=D

Merry Christmas Eve everybody!!!!!!!

=O

Today, my friends, marks the

ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY

Of lace-making adventures. 

Yaaaaaaaay!!!!! 

^_^

Gems and Mint =D

So long story short, there was a little issue with my internet, but now I'm back!

Remember Gemmy Bear?
Well... apparently the pricking was too small, and that's like.... kind of important--so I had to redo it.
It wasn't too bad, I used the technique seen here, which actually worked--so yay! =D

 Gemmy, before and after --> not tooo big of a difference. 

(forgive the dark picture, I'm trying to figure out how to get my camera to cooperate)

Allllllso, the woman from my church who asked for Anna's Doily wants it soon, but since I have to go to the airport today to pick up a friend, I can't deliver it until next Sunday. Anywho, my point is that I was scrambling to finish the pattern before I had to give away the doily--and I sort of did, but not before I tatted the first round again, thinking it might go faster... 

It didn't. 

Buuuuut, I did have a base for a new doily!

Meet Minty Fresh, aka, Minty: 

=D I like the way it came out. It's fun to just randomly tat stuff and get a cool design out of it =D 

NanaRama Round 4!... sorta

So I haven't posted in a few days mostly because I haven't been tatting much thanks to a small outbreak of dishydrotic eczema =( (yipee for zinc oxide!!!) but now it's mostly better and I finished a round on NanaRama!

I have to redo it though =/ since I messed up the stitch count and kept editing it as I went through the round.

^_^

Gemmy Bear?

Does that name sound alright? Because of the "jewel" shaped parts of the pattern, I kept thinking of jewelry for some reason, but the word "jewel" really annoys me, so I went for "Gem" instead. 

But Gem what? 

I played around with some names, and eventually got to "Gemmy", rhymes with "Gummy" --> hence "Gemmy Bear" 

No idea if that makes sense... but yeah =)

(please forgive the dark picture, the camera on my phone still refuses to take decent pictures in: artificial light, direct sunlight, anything that annoys it)

I drew this bad boy up while I was watching Grey's Anatomy. It was supposed to be a practice for a gimp, but I figured it didn't make a difference if there was more stuff in there besides the gimp so I just added a few things to make it more fun =)
Now I just hope I don't screw it up!
^_^

Wiggles done!

Oh yes indeedy, Mr. Wiggleford is 

FINISHED:

I'm happy to announce that my technique has improved, but it still needs some work for sure =D

 But, if you ask me, I don't think I did half bad. 

Now you can finally see what I was talking about when I said that it was actually a dark purple. I had to find some bright, indirect sunlight for the poor little camera on my phone to be able to catch the color just right. 

^_^

Bubbly bubbles =)

Here's a quick update on Bubbles. Bubbles is stable after his traumatic encounter with Pugsley, aaaannnd, he's got a new round: 

It's a transitional round, and I'm still thinking about what I can stick on the next round... Oh what to do... =D 

^_^

Give a howdy do to...

WIGGLES

To all of you bobbin lacers out there, no I have not forgotten about Wiggles =)
 I've just been avoiding Wiggles =P 

Buuuut, last night I sucked it up and got to it.

The thing is that trying to do tape lace on a bolster pillow is hard...and in retrospect, the tape lace I've seen on a bolster is usually made with a really big fat ash bolster that's practically flat anyways... soooo yeah --> I'm learning =P

Anywho, now I'm really excited about finishing Wiggles, but I think when I'm done I'm gonna go back to grids... I keep forgetting that I still haven't learned a lot hahaha =) 

^_^

Hahaha =)

So after what seems like a million years, I've finished retatting what I have so far of Evelyn's Doily.

Funny thing, though, is that it turned out a little bit bigger than the original --> it probably has to do something with me figuring out that you're not supposed to scrunch your chains back until they look like crumpled up pieces of paper... =)

^_^

Bum bum ba daaa!!!!

As you may have heard me mention before... the arts and crafts market of Mexico isn't exactly what you'd call varied. I was stunned when I found the tatting shuttles, and I was freaking out when I realized that there was indeed thread sold here that could be used for tatting.

