Tatting trip of a lifetime.

Well I finally did it!
I booked a trip to the USA to attend the Palmetto Tat Days in Toccoa, Georgia in September! A birthday present to myself.

Fueled by encouragement from Jane Eborall and Lisa Greenlee-Adams and wanting to catch up again with Ginny Weathers in Port Byron, I took the plunge a couple of weeks ago and booked my tickets, registered and started planning for real instead of daydreaming!

So watch out USA, the Aussie addict is heading your way. Lucky I have a large suitcase!!

On a roll....

I have a bit of a 'thing' happening at the moment. I am so indecisive about what to tat and I waste so much time deciding on patterns and colors.

So I decided to tat everything from one book.

It started out with my love of Robin Perfetti's patterns so I dragged out her Tatted Coaster eBook and off I went.

I liked the green one so much I did it again for my friend Carly.

Tatting Lace With Your Life

The Korean book 'Tatting Lace With Your Life' arrived today.

A beautifully put together book with a lot of inspirational patterns that just jump from the page and scream 'tat me now'.

Q codes next to technique descriptions allow you to scan the code with your phone to go to video tutorials on how to work those techniques.

Probably the only thing letting it down just a little bit is that the diagrams are quite hard to see. They are done with very fine lines and small numbers. Especially the ones with fine green lines and fine red print.

Other than that it is a nice one for my collection.

Oh...the temptation!!!

A great bit of mail today. Just a little worried about opening it though :)

This could be a wonderful thing.....or lead me back into addiction..
Just when I thought I probably had enough in my collection!

Either way Thanks heaps Heidi Sundberg-Nakayama!  It arrived so quickly!

Tardy tardy tardy....

Oh my. 7th December 2017 was my last post to this page. Definitely need to pull my finger out and catch up.

2016-17 was a crazy time for me with very little time to tat. Our dairy farmers here in Victoria were hit by a milk price crisis and needed some support so I spent most of my time as a volunteer with Northern Victoria Farmer Relief Drive, running out to farms and delivering hampers and trying to help people get things back on track. I loved working with farming families, just wish it had been under better circumstances.

So now I am back into the tatting pretty full on until the heat hits in our southern summer, so I thought it was time to catch up.

I will be adding posts in chronological order things were tatted or received in so I can keep this as my main diary of what happens when so please bear with the out of order posts.

Today Ben and I are starting to photograph my shuttle collection so i hope to be adding pics of that to the shuttle page and add as much information as possible to the descriptions as I discover more about them.

Glad to be back and I hope I can show some interesting and fun stuff over the coming months.

Jen

Distraction of the best kind.....

So today I sat at my new desk and was playing with an oldish design with the view to putting it up for some test tatters to try.

I needed my trusty hook and, as usual, it was nowhere handy.

Also on my desk was a hook fob I had made some years ago out of a necklace I had bought in Denmark. I rummaged around and found a few other bits and bobs and got totally distracted from my original intentions for the afternoon!

So.....I grabbed an old necklace I had been keeping for the beads and pulled it apart to make a fob for my smaller size hook.

In the process I thought.....a chatelaine would look good in this design.....hmmmm.

Thus, an original chatelaine was born.
Meet 'Distraction'.

Then I finally made the fob I had originally intended years ago with one of my favourite old earrings!

By the time I finished it was WAY too late to tat. But in all a very productive day!

Robin Perfetti doily addiction.....

Over the last few months I have had a bit of a pattern purchase splurge and bought several patterns from Robin Perfetti's Etsy shop -  

      tattingbythebay 
https://www.etsy.com/au/shop/tattingbythebay

I bought the Magic Square, Bouquet Doily, and Classic Heart pattern to add to her Snowflake Pattern Pack and Tatted Coasters Pack I bought way back in 2016. (yes they are still sitting there waiting......)

So I thought I had better get out there any do some of them.

Firstly I have to say - if you haven't tried one of Robin's patterns please treat yourself to one or more. Even if you check out her free ones first, that she so generously makes available, on her blog Tatting By the Bay http://tattingbythebay.blogspot.com/

You will be rewarded with some of the nicest and most logically set out patterns you will ever see and they all tat up beautifully!

So..... firstly I did the Classic Heart (gave it away and the only photo I have is dodgy...oops.) But seriously it is a gorgeous pattern and one I will do over again for sure! (and replace the dodgy pic)

Then I saw a doily mat done by Ginny Weathers and I was intrigued so I went back to Robin's blog and did the Mary Konior Patchwork as a Magic Square that was in her free pattern section.

After that it was time to do the Bouquet Doily.   WOW... what a lovely pattern to tat! I chose to make it in blue size 20 HDT from AlenAlea Design and contrast it with white. Love it!

I have seen this doily done in various colors and it always comes up nicely.  Straight off the shuttles and it was sitting pretty much perfectly!

So thank you Robin Perfetti. I adore your patterns and you have re-engaged my enthusiasm for tatting.

Off to discover more wonders from this designer!