Umm

I'm afraid we are now at day two without anything interesting to show you. At least today starts without me being nervous. In fact yesterday's incident resolved so pleasantly that I fear I really rather overreacted with stress. Of course if you've been following me for a long time you might remember that things have gone much worse, painfully worse in times past. I'm not going to waste anymore thought on all that old business though.

I spent all of yesterday immersed in the business of remaking the pieces that are flying out today including the demi gloves that were giving me so much pause. I managed to even finish tatting one of them even improving my methods...I think. I can't really be certain since it had really been too long to remember how I went about construction last time. Either way, I'm making progress and I'll be at it again today to hopefully finish the second glove and start with the embroidery.

I always feel so boring when I'm immersed in remaking. I have nothing new to share unless you want to hear about my day long headache, which I'm fairly certain you do not. So I'll just move along then and thanks for the commiseration yesterday. I try not to go off like that too often, but it is cathartic. Hopefully today will bring something new and interesting.

Put 'Em Up

It was another fairly productive day over in my neck of the woods. After being distracted by household duties both normal and odd, I had to clean up under the couches...the child 'lost' something, I got the demi gloves finished up. It did take me a while to suss out the best way to photograph them and after getting some dolled up pictures twitter helped me pick the best ones and helped me name them and they are now listed. This 'boxing' photo was quite popular with my twitter friends, but I did opt for a different photo for the main listing. I also admit that the price tag on these pieces is particularly high, but it is quite an involved, dense pattern with a little Celtic work as well as the time sucking embroidery so I'm sticking with it.

The advantages of being ones own model are the ability to take photos whenever you need to. The disadvantages are you have to get presentable on the laziest of days and then make faces into a camera hoping that the neighbors don't walk by and think you're a total loon. Okay, so they likely think that anyway. After the listing was up I went back to work on some sold pieces. Then I sold some masks and that planned today for me. I'd still like to get that awareness bracelet made up for the shop so I might take a break from masks to do that, but no playing with rings for me yet.

I should also be getting in some special order thread that was requested by a customer toward the end of the week. I have been commissioned to create several pieces in this thread. I'll show it to you when it gets here, but it's a poly blend thread chosen for its color and I have never worked with it before. I definitely prefer working with natural fibers, but we'll see if I can keep up my standards with non standard thread. I think that's it for me today, much tatting lies ahead.

Demi Glove

Wow, did I have a productive weekend. Well, it was mostly Sunday actually. I shipped the awareness bracelet to its new home and got an order for a custom red choker, so I worked on that all Friday and Saturday morning so I could get it in the mail as quickly as possible and get back to the demi-glove. Twitter assured me that 'demi-glove' was the better name for the piece, so I'll stick with that for now. This is the first one all done up and embellished. I spent a lot of time working on getting the design to follow the shape of my hand and it fits perfectly. Luckily the design also has a bit of stretch so it shouldn't need to be too customized. I am currently still working on the second of the pair. As you might image this is a more involved piece than even some of my neck pieces so with the crystals and the embroidery added on too, they are going to cost someone a pretty penny.

It wasn't just a productive tatting day either. Where we spent Saturday movie going, Rango is a great movie by the way, we shopped on Sunday and I found my rings. I checked hardware stores, but I just kept finding bits that were not quite right. Then I thought maybe the craft section of Michael's, the Internet had let me down, but after an impulse to check just one more aisle, these babies were found. They are beyond perfect, the right mix of diameters and the ring gauges are just right as well, not too thin nor too thick. While I was there I also ransacked the clearance aisle for more bits to work with and scored quite a few new oddities that will eventually be worked into lace.

Today the plan is to finish up the other demi-glove and perhaps even get them listed. Then I have a couple of things I want to remake including the awareness bracelet. Once all that is done, I might get to playing with rings, or the other bits. Of course all that might wait until tomorrow too since the list before it might take longer than I hope. Boy, it is great to be inspired to work though. I love getting things done.

Wear It On Your Hand

Thank you all so much for your pictures guesses. You were of course all correct and that was a great relief to me. I had been asked to create a bracelet that would contain the ribbon, but not be just about the ribbon so I thought the best was was to actually work the design more subtly into the lace rather than design a larger ribbon, but I feared that I could only see the ribbon because I already knew what it was. The design was also approved by its requester and it will go into the shop today for her. It will likely also go into the shop as a regular listing soon as well.

I was also busy yesterday with the new idea I mentioned yesterday. I wanted to blend two pieces into an entirely new product. Well almost entirely new...I had tried the glove before, but I lost my way. This one is sort of a glovelette or mitt or demi glove...yeah, I don't know what to call it. Anyway, I started with the Tenebrous motif because I will eventually embellish it and then I started by adding bits of the throat corset motif to the sides, then more of them.

