Roadbumps

So... it turns out I didn't get enough twill tape -_- 

I got it online from a place that only sells 1/4", 1/2", and 3/4" widths of twill tape and here I thought, "Alrighty, I'll get 2 yards of 1/2" and that'll be enough..."  

Nope. 

So I ordered 1" twill tape off of Amazon, and I think it should be enough, especially considering how it comes in a freaking 10 yard package. 

^_^ 

Oh, btw, I also feel the need to tell you guys that my supply list from my last post was missing one very important item. 

I ordered a Sluis Withof bobbin lace manual from Anneke Rejis! 

Post Chemistry Update #3--beginner flowers

So I love duchesse lace --> but I haven't been able to get the manual on it =/ So, I've been winging it! 

Observe:

I drew up the pattern on some millimeter graph paper (not that I got specific, just a basic free hand doodle).

I pinned it to my pillow under some vellum paper.

I made the center ring (with my very first turning stitches =O )

And then...

My pillow fell while I was trying to make the petals.

I tried to catch it, but I grabbed bobbins instead and it got pulled completely and irreparably out of shape.

-_-

So, I tried something else.

Not as elaborate, but at least I got to finish it! 

^_^

Post Chemistry Update #2--Gemmy Bear

MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! 

I've finally finished Gemmy Bear! Like a week and a half ago, I was in a productive mood and my fingers were itching for some bobbins, so I went at it for like two days straight and.... 

Voila!

Now, Gemmy here was a gimp practice--not that you can see the gimp >_<

I think the color was to blame for the HORRIBLE time I had photographing it. I eventually gave up and stuck it in my scanner which made it look a little weird -_-

It's actually a really pretty red--two reds, actually. 

A while ago, I came back from buying threads only to realize that one of the thread I'd bought was almost identical to one of the ones I already had! You could just barely tell them apart! 

However, one was darker than the other one, so what I did was I used one thread on all the starter pins on the left (in the picture, right) side and the lighter one on the other side. 

...not that you can tell >_<

The gimp was a coppery type orange-red that looks pumpkin orange compared to the other threads, but again -sigh- you can't see it that well... 

It's obviously a beginner's piece, buuuuut I think I didn't do half bad aaaannnndddd

Gemmy's done!!! 

^_^

Day 5 and whaaaat?

Okay, so when I first saw Day 5 of TIAS, my exact words were: what the fraaaack?

On another note, I very happily completed my very first lock chain =D =D 

I think it might be a gondola--or a viking ship, I saw that in a few guesses on the TIAS blog  and I kind of dig it =D

My own guesses include:

• the gondola 
• some other type of boat
• a swan-type thing
• a basket with flowers. 

Annnnd, I dyed some more thread =D 

As you can see, it's RAINING here! 

The cold front (79-72 degrees) was supposed to be gone the day before yesterday and then it started RAINING!

I'm not exaggerating, I've been wrapped in a flannel blanket all day while I tried to understand the equation for the change in enthalpy (I had to look it up to make sure I spelled it right--I keep saying enpalthy) in a chemical reaction.

In thermochemical terms, let's just say I was a walking (more like curled up) exothermic reaction all freaking day.

I was worried this one ^ wasn't going to work out. I had to mix up brown dye and then pour it into yellow dye, but I was worried it was going to come out mottled, or an icky barf color. I'm not sure if you can tell from the picture, but it's actually a really rich wheat/gold color =D 

Oh! And I have made some progress on Gemmy Bear. Not much, but progress nonetheless =D 

I'm trying out a gimp, but I'm like 97.3% sure I'm screwing it up. 

Oh well, haha =D 

^_^

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 

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. 

^_^

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 =) 

^_^

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


^_^

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

^_^

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 ;-)

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 ^_^

*insert clever line here*

So, I've had a messed up weekend--I won't go into it, since it's more than just a pain in the biscuits and this is a happy blog --> so on with the happiness:

I have been a busy little tatting bee. Aside from the previous white doily I posted, I have also been working on one for my sister over in sunny California =D BEHOLD!!!:

Though this is an authentic handmade 2012 Karla Barraza tatted doily-thingamabobber --> the picture is fuzzy.

