Hello Silver Dawn!

OMG can it really be THREE MONTHS since I last blogged and promised you a new colourway!

So much has happened since then, 

Christmas celebrations... hope you all had a happy one.

New Year celebrations....hope you all will be happy and healthy,

Holiday in the sun.....more about that soon..ish.
Coming home to the worst storms we have ever had.water everywhere, the whole country is still soaking wet .

Looking after gorgeous grandchildren while their mum is away lecturing.

And of course Tatting and Dyeing, working on my TAT Master...and its hard to do it well.

Only one out of twelve completed to my satisfaction.

So back to Silver Dawn.

Imagine if you will very early in the morning just as the sky begins to brighten to pure silver...no hint of blue yet, gradually it becomes tinged with pink giving the sky a slight purplish tinge, which soon turns into a pink flush.

Above the horizon comes a hint of peach, then apricot tinting the pink.

Wow! then suddenly the sun begins to break through on the horizon an the whole scene becomes lit with gold.

Sounds idyllic doesn't it?

Well I am lucky enough to be able to see this happen with nothing to interrupt the  view of the horizon.....if I should get up that early that is......and it was one such morning that took my breath away.....and shouted out SILVER DAWN.....you must dye that!

But

While we were on holiday in UK I was witness to a sky that was even more like I imagined
my
Silver Dawn to be.

So here goes....this is my interpretation of this beautiful sky.

This is how it looks when tatted in my favourite patterns. It's very soft and gentle.

And

Tatted in my favourite pendant pattern.

If you like Silver Dawn you can find it here.

Adding the WOW factor!

So far so good

I LOVE all of my new pendants.

But

I thought....

I need Earrings to match....

well obviously!

I have both of Marilee's Jewellery Books...

Boutique Tatting,

Tatted Jewelry.

Having  uumm...hd and aaaa...hd as to which I should do first....
I settled on Carnival Earrings from Tatted jewelry...listed as a beginners project.
so here goes....
Next pendant in RAINBOW BRIGHT My all time Favourite of My Threads.
The Pendant 

....and the earrings....

This is one of those WOW moments...
I love the way the colours just follow one after the other,just the way that I intended them to.
The red Wonder Bead is gorgeous  too....
....The Set

The pendant need a red Wonder bead in the center, I think.
Lovely to wear.

Remember the pendant that I made in Sweet shop....in the very first of these pendant posts?
Well that colourway got the earring treatment too.
You actually already saw me wearing them on my Birthday Canal Boat trip.

Finally my third favourite thread is Berry Burst...so here goes....

....which also strangely enough goes really well with what I wear....
the silver beads against the dark thread simple glow against my skin.....
.....and with the earrings is just gorgeous....

I used Swarovski Bicones and top drilled Swarovski drops and gosh do they sparkle!
This was the very last of my Berry Burst so you can guess what I am dyeing now!
See you soon with a new colourway I have to show you.

Even MORE!

This pattern was so addictive......I have given them to all my relatives and friends and still can't stop!!

Some colourways are working better than others .

Just personal preference and what I have to wear them with.

 Everyone I gave them too had their own different preferences,which was cool.

Next up was Gina's Tequila Sunrise.....

 This time I used silver lined transparent beads and they really made the colours zing!

So that's what I have used on all the colourways since then.

 Next to tat were the ChocoRaspberry family( made to make your mouth water)!

We already saw Raspberry Ripple with Vanilla in the previous post.

This looked really lovely with another 'random' T-Shirt from my ever growing collection!

You can now see how the beads add zing.

But the next two in the ChocoRaspberry Family would look equally well.

All the colouways seem to come to life against skin!

Raspberry Sorbet...

and......

......Raspberry and Chocolate Mousse.

Come back soon to see my all time favourites

More pendants

After the first few came a rush of pendants......

next up was my Vanilla Sky with 3 Cut Crystal beads.....

 

This looks lovely worn with a plain Lilac T-Shirt.

 

This was followed by.....Raspberry Ripple with Vanilla

and Silver Lined Pink Beads

 

........and Coral Reef with Silver Lined Royal Blue beads

....and Apple Blossom with Silver Lined Pink beads.

