was staggering. For everything I finish, there are five more projects in various stages of not-quite-done.
But spinning is like a poem, you sit down at the wheel and when you get up, something is generally accomplished. These are some of the handspun yarns posted on my etsy site (see previous entry). Can you tell I love color?
Last September, at the Palmetto Tatting Gathering, Georgia Seitz distributed crazy quilt squares, already sewn, ready for tatting ornamentation. I took two, began one immediately and lost track of the second. Time to find them both and finish them, I thought – which I’ve now done as part of my unrelenting (and probably fruitless) quest for better order. Now they’re done and mailed off to Georgia. Hand-sewing is something I have to push myself to do, and I'm always surprised to re-discover how much I actually enjoy it. Maybe if I weren't a tatter I'd be more of an embroiderer? I mostly used pieces from my endless stash of fragments and motifs, only tatted one piece particularly for this purpose. Can you tell which one?
I’ve hesitated about putting this quilt up because it’s one intended for Bill’s grandson Kyle, getting married this weekend. Then I’ve reasoned the happy couple are probably too busy at the moment (they’re both chefs) to be concerned about checking my blog… as if they ever do? So here’s a peek. What you’re seeing in the photo is the sunshine-and-shadow center of the quilt, the orange/cream/green pansy sashing/inner border, and a glimpse of the back (navy blue cotton) and the yellow border. It’s a double size quilt; I machine quilted it, then hand-finished the border. Started it Christmas day, finished a few weeks ago…

2010-02-06T06:44:00.000-08:00

One more finished, three more still in progress. Time is ticking away and – is it ADHD or simply a fiber-related personality disorder? – there are other things I want to be working on and can convince myself are in fact, equally pressing.

Exhibit A, for why I love hand-spinning. People I know have recently adopted a baby from Ethiopia; I haven’t met this child yet so I don’t know her size. Something stretchy was in order, also something wooly because we’ve still got a bit of winter. And I also wanted it to be soft, which can be somewhat controlled with the spinning. Originally thought all white, or at least that natural, creamy off-white; then as I was spinning, I began pulling out other colors until I had a whole batch of interesting things to work with. Knitted the little socks, adding eyelets for ribbons to keep them on as booties; then began the hat. Uh-oh – ran out of yarn. Solution – go to the wheel and spin more. Works every time.
Last week I opened an etsy shop - I registered three years ago and didn’t do anything until now. So far, only handspun there, hand-dyed threads and sock yarns coming soon. What I’ve got up so far is at http://www.etsy.com/shop/gracefulyarn

2010-01-31T08:48:00.000-08:00

Had to fit this in before January was absolutely, completely over. It’s been a busy month with a lot of article-writing, a whole lot of tatting, a bunch of spinning, and a fair amount of afghan construction.
Here’s at least one early sign of spring – some tatted peeps – these are in the February Tatting Times, which has already gone out to the first batch of subscribers. The blue one was the basic one; on the green one I added more of a tail – and the variegated one, which is actually quacking, definitely did not work in variegateds – it’s included as a sort of cautionary example.
The first batch of homelessness afghans already went to Detroit; I’m hoping to get more finished within the next week. It’s one of those every-evening-sit-down-and-work –away-at-it endeavors – a lot of crocheting and sewing with only small incremental changes for weeks at a time.

2010-01-11T06:28:00.001-08:00

Eleven days into the project and I’ve got one afghan finished (folded, it’s the one underneath) and another begun (that’s the one with yellow, on top). It’s something to do while listening to books on tape in the evening; I seem to be able to advance it about six inches per evening. After I finish the yellow one, it will be time to put the pieces together for the ones made of rectangles. That takes a while too… It’s nice warm work for a cool evening BUT – I’d rather be tatting.

2009-12-31T14:38:00.000-08:00

A good winter project arose, though I hadn’t been planning on it. But I was asked by a neighbor to come up with a possible backdrop for a program he directs, and the nature of the event made me think of afghans. This neighbor directs the Homelessness Marathon, (http://www.homelessnessmarathon.org) a nationally televised and broadcast (on radio) 14-hour effort to bring the cause of homelessness to everyone’s attention. He wanted color in the background (his tv technies told him “anything but white”); I was thinking warmth. (unfortunately, a white stripe found its way in before I heard the technie announcement. Thus another project was born. Or maybe several! (Depending on time, help from others, etc.)

The idea is to have a bunch of homemade afghans hung behind the broadcast area (this is “talk” radio, so no one’s moving much). They generally broadcast outside, so the people involved in putting the program together are as cold as everyone else on the street – and this year we’re talking Detroit in February! Jeremy will drive the afghans out to Detroit when he leaves in mid-February; then he’ll leave them with a homeless shelter to be used by people who need them. I’m thinking perhaps some fleece blankets would also be good, as a backdrop for the afghans as well as more to give away.

So the top photo is the start of a one-piece afghan; the photo to the right shows the first pieces of a “Warm Up America” style afghan – this one will need to be assembled. This project is gratefully accepting donations of 7 inch by 9 inch rectangles for afghan assembly – I’ll need these no later than January 20. Any color but white! Unfortunately, I’ve got a lot of white yarn – but that can be used for putting the pieces together.

2009-12-27T06:26:00.000-08:00

One of this year’s major accomplishments was finishing “Tatting By The Book,” my second collection of bookmarks. While I was designing and tatting the bookmarks, at the back of my mind was this worry about the book’s cover. I couldn’t come up with an image of how it might look and this bothered me – all my ideas took me back to the same cover as the bookmark collection I did in 1997. Then I found this copyright-free illustration and altered it – after that, everything simply came together. Everything I wanted to get in managed to fit - all 17 of them! The printer did a great job – and I was able to get the first orders out in time for Christmas.

Secret Santa was terrific this year! Carol A. sent me some incredible presents – including this lovely fellow – he’s young, lively, and his round tummy says he likes chocolate almost as much as I do! He does seem to be a leprecaun, so I looked up Irish names and settled on Flannan - which means, if I recall correctly, "little red one." He accompanied a lot of lovely things including a pair of my favorite shuttles, chocolate (I got to them first!) a sparkly bag, beads, Lizbeth threads, including one color I haven't tried yet; a neat tin (with more candy) and a lot more good things.