Funny thing is that there's only one company that handles crochet/tatting cotton --> Omega. My problem is that in the arts & crafts store I frequent, they don't get many colors, and when I checked the website, I found out that Omega has maybe about thirty colors for tatting thread--not bad, but it pales in comparison to other suppliers.

Enter boredom, and YouTube. I realized that a few of you tatters out there also dye thread, and I got to thinking, "hey, maybe I can do it, too" Soooo thanks to Rebecca at Chemknits  I have managed a little dyeing of my own. First, I'd like to note that I was worried I wasn't going to find any thread/fabric dye because apparently you can't dye cotton thread with food coloring...

But anywho, check it oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooout:

After a few hours of drying on my windowsill, I present to you... a really cool looking blue thread that's totally freaking aweseome!:

And since I had a little extra thread, I did a second batch with a lighter color!

Here's the two of them together =D Neat, huh? 

^_^

Okay

Okay, so it's not that I don't have anything to post... it's that I haven't exactly gotten around to it...
First, let me start with some updates:

Saturday, it's raining, and we leave the Puggers inside the house instead of on the balcony with his dog house like we normally do when we leave the house. We come back a few hours later to find...

...absolute mayhem. 

My cuddly little angel had pooped twice, peed all over the place and torn into the garbage in the kitchen and dragged everything out into the living room leaving a trail of wreckage --> he'd knocked over my bobbin lace pillow (with wiggles still en progreso) and had discovered my thread box. Thank God we don't have carpet.

Only Bubbles was hurt, but he'll make it. The rest (thank you God) had survived unscathed with only a few specks of dust from lying on the floor. I didn't get any pictures because:
   a) I was in shock, and
   b) everything was so icky that we just had to clean it up right away.

Also, he found my black thread, and chewed on it until it was all slimy and tangled. I had to wash it and hang it out to dry.

By the way --> it's a real biscuit trying to untangle black thread. My progress thus far:

And what was Pita doing, you say? While this havoc ran wild under our roof? The whole thing has her paw prints all over it, but unlike Puggers who was head deep in a garbage groping session when we showed up, Pita was curled up calmly on Pugsley's pillow taking a nap.

Anywho, on to more things tatting.

If you recall, I mentioned something a while ago about re-tatting  Evelyn's doily with a tweaked stitch count.

Behold! :

I messed with the two rings at the center of the round, and also with the two big curves in each fleur-de-lis type part.

I'm also thinking about some new ideas for NanaRama aaaannnd some other stuff that I'll post about soon =)

Tada!!!!

I'm done typing up the pattern and have finished the charts for the first 3 rounds of Anna's Doily!!!

Here's the thing, I need someone to test tat it for me. Any takers?

Yay!

For the past few weeks I've been dreading working on the charts for Anna's doily because it was a pain in the ash to draw it up, especially since I was doing it freehand with Inkscape.

Muahahahaha --> that is no longer the case! I'm still using Inkscape, buuuuut I figured out how to work over the original image, so it's basically tracing =D =D =D

I'm happy =D I might have tatting patterns up soon =D

^_^

Hmm...

By the way... I'm thinking of tatting along with Renulek. I blew a gasket when I found this blog, and after skimming through a bunch of posts, I was like.... whoa.

Recent stuff and stuff

I realized the other day that I had a few scraps, okay a lot, and most of them were too small to really do anything by themselves--and I got to thinking... and here's what I thought up:

I'm calling it "Scrappy". What do you guys think? 

Remember those snowflakes I was talking about? I made this one with size 10 Omega thread, so it's kind of chunky. I'm not used to working with size 10, so it was interesting for me to try and get used to the more elastic quality that this thread had. Is it normal for thicker thread to be sort of elastic? 

Anywho, I don't have much time until Christmas, and Chemistry didn't turn out to be as work-light as I thought it would be... but then again, it's better than Geometry =D 

Christmas Preps and such

So, I've been thinking that today's what? November 8th? And Christmas is a little under two months away... I might need to hop to it on the snowflakes, since I have family coming down...