This is the point where I began the making, cutting out, remaking and staring at it until it made sense phase. I had mentioned on twitter that I wondered what it was like to be a maker that prepared and sketched and planned before working, because I just jump in and cross my fingers. When that crossing doesn't work, I get out the scissors. I won't tell you how much clipping I did before I finally came up with something close enough to call a decent prototype.

I was trying to make a final piece, but as I closed the glove, I realized what more needed changing to make it fit right and since it was plenty obvious, I knew I could stop working on the prototype and just use what I have learned for the final piece. What was surprising is that using the fingers from the first glove attempt, I think I can use what I've learned here to finally make the full glove as well...one day. For now, I'm just going to try to finish up this little, purely decorative accessory. I plan on embroidering the center and adding crystals to make it an over the top piece, well likely a pair, but they should be swanky.

P.S. Thanks for the hardware store suggestion for rings...I can't believe I didn't think of that!

Invisible Hand

It was an ADD sort of creating day. I leaped from one thing to another and back again repeatedly, not really getting any one thing done. I also obsessed on etsy most recent change/move. In an attempt to make everyone happy, they are trying to create a relevancy search. They realize that change makes us wet ourselves, so they've opted to try out 'Relevancy Thursdays' in an effort to gain data and I suppose improve the algorithm involved. I do think that is it ironic that they are trying to mimic the google search whilst google implements recency results. Anyway, I digress...again. The unfortunate basis of the relevancy seems to be our our titles, descriptions and tags. When I looked up tatting, the only tatting on the first page was at the bottom buried by things like puddy tat glass, which had that in the title, the tags and the sellers name, and not, not tatting. Hell, that wasn't even tattooing, which did make up a large portion of the results as well.

My own person pieces, pages back...pages. You can see why I'd be annoyed. The way to fool this new search apparently, is to add your most effective search term to your titles, your tags and your descriptions, but frankly that's not only a lot of effort, but if feels wrong. I like my cleverly named pieces. I like my short effective descriptions, but I'd also like to actually be found. My views were not down for the day, though that might be due to my own search experiments, but I made no sales and heard others puzzled at the results as well. There were those you sell similar products with similar tags, titles and descriptions, yet appear no where near each other in the search, so what is the formula to be found. Of course, we can't all be on the front of these results, but it would be nice if a tatting search yielded, you know...tatting. Of course the other fear is that unscrupulous people will add unrelated, but popular search terms to all their tags, titles and descriptions destroying other peoples chances of being found. Without the sheer man power to police this issue, I fear we're down a very bad rabbit hole indeed.

I did work on my gloves for a bit in the afternoon. I married the fingers together creating at first a frightening Frankenstein monster hand. Really, they are going together well and next up is the hardest bit so far. I want to attach them to a slave bracelet design, but I'm not certain the best way to fill in the empty space. I think I might just continue the current weave pattern and see if I can find the best attachment points, but really, I just need to do it, thinking and plotting is not helping at this point.

Back to work on the spat that I thought I was done with. I scrapped the side designs as well, they were too, I don't know, predictable. Instead, I took the motif I used to fill in the center bottom and modified that to do the job of the current side motifs. Then I struck a wall. Not a design wall, but a color one. As I am trying to create a matching set with mystery pieces, I was using said matching color. As the ball is wearing done, I went online to order more of this color. I noted that the tag on the ball is old...I had bought the thread some time ago, it also had no numbered color code, no matter I can match the color. Nope. I fear this is a discontinued color and I see nothing it's like anywhere. It's a cebelia in a medium brown shade. It's darker than the coffee cream and I can see nothing darker than that until we reach the royale thread in a chocolate brown which is far too dark. It's my own fault of course for getting ahead of myself. I've ordered every brown toned shade of cebelia that they had hoping that perhaps the online color swatches are horribly off, but I'm pretty sure I'm screwed here. I searched for a while trying to locate a list of discontinued colors or something, but I got nowhere. I suppose there's a slight chance that my hand dying thread angel can reproduce the color or at least a similar one, but the cost for that is much higher than store bought.

Oh, well, I'm just rambling again. I am still waiting on emails, so I'll just stay in a holding pattern, work with what I have and hope for the best.