Actually got my Christmas presents all done with a little time to spare – which I used to begin another project, of course. This was legitimate, according to my lights, anyway - because it fit my goal of using up “stash” yarns, in this case two yarns I’d been stockpiling that suddenly acquired a magnetic attraction to each other. This will be a shawl… literally wrapping up last year’s New Year’s resolution to make a significant dent in my stash of yarns. This year’s resolution has the same general nature but has to do with fabrics. I’m not much of a quilter, but somehow I’ve established a stash which has gotten seriously out-of-control. I’ve signed up to do a quilt show next November, so I expect I’ll be busy at the machine for much of the next few months.

2009-12-11T11:08:00.000-08:00

Does anyone really have free time at this point in the year? My winter job has begun, but in addition to the holiday preparations, my attention is otherwise pleasurably distracted. I’m working on a long-promised bookmark pattern collection, having fun trying out some new patterns. These are two for the book, the gull-feather (in green) and the tiara bookmark (mauve). The book’s patterns are just about finished, thanks in part to a workshop last spring that tried out some new patterns, and thanks also to people in the Finger Lakes Tatting group who tried out a few more. Now it’s just re-checking and tatting time… and at this point in the year, what could be better?

2009-11-06T11:18:00.000-08:00

Now that some of my projects have gone to their intended recipients, I can post a few of the things I was working on.

It was time to make a quilt for my friend June, who had a significant birthday. It has a few special features – garden print fabric; one of the borders has pens, pencils and paintbrushes, appropriate for a woman who’s a writer, editor and sometimes an artist as well; the small squares have conversational motifs like space men (she loves science fiction) cats (she’s graciously cat-sat more times than any of us can count) pumpkins (for a birthday near Halloween and other good things. I was so excited to give it to her, I forgot to photograph it, but June hung it on a clothesline and did the honors.

I also decorated a dish towel for a “Fall’oween” exchange organized by the Fringe Element tatting group – more specifically, by Ruth M. This went to a tatter in British Columbia… a trip I wish I could have taken myself, particularly after I learned more about the person who received it – Ruth’s sister!

Lastly, I had to do a Halloween story – before the holiday, of course – and this was my favorite photo. Something about the inflated Dracula in dreadlocks singing to an attentive chorus of little pumpkins tickled me. For some reason, the paper didn’t use this one, so now I feel free to share it.

2009-10-20T19:26:00.000-07:00

This month turned out to be more action than talk! It took about two weeks of serious effort to stack the wood – just in time for when that white stuff suggested we needed a fire. How many hours went into this is hard to say. Stacking wood is, after all, both art and science. Under Bill’s mentorship, I’ve learned to search for the exact right piece for each place, which yields a far better result than having a fair amount of woodpile descend sooner or later on the unsuspecting gatherer. This happened to me a few times (about 30 years ago) but the impression was indelible. I did much, maybe even most of the stacking, but Bill did a lot as well. Of course, when I realized he was going to work on it, I was motivated to sneak out and start stacking before he could get there, so psychology helped get the wood stacked. Oh, and there’s mystery to wood-piles too – I’ll never completely understand why rocks seem to be part of the delivery. In case it's hard to estimate the size of this woodpile, we paced it out at about 30 feet long, six feet wide and five feet high!
The October 15 snowstorm was one of the earliest on record, but fortunately didn’t last long. I “enjoyed” it mostly from inside – for the past week I’ve had another early first – a nasty flu that sent me to bed with fevers that kind of came and went. Because I'm the wrong age-group for swine flu, it's got to be the other kind - and by now it's probably also fair to say I've got enough naturally-acquired immunities so I won't need a flu shot. Who'd have thought feeling green (around the gills) could be (ecologically) green as well?
At least, getting the woodpile done meant finally having a chance to tat. Lots of ideas want to come out in tatting. Here’s one of them, a Celtic-style snowflake with eight interwoven arms. It's slated for the next issue of Tatting Times. The next ideas are clamoring to be tatted - I can almost feel the thread I picked out vibrating!

2009-10-02T06:34:00.000-07:00

Inspiration... it's a wonderful thing. But for the immediate future, I've got an awful mess in the yard - it's this winter's fuel supply, four cords of the good stuff (plus about half a cord left from last year). This is the pile with about half a cord already removed and stacked, with Bill's truck in the background, for scale. It's absolutely enormous. It comes in a dump truck of the size used by road crews to dump gravel on the highway when they're doing a really major job and don't want to make a lot of little trips. So instead of creating lovely new designs - and realizing this term is relative anyway - guess what I'll be doing for a while with whatever free time I have? At the moment, about five teenage boys with a surplus of energy could do great work here but alas, I don't know any close by.
Just want to quote someone I met at work, an artist who explained her work - which did not seem to include wood-stacking in the deal. Her name is Candy Lucas and she described her art as "neo-representational eclectic surrealism seeped (NOT steeped, she insists, but seeped) in metaphysics with a dash of psychedelic spirituality." I haven't seen her work, but I liked the words.

2009-09-23T05:29:00.001-07:00

Earlier this month I was dyeing threads like mad to take to South Carolina for the Palmetto Tat Days. What a wonderful breath of fresh tatting air, neat people, Southern hospitality. As always, the absolute best is the people. It was better planned than ever before - and these folks routinely put on one of the most thoughtfully-planned and fun-planned events in the world! - and I even had a chance to take a class. I was a student in Sharren Morgan's angel class, which was fun for me, both because the pattern she designed is lovely, and also because she's such a great teacher. Visiting with friends is the most fun, and it was wonderful to catch up with people I treasure and hadn't seen in a while... And then it was back home to real life and work, including another huge writing project. And also, finishing designs for the Fringe Element Tat Days this coming weekend. This is another marvelous event, just across the northern border in Canada. (Those who haven't gone have been missing a real treat, including some really great tatters who don't travel south as much as we wish they would!) These are what I’ll be teaching –

Angels – the issue was getting the wings to form a sort of extended halo over the angel’s head so it wouldn’t be floppy – I used the balanced double stitch for the halo/wings. These angels have attitude as well as feet; they're made with Art-girlz charms, which get tatted onto the way one does with buttons. (If you've seen me lately, you know I've really, really gotten into using charms with tatting.)

And baubles – I love baubles and I’ve done a lot of different patterns for these. They’re fun, colorful - always good - come in a bunch of sizes and shape and open to quite a lot of variety in how you use them. However, the bead counts can be really, really tricky - a size 10 bead can be totally different here from a size 11. I enjoyed getting into quite a nice split-chain rhythm while covering the bangle.