Round 6 Done!

^_^

Bubbles lives!

To be honest, I'd kinda forgotten about Bubbles, until a few days ago.

But here's how it's going:

Opinions, tips, anyone?

^_^

more progress

So, I FINALLY FINISHED MY GEOMETRY CLASS!!!! I don't even want to count how many months it took me to finish that thing, but it was somewhere around four or five, when it normally takes me about a month to finish a class -exhausted wheeze-

So yeah, I'm happy =D

Anywho, I've been working on my various projects, and here's how I'm doing so far:

So, before I was a tad worried about how that sixth round would turn out, but I'm liking the effect so far. I'm almost done with this round, but I'm still rummaging around my head for some new ideas for the next round =D =D

What do you think about Wiggles? And before I forget, I realized that you might not be able to tell what color I'm using. For the record, it's actually a really dark purple that I absolutely love =D


^_^

Hmmm.....

So, I started working on the 6th round of Anna's Doily, and I'm still not sure about it, but I'm giving it a shot, thinking the overall effect might change when it's done:

And I finished the third round of NanaRama!! I really like the way it looks, a little less "out there" than Anna's Doily.

^_^

whaaaaaaaaaaat?

I just realized that I finished the latest round of Evelyn's Doily like a week ago and forgot to post the picture! *gasp*

I'm thinking of redoing it, and changing some details here and there to make it more stable and possibly more uniform





That out of the way, say hello to a crappy picture of round 2 of NanaRama (plus a little bit of a failed 3rd round since I forgot to take a picture before I started it =S)

Aaaaand and update on Wiggles 0.o

^_^

I've been thinking...

Remember that piece of green needle lace I was working on a few months ago? And remember how I said I'd have to put needle lace on the back burner because of my eyes?

So I started thinking about it the other day. See, I'm generally the kind of person that thinks of unfinished projects as scabs staring up at me waiting to be picked, an itch I can't scratch, or a box that  says "DO NOT OPEN".

I know that everyone has their physical limitations, but I got to thinking that it wouldn't be so terribly bad if I only did like three rows of stitches a day (which, since I'm still working on the first part of the border around the center is like... 24 stitches max).

Well, I tried it today, and maybe three rows is pushing it. My eyes started aching right away =(. I might try two tomorrow.

-_-

Meet Wiggles

Soooo, after I finished the practice circle, I decided that I might as well try out the few tape lace techniques I'd learned on Youtube. Also, THANK YOU BOLILLOTECA for your video!!!! It's in Spanish, but living in Mexico tends to help in that aspect... anywho, all of the tape lace videos I'd previously seen had been in Italian, but (thank you God!) the lady who made them added text to her videos instead of narrating to explain what she was doing!!! I love Google Translate =D

I have the feeling that I've gone through that story before... but yeah...

So meet Wiggles:

Here, you see Wiggles on paper, right after I'd drawn her up and gotten a little light headed from holding my breath against that nasty sharpie smell.

*Note: Does anyone know of any low-no odor permanent markers?


Oh well.

Here's Wiggles already pinned to Camile.


I have hope for Wiggles. Hopefully all goes well, but I have had a wee bit of trouble trying to figure out how many pairs to use. The first time around I didn't hang enough, but I hadn't gone too far so I just went back and added some. Though now I think I'm using too many =S

Oh well. I'll figure it out eventually.

^_^

sometimes i forget

I've been talking a lot about tatting recently, but I have been working on bobbin lace and it may have occasionally slipped my mind to post anything about it...

Recently, I've decided to try to move away from grid-based lace and try to tackle part laces. Despite not having any books on any specific type of part lace, I have managed to scrape together a few techniques thanks to Lety and of course, Google Translate.

I just finished (like an hour before I typed this up) a practice which turned out pretty good (in my opinion) for a first time:

Progress!! ^_^

Alllsoooo, meet:

Bubbles

and

NanaRama

They're both in their first round (and I'm not sure what comes next if I'm being honest =S )


P.S.--> These pictures were all taken with my phone, so bear with me on the crappy quality ;-)

Corner #4!