Pearl Necklace

While the fingers waited for their hand I did the unspeakable. Okay, maybe not unspeakable, but it did feel wrong somehow. I ripped apart a perfectly good string of huge pearls. The first cut was the hardest, but I managed to tear the thing asunder. I wish I had taken a before picture, but they were a classic string of pearls. When worn I felt a little like Lisa Simpson, which may possibly be the saddest statement for pearls ever. I Laid them all out in one of those necklace design trays since they were of varying sizes, just slightly, but I like everything to be all even like. Then I had to do some math...I know, I hate math too.

I was charged with giving these pearls a makeover into a 44 inch strand that could be doubled and closed with a simple loop over a pearl. It was a quick piece to work up, just chains and I liked the look so much that I spent a few minutes in the evening ripping apart a set of small pink pearls for a similar makeover for the shop, perhaps with black thread for a completely different look. As this customer had said of hers, they were never worn. Perhaps now, they will get out some. I also have some freshwater pearls that might get out of the supply box now too.

Then I sent out an email to the commissioner of my sequins mask. I wanted to confirm that they did not want it, so I could move on with the piece. I was surprised to receive a message back quickly asking for a second, simpler sequins mask. As is the habit of the season, they were sick and that is why I had heard nothing further. So rather than return to the gloves, I am again mask making. This one will be my signature mask with the added sequins details. Perhaps with similar embellishment in the center for a little extra oomph. When that one is done and hopefully cleared for work, I plan on shopping the first mask to some of the wonderful photographer friends I've made who can give it the photo shoot that it deserves so that I can list the thing in my shop in a style befitting the price tag I'm slapping on the sucker.

While I didn't work on my gloves, the idea mill is up and running. After further thought, the palms will definitely remain bare and the piece will hook around the wrist at the base and then switch to lacing further up. I've still not worked out the marriage to the slave bracelet design, but I think I know which basic design I want to use. I'll let that choice be a surprise when I get around to it though. I also have some basic tatting to get to as my Aunt has asked me to help with a lace display at the museum she works at. She has several large tatted lace pieces and I was charged with making up some small samples of the designs used for display in a shadow box. I admit it will be odd after I have spent so much effort taking my tatting away from the edgings and doilies to go back there for a bit, but respect the roots right?

Here's the Finger

The package I was waiting for yesterday did not arrive until about 7 in the evening, so I was as I had suspected left to my own devices. With the peer pressure mounting I decided to go forth and start the creation of my tatted gloves. Several other glove patterns exist, I've seen pictures, but rather that use them as a jumping off point I started elsewhere with my spine pattern. Sure a few people have offered great suggestions which I had considered. Just do the back side and sew them to existing gloves or why not just do opera length fingerless gloves. I thought about both of those options, but decided that I wanted to conquer those fingers.

Sure, if all this works there might be a much cheaper, I imagine, fingerless version, but for now were starting from the beginning. I also ran across someone asking how the designers mind works and while I didn't answer there, I thought about that a lot. Sure, there are those that truly understand the math involved in pattern creation. They sketch and run the numbers when they design. Me, not so much. I think that I might understand the math at a subconscious level, but it certainly does not ever come out to play on a piece of paper. More often than not my designs start with an idea which is often times very vague. Then I either imagine what existing designs might be married together, pull our scraps of lace to actually lay them together, or more often, I just start tatting and see what emerges.

I rarely scrap an idea. Usually the first thing off the needle wins. There are rarely adjustments or revisions to the original design and to make everything even more interesting, I almost never write down stitch counts while I work. I must take a zillion pictures and then I count stitches and hope I remember. Usually a pattern gets written down only after it has been created quite a number of times, or when someone asks real nice like.

I am digressing though, fingers. I wanted to show you fingers. I have all five on one hand done now, but I took pictures when I had only 4. I used my spine pattern which itself was adapting a one shuttle pattern to two adding a Celtic element. I played with the stitch counts to make each finger fit just so. I do need to make some slight adjustments to the length and then it is on to making them one. I can't help but think that I'm going about this a little backwards. I have knitted gloves and they go in the other direction, but it seemed only logical to me to conquer the fingers first. I thought about continuing this basic design throughout the length of the gloves, but I decided that had been done. All the tatted gloves I've seen do the strips method to create the glove. My current idea is to take one of my slave bracelet designs and figure out what need to be done to match the two together. I'm also toying with the idea of leaving the palm bare. I think it might be a striking look and besides warmth is clearly not what these suckers are designed for. I features some other gloves recently on the Wunderkammer that played with that negative space and it gave them a real avant garde feel.

Ooh, speaking of Wunderkammer, she has reached 300 followers. I wanted to celebrate, but I think I shall save all celebrations until the one year anniversary, since it is near the two year anniversary of this blog and my 4th etsyversary. Sure, we've got a few months to go on that but, look out, it's coming.