This past week’s other huge project was cleaning off and refinishing the dining table. Anyone who’s been in my house knows how huge this is. I don’t think we’d seen the top of the table since before Bill’s heart surgery in April. I did the refinishing part with Bill’s help, and he tended to dream a bit while holding the sander, so the results are mixed, shall we say? We do have a very clean table, it can now be wiped with a damp cloth without raising blisters in the finish. (Not that the finish is anything to write home about. Spar urethane is good, but it majorly drips!) I celebrated by sewing a fall table runner to adorn the newly-cleaned table. This morning we debated. Should we put a bowl of fruit on the table? No…. we’re agreed, we’re still enjoying it relatively clean.
Next project will be stacking wood. That check on the table? That’s for four cords of the good stuff, supposed to be delivered this Friday. Probably two weeks of stacking work ahead thereafter.

2009-08-30T19:22:00.000-07:00

Thanks to a new member of our tatting group, I entered a local fair. I didn’t have high expectations, particularly because it took me until several days past the deadline to actually reach the fair registrar. Actually getting my application in required an early-Sunday-morning rendezvous at a gas station several miles from my house, and a hand-off of descriptions and payment worthy of secret agent’s meet-up. Then, that evening, I drove my stuff to the fair, hoping for the best.
I intended to actually get to the fair and find out how I did - and see the other entries - but I couldn’t, in part because I’m working on the article that ate my life. It’s about Underground Railroad stations in my area of Upstate NY. Many are rumored, but few are verified. Well, duh! It was somewhat dangerous to advertise, kind of like selling tickets for your own funeral. Wherever you went, north or south, there were folks on both sides of the issue, and it was sometimes difficult to predict which side they’d favor. Of course, after the Civil War (or the War of Northern Aggression, if you ‘re a Southerner) there were many, many claims of Underground RR stops. Dare we say this could, in times of depressed real estate values, up the ante on property value? On the other hand, connect the dots between known stations and a lot of the disputed ones fall neatly in the middle. The editor is cheering me on, saying this could be an award-winning two-part or three-part or four part series, or simply a one-part one (depending, I suppose on the rest of the news). It could even be a book, the trouble being that two books on the topic (at least) have already been written. I like winning awards as much as the next person, so it’s a useful carrot to dangle in front of me. But there’s actually a lot of wiggle room between “could be” and is.
Which brings me back to the Trumansburg Fair. I went there after work this evening. It was a slightly subdued day at the winery. I suppose many people are saving the Labor Day weekend as their main chance to howl. Quite a lot of people came through, but only one noisy group – some very young people accompanying a youthful about-to-be-married pair. It would have been counterproductive to jump onto the counter and shout, “Don’t do it! You’re too young to make this sort of decision!” And besides, maybe I would be wrong (though I don’t think so). They came early in the day and were clearly accomplished party-ers, so the walls seemed to ring with silence after they left – despite a steady flow of other customers.
So I got to the fair to pick up my things and found SEVEN blue ribbons. I was flabbergasted! Here they are. Clockwise, starting with the left side of the back row: the tatted mystery doily, handspun novelty yarn, a crocheted hat, a felted knitted bag with knitted and crocheted leaves, also felted and appliquéd; a hand sewn mini bear, handspun and hand-dyed mohair yarn, hand-dyed and hand-knitted socks, and all those ribbons!
It should be noted that if the finer points of entering had been elucidated sooner, other people would also have entered and won ribbons instead of me. But for the moment, I’m going to gloat just a little, until I’m bored enough with gloating to go to sleep.

2009-08-21T19:03:00.000-07:00

This is the weekend of the Great Big Family Wedding. Bill’s son Andrew is marrying my friend/ former tenant/former boss Sue on Saturday. For 25 years or so I’ve been saving the best afghan I ever designed and made – this is the occasion to gift it to people who will appreciate it, since Sue is one of the world’s great gardeners and Andrew also loves flowers.
In the meantime, I’m spinning yarn. Laurie (of the beautiful flax wheel) spun some yarn when she was here. By intention or because she was not used to my wheel, she did some rustic-looking thick and thin. I plied it with some thin handspun I spun for the occasion, loved the effect, and I’ve been spinning the rest of this batch up the same way, keeping Laurie’s separate so I can give it back to her later as something knitted.

This is what I’ve been spinning. I’ve got about another 6 ounces to go. The white dishpans should show how yellow this fleece is, even though it’s actually squeaky clean.
Got fair results for the stuff shown below: the bear and the doily won thirds, the mohair sweater I knit four times got a fourth – and my original tatted gloves won a blue (first)! This is the second year in a row I’ve won a blue for an original tatting pattern, so I’m happy… Bill liked the bear best and thought that should have won a blue. I’m hooked on bears, so of course I’ll keep making more of them!

State Fair entries

2009-08-13T19:30:00.001-07:00

With some wonderful cooperation from people at work – a boss who didn’t object to my knitting when there were no customers, and the customers who seemed to be taking a week off from relentless vacationing - I got my fair stuff finished in time to go to bed tonight... eventually.

Last weekend I was tatting almost non-stop (except for an afternoon spent spinning with our spinning group) and finished my tatted gloves – this is an original design. The tatted doily, 15” from point to point, is a pattern Doretha Albee published in 1995, in her newsletter “Knots and “Notes.”

The fair donates baby quilts to good causes, and this year’s sounded like an especially good one – “Friends of Karen” provides quilts and comfort for critically-ill children and their siblings, and I had a small brainstorm that felt original to me. I sewed flat tubes of cotton fabric and interwove them, then tied them together so they didn’t wiggle too much and added a border. I thought this might make a lightweight blankie for a feverish child or simply be a comfort in warm weather. It took more time than I expected, but came out well.

Have to admit I’ve been carrying my knitting with me everywhere in this past week, and finally finished the sweater yesterday. This is mohair I spun, dyed and knitted, the sweater pattern is as “original” as a top-down raglan could be, and I think it will be a good and useful thing to wear when the weather gets cold, with sleeves that won’t drag into other things I do, including cooking and needlework. I found the buttons - which won't show up unless you click on the image to enlarge it - at a JoAnn Fabric store that was shutting down, and really like the way they complement the sweater.