All the corners are done! Now let's just see if I can figure something out for the 6th round...

What do you guys think of this one? I'm a little more than halfway through the 3rd round, but I'm really liking the arches. 

Corner #3!

***

Corner #2!!!!

i think it's genetic

So the other day, I was just thinking about what my mom was telling me about my grandma (she died a few years before I was born), and how she apparently did everything from whitework, to knitting, to crochet, to needle lace and apparently to tatting.

Is it, perhaps... genetic? I started out doing this stuff because my mom mentioned once that her mom used to do something that sounded like either carickmacross or whitework... and it just sort of spiralled out of control.

Hmmm...

Anywho, while I'm here I might as well give you guys an update =D

slow, but steady

Update on Anna's Doily 2.0 and Evelyn's Doily 2.0!!!!

I've been tatting away (when I should've probably been doing some homework.....shh) and trying to figure out a corner that I'm trying to make for it, as I've decided that I want to be all fancy and stick separate motifs on the 4th round to make said corner:

What do you think?:

I tried to add more to the corner, but the various bits and scraps in my trash can will give testament to my mild impatience that day...

Also, I've been working on this thing for so long that I think I'm starting to dread that color.

Alllsoooo I've been retatting Evelyn's Doily, since I noticed that in flattening the previous one, the 2nd round was pulled out of shape (remember a certain irritating bowling...?) and consequently pulled the 1st round out of shape as well =(




So I scrapped the little piece of biscuit and decided for a simpler 2nd round (seen above)  which has actually allowed me to make a totally kick ash awesome 3rd round (that is if it doesn't bowl).  Hopefully, I'll have the third round and Geometry finished within two weeks.

^_^

Anna's Doily 2.0

Soooo, I've finished the 4th round of Anna's Doily, but because of the way it turned out I'm kinda stumped on how I'd add a new round for now...so I'm just gonna repeat the pattern and attach each square when such a time arises, or maybe make a larger corner... not sure yet, but will post pictures once I figure it out!

Voila!

 I dare say I like it =D  I edited the parts to the sides of the diagonal corners, and above the vertical and horizontal corners and the stitch count also underwent a little fiddling here. I think overall it looks cleaner, and since the corners are more pronounced it has a cool star/diamond thing going on =D

Here you see version 1 and version 2 side by side, and if you look closely you can see some of the smaller differences.

Busy Busy Days

Boy oh boy, it's been a hectic few days. Last week I was running around town doing errands for my parents, and I didn't sleep Friday night so I could wake them up in time for my dad to leave for the airport at 3:30 in the morning, and Saturday and Sunday it was essentially just regrouping for me and my mom--you know, holding down the fort n' all.

Anywho, I've started and finished a few projects:

1. still trying to make more "real" bobbins:

   Don't they look smart? I whittled the tips down to points and glued beads on them. It was what kept me up while my dad went to the ER (long story better suited to another blog).

Here you see them in action:

I was pretty proud of myself--but then pride always comes before the fall right?


There is now one left. The friggidy frackin' beads kept falling off. Grrr.

C'est la vie...

Also, I've been tatting away. I'm retatting Anna's Doily and here's a general summary of my progress:




So, I'm using Omega cotton crochet thread, size 30. This is the second version of this doily, which I'm also using to refine the pattern.

I will soon post before and after shots so you guys can see the differences =D

Also, I've been working on Evelyn's doily, and started work on a new doily (mat?) which, up to this point, decided to dub: the Flow Doily.


I had some rather... irritating problems with the first round of the Flow Doily. I wonder if you can see what it was...






I tried to figure out what went wrong, but I didn't pin it down until after I started and finished version 2.0 of the first round. What I did, was essentially make it in two parts that I joined together at the center.



And I must say that I rather liked the effect.

 Anywho, that's as far as I've gotten on Flow.

