Flying Stars

Man, those pendant kept me busy most of yesterday. I mean it was a good handful of them, but I didn't think it would actually take me days to get them all made. Apparently I'm out of practice or something. I suppose that's possible given that I've spent so much time knotting lately to make up for the slow shop.This is the stack of stars yesterday afternoon as I started in on the outer rounds of them. I did finish them toward the end of the day and went back to knotting to unwind.

I'm on the second round of basket stitch and progress is slow. I'm at about 27" across and that makes for rounds that are over 7 feet of knotting each. It's taking me three lengths of thread to get around once and I use, oh about 13 feet or so at a time. I still haven't gotten it back to flat yet either. I fear it will be quite some time before I get it flat enough for a picture of the whole thing again.

I do have one more piece that was ordered over the weekend that I need to get tatted up for the shop, so I'll get to that this afternoon and some more knotting I imagine. These stars will go out in the post this morning, so if you're expecting some, they're on their way and I hope you love them.

Weekend Recap

It was quite the whirlwind weekend I had around here. First of all, Thank you so much for all the pattern and pendant orders on Friday! While I don't think I'll ever match the volume I did on the first couple of ITD events, it was much better than anticipated. I couldn't work on much of it until Saturday though. Friday was for cleaning and errand running ahead of my youngest daughter's birthday weekend.

Saturday was the family birthday party. That meant more cleaning, decorating and setting out food. I even baked a bit. Then there was a couple of hours of chaos, followed by more cleaning and then I finally got to sit for a spell. I started in on the stars, but I still have all the outlines to do as well as a few more middles. Hopefully I'll have them all done by tomorrow.

Sunday was the actual birthday, so the day was given over to family birthday adventures. We started with a trip out of town to the zoo. This is us waiting for the bird show to start. The birthday girl is wearing her brand new top hat. This was followed by a trip to the toy store. Then there was the mall because she had asked to get her ears pierced. Then it was out of town once more for dinner. To say it was an exhausting weekend is a serious understatement. I hardly even touched the Armenian lace. But we're back to Monday now, so tatting, then knotting and hopefully just a little extra sitting time.

Linen

Luckily on Friday I got a couple of sales. This gave me a couple of projects over the weekend and kept me from keeping my nose buried in my kindle all weekend. I mean, I still read a lot, but I came up for air and thread. The first one I remade was this small rose pendant in linen thread. I both love and hate linen thread. I love the way it looks. It has more character than something made with perfectly smooth cotton thread. On the other hand it's difficult to work with. The varying thickness can get difficult to pull through and I occasionally have to adjust the stitch count in order to maintain the shape of the pattern since sometimes the knots are larger and sometimes smaller.

On Saturday I was remaking medallion earrings also in linen thread. This time I actually remade three pairs in all the shades of linen I have. This is partly because I wear a pair of these in black that I may have taken from my stock. I figured I'd just make a new pair if they ever sold so I could keep them, but since I was doing the one, I decided to do them all. The earrings are a much larger design than the rose and with 6 of them to make and stiffen, I was happily busy much of Saturday.

I actually still have one more piece I was suppose to remake, but I forgot all about it until this morning. I guess that gives me something to start my day with. We still have a few more days off from schooling, so I'm sure I'll read too much again today. Here's hoping for another sale or two to keep me tatting.

Another

Another busy day in the books. I started the day getting all the orders I had over the weekend into the mail. Then it was straight to remaking them for the shop. I started with this Medallion Hex. I designed this one about a year ago I think. I like it better in more than one color, but the one that sold was solid black, so that's the one that I remade.

After that was done it was back to the barefoot sandals I've been
working on. They are a much bigger project so I kept putting them down to do smaller ones. I still haven't relisted them in the shop yet, but I did manage to get them done. After that I still have a pair of ankle corsets to make. I always keep two pairs of them made because they take so long to tat up.

Yesterday wasn't a particularity busy sales day, especially compared to the weekend, but I did sell one necklace. I'll work on getting that one remade today as well as the ankle corsets. I'll also keep posting shameless self promotions all day in an effort to keep the ball rolling. Here's to another busy and productive day!