Lastly, the butterfly bear, which is also a sort of catalog of the various fiber things I do. This is also an original design, sportweight wool (from a sheep I knew) crocheted and felted, stuffed with wool, too. Then its clothing was knitted, the butterfly net crocheted and stiffened, and a small straw hat decorated with tatting. Can you see a tatted butterfly sewn onto its sweater, and another attached to the net?

Tomorrow I meet Ginny early in the morning outside the Amish market and we’ll be going up to deliver our things together. Ginny is putting in some amazing tatting she’s worked on for years… maybe she’ll get Best of Show and leave me a ribbon or two?

2009-08-05T05:15:00.001-07:00

There’s nothing like working on projects at the last minute – and I’m so backed up on things that need to be done… I love it! I really do – it’s marvelous to have so much I have to do that every moment is productive. Okay, maybe not so terrific as all that – it might be better to have just a little time off. That’s not happening anytime soon, though.

The mess of stuff in the photo represents some of my unfinished fair projects. As of now I’ve got less than 10 days to finish them all. Other things have gotten mightily in the way… like work. But in time off, I’ve finished one of them – three to go, one of these, as you might notice, a partially knitted sweater. Can I do this without killing my right hand – or putting myself back into the unsympathetic hands of the last hand-surgeon I saw? (What do you expect? She asked. You do handwork. And consider your age! I did, feeling wrinkles – metaphorically, at least - spring forth as I temporarily shriveled into someone 30 years older… She was perhaps 10 years younger than I, and I’ll bet I work out more regularly at the gym than she does. And yes, this does impact on the health of your hands, along with everything else.)

At any rate, work, the sort I do for other people, will ensure no unbroken stretches of tatting or knitting, so my hands are safe,
though these projects just might remain unfinished up until the last moment.

More pleasantly, the second distraction to juggle in with the mix – work being the first distraction from real life – has been a stream of visitors – all some of my favorite people. It began when our friend Charles was in town from Virginia to be part of his son’s wedding to one of the most beautiful young women I’ve ever seen.

Then my friend Laurie came with her fiancé, Danny – both lovely, easy-going individuals who know a lot of different things, which makes conversations engrossing. Last weekend, K and Sheila were here for a tatting workshop I arrange for the shop every summer. The day after the conference, we visited for a while in the shop and even had a sort of picnic lunch downstairs (K’s husband is in a wheelchair and this was easiest for him). Another set of friends is due sometime next week, when they’ve had a surfeit of a family wedding further upstate. (And somewhere in there I’ve got to get the fair stuff finished and delivered!)
One of the best things a visitor can bring to you is good conversation – not only news from elsewhere but also their own ideas to leaven what you yourself are thinking.

Laurie not only brought great conversation but also the gift of a spinning wheel, this flax wheel of possibly 19th century vintage. It needs a little fixing and TLC, but the wheel is true and it looks like it will spin sweetly. I’ll be taking it to for its first repairs in a few weeks (after the fair stuff goes in…)

2009-07-19T17:47:00.001-07:00

The studio elves have been working on a variety of projects. This object (slightly gaudy, okay, but I was trying out a bunch of projects here) is the first iteration of designs for a tatting-with-buttons workshop next summer. The next iteration should be more sedate – I think the button band, around the circumference needs no beads and smaller buttons while the top needs smaller thread and perhaps just a little glitz. I did like the Solomon spiral in the front with a button center – it’s a bit of a challenge, but it worked out well. The button spiral and the Celtic motif at the top are intended for the August Tatting Times, as is the chatelaine pattern in front - as a bookmark, instead of as a chatelaine. The needle-book in front is a re-envisioning of an amulet bag from one of my “Tatting With Buttons” books – this is a whole lot of fun to do – it’s block tatting on a larger scale.

Meanwhile, I thought I’d take advantage of summer sun – as if there were any – to embark on a massive wool-washing project. I bought four fleeces from the shepherds up the hill; mostly Corriedale crosses, with one Romney. I hadn’t remembered that back in February I’d found one grey fleece totally irresistible, but it is beautiful. I thought I’d dye it and try having the colors blended when it’s milled into roving. The plan is to wait until midwinter, when the mill puts processing on sale. This means washing now, then storing the fleece in mouse-proof containers in the barn, then shipping it out much later. This feels like taking plan-ahead to a fine art. So there it is, drying on the porch, and yes, ma’am, behind it are indeed three bags full of additional fleeces.

I took a little time out from tatting this morning to card what turned out to be about five ounces of dyed and grey fleece into rovings. The two on the left went through the carding machine four and five times instead of a mere three.

Then I spun yarn just to try it out. This fleece had a lot of vegetal material; I hope they’ll be able to do a better job getting it out with a commercial picking and carding process than I did. Picking out bits of stuff considerably slowed down the spinning, so I only got a little done, but enough to see that I really liked the result. Luckily whatever else it picks up by being photographed amid the debris of yesterday's cut grass will simply shake off - I'm not going for more gunk in the wool! I’d almost like a little gold or yellow in there, but I’m restraining myself.

2009-06-30T16:11:00.000-07:00

It happened! The sweater got finished, with about half an hour to spare. That time got used making a gluten-free Kentucky Derby torte. (And yes, it seems to have been enjoyed – I saw the youngest guest wearing a big smile and a lot of chocolate!) The yarn plus pattern had a LOT of give, so it turned out more like a shawl with sleeves and buttons. Bill took a photo of me with his (and my) favorite lily, right before I left to go to the garden party…
Which turned out to be indoors, because every time our hostess thought of setting the tables outside, the thunder started up again. It’s been a rather boisterous summer for thunderstorms – no sooner do I turn on the computer to look at email than it begins booming again and wisdom suggests shutting everything down and disconnecting the modem.
There is something truly, truly lovely about a garden party, and something especially lovely about this one. Simple sandwiches elegantly presented, well-dressed ladies, including Mary, sister of the hostess, who wore an extremely soignee dress she’d sewn herself from a vintage pattern (I’m guessing 1950s) though the fabric was a hot pink background with lime-green roses outlined in black. She carried it off perfectly, and claimed it was easy to sew. For her, of course.
Everyone wore hats; we sipped Earl Grey tea out of dainty china cups, and the flowers on each table were magnificent. It was definitely the party of the month, well worth finishing the sweater for.
Meanwhile, inspired by the summer 2009 Cloth Paper Scissors studio issue, I’m taking a hard look at my own studio and starting to go through things with a critical eye. It’s an interesting issue – not just the magazine, which is inspirational, but also the question of workspaces. Do they inspire? Are they easy to use and clean up? Do they mire us in the worst sort of creative bog? I think it’s time to take a closer look at this space and see what’s necessary – or not.