The thing that Flow did for me though, was made me remember something that I saw on YouTube, about starting from a chain instead of a ring. I then realized that it was the way I had started the previous time (from a ring, with the chain coming out from the center) that had left no room for the last chain of the round to join.

So, then comes the redo of the first round of Evelyn's doily. I wanted to retat it, testing and such, and I did--and I will soon post pictures of how it turned out =D

^_^

P.S. My dad took the camera with him to the states, so the reason these pictures are so fuzzy is because I took them with the camera on my phone, which I've had for about... 6 years.

***

So, he got there alright!! Yay =) Thanks everybody.

***

Hey, so my dad went to the airport today. If you guys have any prayers for safe travel that you'd be willing to send our way I'd really appreciate it. He's been having some medical problems, and a little extra oomph wouldn't hurt =)

Thanks!

^_^

VICTORY!!!!!

So, a few months ago, I found this nifty video on YouTube that told me how to turn sharp corners in bobbin lace, and it was sooo cool because I hadn't seen how to do this before.

Then, I forget about it.

Last week, I remembered it, yet I couldn't think of the name. I could've sworn it was "double stitch" or "punto doble" or something along those lines--> see, because I was being honest with myself and admitting the fact that sometimes if I read something in Spanish, I remember that it was in English even though it was in Spanish. Also, I remembered thinking: Huh, I haven't heard of that before. What is it? 

So yesterday, I'm scouring YouTube for forever and a day--and nothing. I can't find the friggidy frackin' son of a biscuit video anywhere.

And it's driving me crazy. 

I can't find it, therefore I can't get it out of my head. 

So, today, I was all: screw it I'm gonna google it, and may be that'll give me better results. 

An hour later, I am proud to present to you: 

THE BACK STITCH!  (So I was a little off, whatever...)

^_^

This makes me feel better about yesterday's tragedy. 

He Ate It

My dog, Pugsley, ate it:

The wind blew it off my desk while I was sticking some other pieces into my binder, and I didn't notice until I heard an ominous smack smack smack! 

It was completely pulled out of shape. I couldn't fix it =( May it rest in peace.

This is Pugsley's second victim, possibly third. For those of you who do not remember: last year, there was an incident, and before that, another, though I have no evidence to prove that last one =(.

(;_;)

Hehe...

So, as you may have noticed... certain pictures on a certain blog are not always exactly as clear as one would expect them to be...

Until now.

Apparently... there's a "setting" in the "menu" (yes, I did put quotes around that) that controls the "sharpness" of your images... I knew that.

This came in especially useful yesterday. We had some friends come over and I was entertaining their 6 year old little boy, trying to teach him bobbin lace. He liked putting the pins in, but not so much the bobbin and thread part.

Anywho, he says that he wants to use some of this sea foam green type color of tatting thread that I had and I'm like... alright. So I start whipping up a stripe of cloth stitch, and yada yada yada.

My point is, that after they left, I still had a bunch of thread left on the bobbins, so I was like what the heck and decided to do a few practices.

I present to you what I hope is the precursor to many a successful tape-type lace projects:

 To my left you see the finished product, photo taken post aforementioned sharpness epiphany. On the right side, from the half stitches down, is what I did while the little dude was here. The rest was when I got bored around midnight and was trying to come up with a good reason to go to bed.
As I write this, I have yet to take it off the pillow, but I do hope it stays together... oh, here's the link I used to figure out how to make the bars (I think I'm in love with Google Translate, and I'm learning Italian! >_<). This lady has some good tutorials on what I'm assuming is Cantu lace, but I'm not sure since I have yet to find where she actually specifies which type of lace it is--but oh well, it's all in Italian so it's probably staring me in the face and I don't understand it haha ={)




Here, you see this lovely piece of lace in progress:
This time, the fuzziness is not due to my poor photography skills, buuut to the fact that I took the pics with my phone since I was too lazy to go downstairs and find my camera.

Ditto.








So I have now, finally, after such an agonizingly long wait--RELEASED THE BEAST!!!!

I was a little worried that it might just fall apart on my and completely lose it's shape--but no =D =D

I'm happy ^_^