Current Etsy Shop Sale: 25% off with the code HOLIDAY25. Code is good through Nov. 6

A Little Done

Another long day of schooling scooted my tatting time all the way back until after lunch. Honestly I didn't even look at the edging turned necklace, turned doubting object. I guess I need a little more time and space so I can look at it objectively. I did work on getting more of the special pendant made and I took yet another cryptic picture of a handful of them.

I think today I might work on getting the pattern put together. It's a simple one, so I'll probably get at least one more ready to put in the shop. Of course with the lack of sales I've been getting of actual finished pieces I'm sorely tempted to do even more patterns in my shop. They seem to be the only things selling recently. Unfortunately I have a feeling that doing so would just encourage the pendulum swing in that direction and I simply cannot make enough money on patterns alone. So I suppose I will maintain the status quo and continue crossing my fingers that things will pick up until another more effective strategy presents itself.

Socks

Today's post is definitely going to fall under the 'other nonsense' heading. I just couldn't get myself tatting over the weekend at all. I did manage to get all the new pendants into the shop on Friday, but it's not like any of them sold, so I fell into a bit of a rut. Instead of wallowing with no new book to read and no new or old pieces to make, I opted to fall back on knitting.

I had a skein of sock yarn I bought eons ago that had yet to find a use, so I though, why not socks. Yeah, I don't normally like to make socks, the pointy needles hurt my fingers. Yes, I am aware of the irony there. I figured I could get a pair of ankle socks knocked out over the weekend and I was right. It distracted me quite handily and left me with some house socks to get me through the cold Spring mornings on tile floors. Of course I was also left with a bruised fingertip from the tiny, pointy needles. Again, yes I am aware that my tatting needle is even tinier and pointier, but I generally don't push my tatting needle with my fingertips while working.

So that leaves me at today. Still no tatting to do. I did get a request in my shop this morning, but they were requesting a wholesale discount for just a few pieces and I don't do that, so it will likely come to nothing. I do have some better ideas about April's pattern offerings thanks to your comments, so thank you so much for those. I might just get to work on putting those together. Hopefully I'm distracted by a sale or two though, because it's been a ghost town yet again and I can only handle that so long before I get really whiny. Here's hoping.

Lots of Color

On one hand I got quite a bit done yesterday. On the other, it wasn't all that I had planned to get done. For one, I didn't list anything new in the shop at all. I did get a whole bunch more of the new motif tatted up though. I asked over on my Facebook page for color suggestions and I got all but one of the requests made. The other color I couldn't make was a light blue because I just don't have any light blue thread. I hope I can stay motivated enough after schooling today to get these up in the shop. I certainly am not making any more of them unless one goes to a new home.

I still haven't come up with any good ideas for a new piece or pattern for next month either. I guess I'll try to think on it over the weekend and maybe something will come to me. I may just release the pattern for one of my previous designs, so if there was something you really wanted the pattern of, please do let me know. Otherwise you'll just get whatever I fancy. Hopefully some inspiration kicks in with this sunshine.

New

Well, I didn't get any surprise sales to give me something to tat, so I had to rely on my meager imagination. As usual, I just sat down with thread and needle in my hand and started making things up. Soon I had a bit of something I could use. A few revisions and beads later I'd managed to come up with something at least a little different from anything else I'd already tatted.

Since I had little else to do with my time, aside from laundry and the like, I just grabbed some more thread and made a few more of them. My current plan is to make even more and then pop them in my etsy shop as pendants. I'm also starting to think forward to April first and International Tatting Day. I've been able to come up with a small new design every year to offer cheaply as a pendant and the accompanying pattern. This year I was thinking of doing both a free pattern offered here or on Instructables as well as one for the shop. So I guess if you have any opinions on what you'd like me to offer, I'd love to hear it. Obviously there's still plenty of time, but I always prefer being over prepared rather than under.

So I guess today's plan is a little tatting followed by a whole bunch of thinking. Man, I sure hope a sale interrupts that. It could get painful otherwise.