*sigh* yes, I know. I'm still working out the kinks in my camera--so bear with me =D

Anywho, here it's at 4 rounds. I'm thinking of adding some on, but I'm not sure about the time frame since my dad's going to Cali to see her in about a week and a half =S And I's gots schools and stuff... hmph.


Also, a few nights ago, I got it into my head that it would be a fantastic idea to look up how to do sewings in bobbin lace.

My only problem is that I know diddly squat about sewings... now wait, correction:

I don't even know diddly squat about sewings.

So, here I am, in the middle of a real thinker... how can I practice sewings... if I don't even know how to do them????

Funny thing: there's such a thing as google O.O

You: NO. WAY.

Me: Right?

Eventually after about two seconds of massive googling effort, I find this nifty link to a bobbin lace wiki       >_<       So, I gave it a shot, and the result was that charming yellow-red rectangle you see above. I didn't really like the method a whole lot, and you can see where I tried doing the sewing with a passive pair instead of a worker--but hey, that's what practices are for, right?

Neeext, I remembered a certain video I saw on YouTube, and even though that was for bars, I figured I'd try it out and I found the I liked it a lot better (for this practice, anyway) than the other method aaaaaaaaaaand that's what I did on the skinny practice. Pretty neat, huh?

I was kinda worried about the space left between the pieces, though, but I asked around on the forum on laceIOLI, and it seems to be normal, so........... yeah. Also, the subject is apparently more complicated than I had previous thought. Therefore, now I just have to find the time to do all those fancy practices =D =D =D

Also, on Saturday I got a little bored.... Does anyone remember when I was convinced that I was going to whittle out an entire set of bobbins? If not, do see here.

Aaaannnyywho, I got bored, right? So, of course, the typical happens:

I cranked out four of those bad boys until I remembered that I like to be able to move my fingers without wincing. They are pretty neat, though =D 

^_^ 

Tipsy tips =D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLxMMDEx4KM&feature=g-all-u

So, I found this super nifty way of figuring out which size thread to use. Superdeeduper simple!

It's in Spanish, but the great thing is that there's such a thing as Google translate! ^_^

Leafy leaf =D

So, I forgot to add this in my previous update:

I decided to take a shot at a little free form lace, and tried out this bad boy from The Lace Guild: http://www.laceguild.demon.co.uk/ylm/versInstr.html

I think I made the pricking a wee bit to big, but here check it ooooooooooouuut:

So, as you can see here, this is the pricking, it's about 9cm x 3cm and you can see me trying to get fancy with the sharpie =D

I don't have a cookie pillow (but am in the works to make one!), but I know that sometimes part lace is worked on a bolster (albeit a bigger one) so I pinned it to Camille and went on my merry way =D

 Here, I'm almost halfway through and have added all the bobbins I need to add--adding bobbins is weird! It took me a while to get used to it. It was kinda fun working this. I thought it would be harder, but it was freeing in away, not having to stick to a grid. =D =D

Voila! She is finished! At first, I was worried that the gap in the middle wouldn't work, but it did! Though, you can't see the gap in the stitches at the edges as well as I'd like =(

Muahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!! VICTORY!


I give you my very first piece of part lace (even though it doesn't have any parts aside from the one). Nifty, idn't?



^_^

It's official

I have officially fallen in love with Duchesse Lace. Hands down. No doubt--now I just have to learn how to make it, but such technicalities can be overcome =D

Check it ooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut:

Encaje Duquesa
Catherine Herve
Bistra Pisancheva (According to the note on the sidebar, it's Brussels lace--which I'm think (underline on the think) is the same thing as Duchesse--but either way it's still pretty freaking awesome)

Better late than never

So, if you may recall, I have on occasion mentioned something about updates.
Now, while it's not an update on needle lace, it is an update on the bobbiny aspect of my lace making studies =D

So, I used this pattern, and took a simple interpretation if it: all cloth stitch except for the fans:

It took me a while (like a month), but I did eventually finish it.
I had a little trouble with the chevrons that made the top and bottom corners of the squares. I was using a technique to keep the gaps from showing up, but I don't know if I was doing it right--aaaand, the spiders could use a little itsy bit of work.

All in all, I think it's not half bad =D

^_^