2009-06-28T12:32:00.000-07:00

Realizing yesterday I had only three days til the garden party, the knitting continues. The back and one front are now done, the second front is in progress. Now it’s just today and Monday… But I paused to try a gauge swatch for the mohair, deciding it will have to be some sort of cardigan; and to finish a crazy-quilt tatted pincushion, started a few weeks ago. This is the first prototype of a class I’m teaching more than a year from now – I had to finish it and photograph it to give the organizers an idea of what I meant. Not entirely sure it’s glitzy enough – I meant it to have a tatted charm, and I think some of the tatting on it might be too big. Of course there will be more crazy-tatted experiments unfolding eventually … but meanwhile, back to the knitting.

2009-06-24T05:17:00.001-07:00

Ask and ye shall receive… in this instance, an invitation to a garden party, even though I didn’t ask very loudly! Also, I don’t think the person who invited me read that entry – it just happened! So yesterday I spent several hours finishing the sweater back.

Now all I need is two fronts, a marathon of sewing things together and darning in the little ends, two sleeve bands, two front bands and the shawl collar. I’m afraid real work is going to get in the way of a speedy finish, but I’ve got a long book on tape to contribute to some slow-and-steady progress. The garden party is next Tuesday afternoon. I’ve been told to wear a vintage-looking dress and a flowered hat; white gloves will be provided. The sweater (if finished) would be perfect. I wonder whether I could cultivate an attitude of languid, to fit the mood of the occasion. I suspect in order to finish this sweater though, that could be counterproductive.

2009-06-19T15:31:00.000-07:00

Inspired – mildly – by the New York State Fair competition booklet, which really should have many more tatting categories to reflect our huge enthusiasm for tatting! – I decided to finish a mohair-spinning project started when? Last summer, maybe. The goal was to spin enough for a sweater. Some of the spun mohair was markedly differed from other skeins – the ones I spun while Bill was in the hospital look neglected next to the others. But here’s the batch dyed and waiting – for a previous sweater in the queue to get more finished. Said previous sweater is a short-sleeved, slightly fitted cardigan I plan to wear to a summer wedding (if the weather justifies the need for a sweater) otherwise for the sort of garden-party events I hope to host or get invited to that never seem to happen. Anyway, I can dream!
Finishing the spinning and dyeing is part of the way there. I suppose I could always enter the skein competition – but I hope to have a sweater to show instead. There’s 21 ounces of the good stuff – and about 4 ounces of the too-loosely-plied handspun I’ll have to find another use for.
Am I getting de-railed by other projects? I was quilting for a while, trying to use up some part of my stash, and sewing like mad but not apparently getting very far along. And for the past week I’ve been doing something a bit different, about which my patience or attention is close to the end. And of course, there’s also work – which for me is a potpourri of choices and subjects. After three articles on the subject – the third currently in the works – I’ll soon be halfway to being an expert on foreclosures in the Finger Lakes (NY) area. A few nights ago I gave a wine talk on “How to Taste Like a Highbrow” for a library "Women In Wine benefit." I was astonished at the amount of research and re-writing, not to mention rehearsal, I needed before the big event. And fortunately, I had a pleasant, kind audience who said they really liked the talk. Came home and Bill said it had gone magnificently. That’s one worry off my mind for the moment! And a very different talk – one about tatting – to prepare and give next month that should hopefully provoke a lot less anxiety.

But first, there was a very big hat project. In the past eight days, I’ve made 47 little toppers for Seneca Santa. Admittedly, the bulk of most of them were done on the knitting machine, but they had to also be hand-finished, sewn up and in many cases, matched with the gorgeous mittens made by my friend June, who prefers knitting mittens to hats and seems to produce them almost magically. Last Sunday we sorted yarn, hats and mittens. We gave each other a pink challenge (notice a pink theme going on here?) and split up a pound of pink yarn. I got six hats out of it, I know June will probably not get 6 pairs of mittens, but after matching them with some of her other mittens, there are four hats waiting. There’s a gold hat bottom right in the photo – June had one of those mittens knitted before we finished sorting and matching last Sunday. There’s also a pale yellow one matched with a pair of June’s yellow mittens, unseen at the bottom of the pile. I started crocheting multiple strands of vaguely yellow yarn into a hat, then June said the started project looked like a potholder, so I pulled it out and re-did it by knitting it on size 15 needles. Now it’s airy and stretchy.
(Seneca Santa is an area charity providing Christmas gifts and warm winter stuff to needy area children. Last year we saw 269 hat and mitten sets come through the studio; but one of our most prolific mitten-makers died this past May after a long illness, so we think we’re in danger of having a lot fewer sets to give this coming year.)

2009-05-25T17:48:00.000-07:00

And here’s the last of my catch-up entries, representing an amazing amount of time spent in late winter and early spring. The thread is size 30, hand-dyed, a small sampling of the dyeing I’ve been doing, though the colors are unfortunately washed-out by the flash – they’re much more intense than they appear. I dyed at least 200 skeins in various color variegations – mostly size 20 but also quite a bit of 30 and a dabbling in 10. I’ve done some tatting with these and I like the result – and when I took them with me to several tatting events people seemed happy with them.

They’re sitting on a layer of crocheted wash cloths / or dish cloths I’ve been making for the joint purpose of putting a dent into my cotton stash and trying to do some early preparation for Christmas. The dish-cloths are mindless crochet, and were perfect to take with me to Cleveland this winter – they were about all I had the wits to work on during Bill’s heart surgery and hospital stay. But because a few years ago I was gifted with a crocheted dish-cloth and found it quickly became a favorite to use in the kitchen, I thought these could be a gift appreciated by others, as well. I think it will be fun to put these together with a few other goodies – I’m not saying what in case my family is reading this!
Today was a work-day, but before I went in, I did some garden digging, made some soap (melt and pour, but it was fun anyway!) and planted two rows in the garden, doing some digging to prepare a bit more. This evening I planted the eggplant and peppers, transplanted some cosmos and marigolds, and hung up my shovel as having done enough for now.
At least outside. Inside, in the studio, I’m trying to usefully diminish another stash – by making quilt squares. Why is it that umpteen pieces of fabric may be put together with a lot of energy and effort – and the pile of fabric diminishes not at all?