Medallions

Well I got a lot of tatting done on Friday, but nothing made it into the shop. This is mostly due to the gloomy weather that precluded taking decent photographs, and partly because I was feeling particularly lazy over the weekend. Back to the tatting though, I started by adjusting some small details of the medallion I've been working on. Though I liked the longer chains in the outer round, they made the piece a little too unpredictable. I shortened them and the result was a more compact and polished piece.

The next thing I did was play with colors. I tried to ask for color suggestions, but I was getting no feedback at the time, so I just grabbed the thread on top of the pile. Yellows and oranges are definitely not my go to colors, but they did demonstrate clearly how colors would play out. I couldn't leave it there though and since I was clearly not getting them ready for the shop yet, I dug deep in my box of thread and pulled out the purples. They are definitely more to my liking. I finished up the day with grays, but never managed to get any of them in the shop over the weekend.

The rest of the weekend was just family adventuring. The oldest child got an extreme haircut. I stained and painted a memorial box for my cat Shade's ashes. The children had me make necklaces out of pendants they got from Michaels when they were out with their grandma. There was a lot of making over the weekend, even a small pendant that was ordered was tatted up, but I still felt really lazy. I should hopefully get all these medallions turned into pendants and listed in the shop today. I just have to rely on a little sun breaking though, so here's hoping for that and a little more motivation.

Tiny Motifs

Rather than spend time trying to figure out the larger pieces I'm making with the motif, I spent the day working on the small one. Initially I was going to bead the long picots, but I decided they look better in black as part of the structural design, if that makes sense. So instead I opted for a standard, bead the picots, plan.

A couple of folk commented that the beads look a bit cluttered, but honestly I really like that aspect. You know how rarely I use beads, so I guess when I do I like them to really become an element all their own.  As you might have guessed, I then dig through all my supplies to find every color of bead I owned. Joining the last twisted picot with the beads there is slightly more fiddly, but it was worth it.

I've got a listing up in the etsy shop for the pendant now. All the bead options are in one listing.  It's nice and small and I plan on getting a listing up for matching earrings soon, maybe today, or sometime this weekend anyway. Then maybe I'll get back to the larger pieces. Today is the husband's birthday, so it's he has the day off and the plan for the day is all his. The rest of the weekend is pretty plan-less and after all the guests this week, I might just want to enjoy the silence.

A Little How To For You

I opted to turn yesterday's tasks around. I knew I should be remaking the necklace, but instead I chose to make some new one off necklaces. I did this partly because I had decided a few days ago to bite the bullet and use some gold toned findings and partly because I knew the end of the week would be creativity free, so I needed to get some out of my system. I started with this one in burgundy and it's the only one I got listed yesterday.

The next one I did was this one with lizbeth in medium fern. My phone camera has a devil of a time capturing greens and blues properly, so you'll just have to trust me that the colors looks better than it is shown here. I was so frustrated with this picture yesterday that I didn't even bother to share it about, not frustrated enough to get out the good camera, but still.

I was asked and answered a question about these yesterday that I'll repeat here. Can you do this with any charm? Of course you can, you just need a properly sized hoop finding to tat around. I was also asked for the pattern and I must confess that there never is one for these, but I can tell you how to do it yourself. You just tat around the wire adding picots at intervals of 3 or 4 double stitches. Make sure to count your picots when you finish the hoop to determine how many picots to skip to make a nice symmetrical design. Then chain whatever number will get you a nice curve skipping one or two picots depending on the look you want. Occasionally I add a second round that weaves over and under the chains joining to the skipped picots or a thrown ring off a chain. It's all experimenting and it will be different with each ring. If you don't already know how to tat around a ring, a quick internet search for 'tatting around a ring' will result in a good amount of graphic tutorials and videos of the technique. 

Right after the green piece, I went to the mail and found my key charms and new teardrop hoops. The hoops are smaller than the ones in the grab bag that I've used before, so I had to muck about with them a bit to get the new key pendant enough like the last one. It's still not exact, but I can repeat this same one over and over again, so I think we're good. I didn't get my chain in for them though, in fact I just got a shipped notice on it, so I won't be able to list them again until I get back from the coast.

I did work a bit in the evening on the necklace I was suppose to be working on, but I'll need to finish that today and I might get creative again, just to get it all out of my system, or more likely I will get distracted preparing to vacation. Only time will tell.