Tat-a-tat-tatting

Here's a picture of a practice I did of the things I know how to do in tatting (thanks toooo this guy and this youtube video) : rings, picots, chains and joins:

It's just a random collection of boo-boos here and there that made it vary so much, but I think it looks cool =D


^_^

updates and other thrilling stuff

So, it's been a while, and I'm still super busy, but, I do have some stuff for ya:

I know so far most of my posts have been about needle lace, but I've also been doing a lot of bobbin lace too. As a matter of fact, I've posted a new page with.... -drum roll- patterns!

Here's the wider pattern in progress:

I was going to do alternating half stitch/cloth stitch square thingies, but since this is the biggest pattern I've done, I figured I might as well take it easy and did everything in cloth stitch except for the fans.

Yay? Nay?

Oh, and yes I do realize that maybe using white thread on a white pricking wasn't the smartest thing I could've done... oh well =P

Anywho, on another note, I've also taken up tatting. Shocker of the century (for me at least): I went into this fabric/arts and crafts store and found a tatting shuttle! If you live in Mexico, you know how weird that is. Specialized stuff like that isn't common and so obviously I flipped out.


I will soon take a picture of my awesome new tatting shuttle and some beginner level tattery (is that a word...?)

^_^

Um, so

I know I haven't posted anything lately, but that's only because I've had an insanely crazy few weeks. My family came to visit and a certain someone with a blog had a b-day ;-) unfortunately, I haven't been able to do a whole lot of lacing, buuuuut I did do some.
I triple pinky swear that I will have some updates in the near/not so near/distant future =D

Bleh (continued)

So, the offending stitch is listed here in The Encyclopedia of Needlwork (Thérèse de Dillmont) as the sixteenth lace stitch. Let the boos resound.

Here were my first attempts:

As you can see, the bars (damn them) are vertical and not at the angle that I would so like them to be.

So, after very much frustration and very many headaches, I decided to look again at the picture of the stitch--several times-- to no avail.

At last, after much struggle and torment, I caught sight of text below the image and thought "Oh, what could this be?"

Note to self: It's a good idea to read the instructions

Though still not perfect, I've managed to wrangle the little devils into better-ish shape: 

It turns out that I was making the knot at the top of the loose buttonhole and working down when I should've been making it at the bottom-middle-ish of the buttonhole and working up. 

Oh, btw, the way I've been practices stitches is with a piece of canvas. What you do, is you essentially sew the edges into the canvas and work the stitches over the top. I like canvas because of the open weave which makes it easy to measure the distance between stitches --> which is good if you're semi anal-retentive like me. 

Bleh

I am having the worst time with the point de venice. The little suckers are driving me up the wall. Instead of looking like seed type things, they look like warped little bars. Grrr.

Phase 5

So, as I said before, I am in Phase 5 of le masterpiece:

As you can see, I've already done the ground (Phase 4) in Point d'Espagne and am now working on the filling stitch for the weird flower/umbrella/octopus type thing. So far, I'm keeping it simple and just using a really close corded buttonhole, but I'm thinking that in the big flower/umbrella/octopus type thing that I'll branch out into maybe some knotted stitches or something...


Any suggestions?

Victory!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sooooo..... lace (making) adventures is back in business!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks to the wonders of technology, I (the genius that I am =P ) have figured out away to make it past the absence of a certain image capturing device (may it rest in peace) --> apparently, printer scanners are quite the useful little gadgets.

=D =D =D =D =D =D =D =D =D =D