2009-05-20T14:53:00.000-07:00

Catching up – it seems like I’m always trying to catch up a little – comes in many forms. Today, under the impetus of two inspirations, I finally finished the sweater I began in February. I seem to have over-estimated my own size; also, as the sweater grew, I shrank a little. I wanted it to be oversized anyway, in part because it’s cotton and linen and could hypothetically shrink in any direction (though cotton tends to get shorter and wider with washing). I could also hypothetically shrink in any direction, though actually this isn’t happening quite as energetically as I’d like it to! The two goads to completion are related – tonight is the first in our library’s “Women in Wine” series, a fund-raiser for the library’s future expansion, and one I wrote about for the local newspaper; among those present at the event should be Heidi W., who started the same pattern sweater using different yarn – and I promised to model my finished one for her benefit.

You didn't think I'd take a photo with myself in it, did you?
Of course, I’ve also started another sweater already, hopefully one I’ll finish faster, because I intend to wear it this summer. The next one is white, made of a cloud-soft silk/bamboo combination I’ve got in the shop (in fact, it’s called “silk bamboo” and the back is already 1 ½ inches high. This will be a lace pattern with short sleeves and slightly larger needles – size 5 instead of size 3. Occasionally I read knitting blogs whose writers seem to finish a sweater every week or two. How do they do it? Don’t they have lives? Mine has me writing or completing five articles this week. Three down, two to go, not bad for Wednesday (they’re due Friday).

Catching up

2009-04-21T03:46:00.000-07:00

There are reasons – good ones – for the long gap in postings. Here are – in short – the two biggies. One was Bill’s open-heart surgery in early March, which entailed months of getting ready beforehand, with important preparations like making reservations, doctors’ appointments, that earlier-mentioned dental work (apparently necessary before open heart surgery, and 30 years of accumulated neglect added up to a bit of it) collecting the things we needed, making arrangements for the cat… then we made the long trip to Cleveland for tests and surgery. This was a harrowing adventure, as heart surgery can only be, with a fortunately happy ending in the form of a potentially successful outcome – a heart remodeled by the best heart surgeons in the universe to last for a longer, healthier life. There are no photos of that experience – a good thing, too!

Back home, my complex career as care-giver, chauffeur, appointment-scheduler, prescription-courier, gourmet chef, wood-carrier and fire-stoker eclipsed my more usual pursuits except for one important commitment requiring almost-as-compelling attention: organizing the Tatting Seminars in Hector. There are multiple organizers and inspired contributors to the event, including conference attendees who simply pitch in and make things happen – but being the person who actually lives in Hector adds that boots-on-the-ground excitement, as well as making it more practical for me to be the person who acquires some of the bulkier supplies, coordinates a few extra details, acts as the message-center, etc. Add to that the challenge of being a conference teacher, vendor, dyer and purveyor of hand-painted threads, and life becomes complicated.
We all survived the weekend, even Primrose the scaredy-cat who surprised everyone, including herself, by allowing a houseguest to approach and actually touch her. Can’t show the threads here – they came out beautifully, but now they’re gone. More threads will follow… eventually. Today was a time to partially catch up on bills and with Bill; tonight is dedicated to catching up on sleep, and tomorrow, the skeining begins again.

The photo shows some of the conference attendees – quite a few were hiding in the back row behind other people, a few stepped out of the photo entirely to capture whomever was left on their own cameras. I’m there too – at the far left in the back row, wearing green (behind Jeannie Z in red).
Now the fun is over – at least, for the moment – and it’s back to work.

Happy hands, happy feet

2009-02-03T11:33:00.000-08:00

Christmas socks – finally finished! Waiting at Bill’s third dental appointment yesterday – this one with an oral surgeon – brought the socks to the home-stretch. Likewise, the two ounces of Shetland/Alpaca wool became fingerless mitts and a neck cosy. Also shown – three of five hats discovered unfinished in a brief clean-up binge.
Here’s the pattern for the neck cosy, knitted with a scant 21 grams of fine wool – because why waste even a small amount of fine handspun? I knitted it on size 9 needles to get the fully lacy effect.

Neck cosy: Cast on 20 stitches. ** Knit 2 rows (garter stitch). On third row, (K3, YO, K2 tog) THREE times, K5. Repeat from ** for length needed. If possible, try to end the scarf with a knit row. Unstretched, the knitting should be at least 20 inches long. I turned the bound-off edge before sewing to the cast-on edge, to make a sort of moebius twist. When finished, I had eight inches of spun yarn left over. I think this would be a quick, easy and slightly unusual winter present to make and give when one is needed. It stretches to fit over the head and sits nicely, like a cowl, around the neck.

And now the effort moves to two sweaters – one begun last year (and re-started yesterday); the other also begun last year, to keep a knitting student company – meaning we’d encourage each other. These could be long-running projects – they do NOT, either of them, use large needles - though at least one uses part of the stash. And of course, I’ve got a few littler projects to keep them company. More on those soon.
If the groundhog failed to see his shadow yesterday, does that mean spring is coming sooner?

Snowy Day

2009-01-29T05:57:00.001-08:00

Yesterday it snowed all day, episodes of squalls, spitting snow, ice pellets and straight up-and-down white-outs, laying down layers of hazard and keeping us strictly indoors. This morning we have not yet gone out to survey the driveway and paths, which were less than ideal previously – we have not seen bare ground in more than a month! So it was definitely time for a mental health day and an opportunity to finish a few more things and, why not? Start a few others.
The doll in the middle of the photo taken on the chair was begun in 1983 for a crochet book I wrote and sold – that never got printed. There were a few unfinished projects from that book that still needed to be photographed before the book went to press, and as we know, that didn’t happen. This project was tossed into boxes, found at intervals and tossed into different boxes. She finally got finished yesterday. Like me, she’s become more substantial than she was 26 years ago, particularly in the lower half (she was constructed top down, extemporaneously) and she seems to have also changed eras – well, so have we all. To her left, elbowing in front of her, is a diminutive grape basket, a present in kit form for my birthday several years ago, from a talented basket-maker who doubtless thought this would be an easy project.
To say I was all thumbs trying to weave it is understatement, in fact, I could have used a few more thumbs. The instructions had cheerful directions like “weave 20 rounds with fo” I had barely a clue as to what THAT meant. By the time I got to “lashing the rim,” it didn’t seem like further punishment would help much. I may have invented several basket techniques a veteran of this craft would surely cringe at. It is the intended decoration that gives this basket its name – it isn’t supposed to be large enough to hold even a small bunch of pinot noir. But I think it would be a dandy place to hold spare shuttles as I liberate them from tatting projects as they get finished.
Last – though this took up most of the day – are the two brown balls of Shetland/alpaca wool spun while I listened to news programs. This is only two ounces, but spun finely, there’s a LOT of hours in it – at least half an hour and closer to 45 minutes in the plying alone. Then it was wound and re-wound to divide it neatly into two balls of roughly equal size. Are those knitting needles peeking around behind one of the balls. Well… um… yes. I did start another project. And true, I have not yet finished the third pair of socks. But I worked on them during Bill’s dental appointment on Monday, and at writer’s group Monday night, and Bill’s got another dental appointment – a long one – next Monday, so the end is in sight.

The quilt is for sweet Tanya, one of the youngest tatters in our group. She’s received it, so I can show it off now. It was started three years ago, one of those projects where you know the general intention of it, but don’t know quite why you began. When Tanya recently shared some good news, I knew it was for her, and finishing it became a pleasure. I’m not a great quilter, but every now and then something comes out really well, and this was fortunately one of those times.

January's Hat Harvest

2009-01-23T17:46:00.000-08:00

The photo is a partial "list" of completed projects from the first part of January. There's a common thread - most use more than one yarn held together. The fuzzy yarns seem to be improved when they're joined to other, heavier, more substantial yarns - even other fuzzy ones; the little socks are a combination of a light knitting worsted and an acrylic sock yarn I bought on a whim at the dollar store. Using the pinky stuff with brown meant it would work for a boy.
I finished a few other things before and since taking the photo - not seen are a pair of socks destined to be mailed to a friend, another pair of fingerless mitts that hid out, camera-shy, while I planned to take the photo; another scarf, a lot of tatting, experiments and finished things that wound up in Tatting Times, a bit of clean-up here and there.
Many needlework blogs end up sounding self-congratulatory - "Look what I did! Look at me!" - but these few finished things are such a drop-in-the-bucket of the started, currently still-incomplete projects. I finally got the courage to count how many sock projects remain unfinished - I believe the number is currently four pairs, because two are now finished. (And that's just socks - I'm not yet ready to mention the multitude of tatting, crochet and other knitting projects "in progress" - but often not making any progress at all!) The past few days I've worked on knitting the pair of socks I began on Christmas - it's very fine yarn and still very, very far from finished, though I've been carrying them around with me. Knitted while I listened to the inauguration, even knitted at the restaurant when we went out to eat. And I've just barely turned the heel on the first sock. Some things move slowly.
These little socks were fun - I used size 5 needles, 28 stitches; it was more a matter of applying myself to the project of making sure they got done than taking time for them. And last Friday I had the satisfaction of seeing them on the little feet they were made for. You're looking at youngest grand Caleb, chocolate cake in one hand, determination to figure out my Louet hatbox spinning wheel uppermost in his mind. He alternately declared "Gramma, I WUV you!" and took, "I love you, Caleb!" as the starting gun for going back to have another try at stomping the wheel into submission. For the moment, the wheel won.

Keeping to the resolve... so far

2009-01-04T16:47:00.000-08:00

Four finished projects are shown here - a fifth remains invisible. The two red scarves were knitted to use up yarns I discovered in my stash that needed using. More red projects are planned, but I needed a break so there's one on my needles now in shades of turquoise. Today my "twin" Wendy came for lunch, but I first dragged her to the stash and demanded she pick three yarns so I could knit her Christmas present. The result was the green scarf (there are also threads of purple and black in that) which looks smashing with her newly auburn hair. She left wearing it, layered with the black scarf she'd worn in. To the right, on the pinker of the red scarves is a Beaded Romanian Point Lace project designed by Canadian bead designer Brenda Franklin. Brenda taught this class at the Fringe Elements Fall tatting days last September, which always has a non-tatting class or two. Her instructions were superb, and I'd wanted to learn this form of lace, so I took her class when it coincided with a free period, and got the project partly finished. Brought it back and dropped it on my desk, where it sat tantalising me through the fall. I don't have a very large desk, so it seemed a good idea to begin the New Year by taking at least a few things off it. I finished this New Year's Day. It's very beaded and fairly heavy. I'm afraid if I hung it up as the ornament it's meant to be, the weight might pull it out of shape. For right now it will be packed away with the instructions for a few others of her designs, to be (maybe) tried at a later date. Maybe. Not shown in the photo is the disastrous felted bag project. I've made quite a few felted totes this year - at least eight others, but this one behaved like no other felted bag. It started out wide and long and felted narrower (as expected) but also longer than its pre-felted state. This one looks rather like a wooly pillowcase folded in half lengthwise. Only the handles came out as planned. I'm now considering how to finish it - turn it into TWO bags, perhaps? Line it and quietly give it away>

On the cusp of a new year - resolutions

2008-12-31T13:40:00.000-08:00

Most years I refrain from making resolutions - there are so many I make privately I fail to keep. Losing weight: I promise myself each year I can do it. I can - but don't. This year I'm going public with a new resolution - to reduce my stashes of papers, fabric and yarn. Like chocolate, I've rarely met a fabric or yarn I don't like. So much potential in bolt and skein... and now, so many stashes! But I'm determined - I know I can do it! And I will. I will. I've started already... and more on that later. Today I looked through two large tubs of stashed yarn to put a good-sized box together for someone I don't know, though I've got much sympathy for her. She's a fugitive from an abusive husband, and her social worker, a friend of mine, asked for knitting yarn and needles she can use to knit for her children. I have to admit, I won't miss the yarn, I have so much - and it's a pleasure to give her some good stuff too. There's enough of each kind for her to make some warm things for her children - including sweaters - and something nice for herself as well. Feels good to have one box less to put away; and of course, while doing this I also found enough raw materials for several days of stash-busting projects.

Why I've been quiet...

2008-03-28T15:37:00.001-07:00

It's been a little busy around here. First, there's the Hector tatting conference - about 65 happy tatters, a bunch of vendors, stellar teachers and great classes - plus a lot of stuff to organize. Fortunately, I'm not in it alone - there are at least six other people who are doing a LOT to work on this event, and the many hands make it a wonderful, warm patchwork quilt of an event. But there are always details large and small, from dietary concerns to last minute emergencies and changes, and this week's crop of them has sent me to hit the left-ovr jelly-beans harder than intended!

By coincidence that turned out to be partly fortunate, I had fewer writing assignments than usual in the past six weeks or so, which has given me a lot of time to tend to the conference and work in a few creative directions. The result has been two new publications of patterns, "Here Be Dragons," a collection of beaded dragon patterns, and "Basketats" a collection of tatted baskets. Both use techniques I think of as innovative, though received wisdom says there's nothing really new under the sun. Or is there? The dragons use a "thread management technique" to keep the beads mostly on the inside and chains on the outside. I haven't seen this technique before, but it doesn't mean this is unique.

Then, for the baskets, I went off in a number of different directions. That's the good thing about a collection of patterns - it is possible to jump on your creative horse and ride off in several different directions at once. I tried using thick hemp cording to make a relatively large basket - a great effect, I thought; and thinner hemp cord also had such great advantages and was such fun to tat with, I ordered a whole bunch of it for the sho. Hemp and linen are personal fiber favorites, but it's not often practical to tat with them. In this case it was! Some of the baskets needed stiffening, others didn't. Using pearl tatting with a heavier core thread added body to a few of the baskets; but the Celtic-style baskets did want stiffening to stand up. Then there's one that takes its shape from very long bugle beads.

All in all, it was a wonderful experience to get my ideas realized as concrete and useful things, ones I hope are also beautiful. Both the dragons and the baskets are ideas I've been sketching, tatting parts of and playing with for a very long time. All this and the Hector Tatting Seminars coming together in a relatively short time. It's a great way to finish the winter, feel productive and greet the warm weather that still stubbornly refuses to show the slightest trace of itself... yet. Sure, six weeks from now we'll have hot days to make us eat our words, but this does seem to be the winter that doesn't want to quit!

2008-02-12T17:08:00.000-08:00

Socks! These are a selection of models made for - and at - the "Sock Salad" workshop at the studio February 2. Two fabulous participants, great knitters who seemed to like each other as well as the class - and my cooking. There was a lot of preparation to create the workshop, but everyone, including me, learned a lot from it. Still not sure how I feel about toe-up socks, though starting them is literally neat. I don't like the heels though, they're a bit pointy for my taste, and too closely resemble commercially knit socks. Behind the socks is some just-finished handspun. Back in January, while I was a vendor at our area "Rock Day," repeating to myself, "Remember, you're a vendor, here to sell things, not to buy them," this affirmation was drowned out by a 4-ounce bump of "Blueberry Pie" merino-tencel. It was the kind of soft that makes you want to pet it, and of course, it followed me home. It wanted to be finely spun, a job for which the Majacraft Little Gem volunteered, and with one thing and another, the two half-filled bobbins seemed to have a lot of yardage on them - they took 2 hours to ply! At the moment, the yarn seems to want to be a scarf, but there's another one to do first. To the upper left, the blue scarf (Naturally Nazareth "Winter," a knitting worsted weight) was my first foray into knitting modular triangles. Enormous fun, so the next one, the rosy one in the center, was made on size three needles using my own hand-dyed tussah silk. I like the feel of this fiber, it's soft and tough at the same time; no silkworms died, also no child labor was invovled. And it takes the dye beautifully. I used some 6" needles - ones cut down by a friend who removed the end-caps from commercial needles, then hack-sawed off about 8" of upper needle before cleverly replacing the ends. Voila! Small and easy-to-pack needles. The dark Mardi-Gras colored scarf-in-progress is the final iteration, one I'll teach at a workshop in April. Instead of triangles, the modular pieces are sort of braided, and lace is also involved. I'm almost ready to write the pattern for this one. Lastly, there's the project that took much of late January and early February, a hand-made handkerchief for an on-line exchange. The tie-dyed cotton was chosen for my exchange partner, Bina, who loves purple. Of course she needed to also have a hanky-case (crocheted and felted wool). The edging is my original "Stand Up and Cheer" edge, a single shuttle edging I've had in Tatting Times and more recently put in "Tatting Elegant Edgings." Here's the pattern:
Ring A: 6-6-4-2-2-4
Ring B: 4±4-4
Leaving enough of a thread-space to prevent distortion, join to first p on Ring A.
Ring C: 4+ (to last p, Ring B) 2-2-2-2-2-2-4
Join to second p on Ring A
Repeat from beginning for length needed.

Corner:
Tat last Ring A before corner: R: 6-6-4-6
Tat Rings B and C.
Then tat center corner R: 4+ (to last p, last
Ring C) 4-2-2-2-2-4-4
Tat second corner Ring A: 6-6-6+ (to corresponding
P of previous corner Ring A) 4
Tat Ring C, joining to center corner R
Resume tatting the usual Rings A, B and C

January 30, 2008

2008-01-30T05:32:00.000-08:00

If loading the picture worked, here's a partial view of some of the projects I've worked on completing this month - it's been a time of trying to get something done every day - or at least as often as possible. So hopefully you're seeing a pair of completed brown hand-knitted socks for almost-grandson Kyle - he got them and immediately put them on and pronounced them "Cool!" - the hoped-for response from someone with large feet. Lime-green washcloths were ornamented with tatting to send to my daughter, so she's got a taste of home in Panama. As a prolific tatter and designer, I always have lots of snippets of lace around, things that got started and abandoned thanks to a mistake, or things that were simply experiments. I like these on linens. I've found that towels, pillowcases and kitchen linens with tatting on them are just much more fun to use. and then there's that blue sock - it's an experiment in toe-up knitting for a workshop I'm giving this Saturday.

More later...

December 27, 2007

2007-12-27T12:06:00.000-08:00

One new year's resolution completed before writing it down and resolving to start a blog had gotten onto the to-do list. Maybe because the projects-in-progress are more compelling? Currently there are four active ones - this means four in current rotation, mind you - there are many more Un-Finished Objects (UFOs) floating around, of course, and another sort of got started while I was on hold on the phone. The four - okay, five - are a dragon being designed in tatting, two scarves in modular knitting (one is tussah silk dyed the day before Christmas and dried in record time near the woodstove) the last a pair of socks as a Christmas present for Kyle (almost-grandson and a tall boy with correspondingly long feet). Photos will be posted when I figure out how to.