More of these coming your way soon.....until you are sick of them....I just couldn't stop trying different colours.

Tatskool Tats!

Yup, you finally get to see some tatting!

Way back in the summer I fell in love....

with a new design.

It came to me via the Online Tatting Class, and is

by Petra Tornack-Zimmermann.

She has recently published her book 

Happy Occhi.

A book of square motifs.

The design that I fell in love with is Sonnenschein....it has certainly been my sunshine.

Thank you so much Petra, your book is on my to get list.

The very last one that I have tatted is in my favourite colour of all time...

Rainbow Bright of course.

But lets go back to the beginning.....

.....the very first one that I tried....

...led me to shout...

PENDANT

BEADS!

Because it had such eye catching negative space.

The second one had the beads but it just didn't have the WOW factor.

 

Nothing for it but to try my HDT .....

SweetShop was my first choice...oh how I love this thread.

The beads are 3 cut crystal and they sparkle so much.

Sorry didn't quite get the colours right, better in photo below.

Oh! SweetShop why do I love you so much.....

because you go with everything....

....for instance, I randomly (as if) selected a T Shirt and woweee...look at this...

isn't that amazing?
More pendants to show you soon.

Gina's Tequila Sunrise

I was very touched by the response to my post renaming Flame Lantana for Gina.
Something that I always intended to do.

Thank you so much, I think she would like it.

It was interesting how many of you had never seen a Tequila Sunrise up close....me included

so I looked it up.

Here is a link to a recipe,

The photo is gorgeous

It's normally made in a tall glass but Wikepedia shows it in a highball glass, 

photo by Evan Swigart.

Wow aren't they stunning!

I never thought it would look that good!

The tequila is mixed with orange juice over ice and the trick is to pour the Grenadine syrup down the inside of the glass so that it sinks to the bottom without mixing, poring over a spoon is said to help.

Wow must go and see if we have any Grenadine syrup left....dates back to our Pacific island days, I remember hating the stuff but the kids loved it. maybe I should change my mind!

Well done Gina, you were spot on.

I forgot to put in the link to my original post about Flame Lantana, here it is ....

Just read Gina's comment on that post, before she had the actual thread in her hands...

Makes me think of fireworks! I like lantana too, we just don't have much of it around here so it wouldn't be my 1st thought. I like bright colors.

So now I know that she did like bright colours.

I got as far as testing a skein today to see if the colours are right.

 Dont hold your breath this is a slow, slow process.

If you have any questions about this thread please email me.

Please know that this is just my memory of Gina.

Essence of Gina.

There has been a lot of suggestions that it would be good to dye a thread in honour of Gina.

I wish I could mix a brew that would remind me of Gina every time I looked at it

So what was essence of Gina to me?

Life wasn't always easy for her and often she got a raw deal.

But she seemed to pick herself up and just get on with it.

Her blog was always so interesting to read, she ha a natural gift for communication.

Her metaphysical blog showed the much more thoughtful, unsure side of her.

But to me she was a ray of sunshine when she landed in my inbox. there was always something to make me smile. she ended all her emails with a smile

:-) Gina

Sometimes it would be a funny story or picture or a beautiful Powerpoint presentation of photos and music and sometimes it was just to chat.

Can I distill my essence of Gina?

Well I think I already have!

 Way back in 2010 I sent Gina a sample of my new thread Flame Lantana.

The second thread in my Rainbow Transitions series.

she broke her blogging sabbatical to write a post.

This is what she said-:

I got a Lantana sample from Tatskool and I think it's misnamed

I think it looks like a tequila sunrise!

watch the video clip of 'Tequila makes her clothes fall off!'

it will make you smile too.

So....uh...be careful when you tat with this thread. she said!

She obviously knew far too much about Tequila Sunrise and what it can do!!

I must admit  that I have never seen a Tequila Sunrise before, she is spot on with the colour.

This is what she got

.......this is what she tatted.......

and

.........and this is what she said....

"I was VERY surprised at the way it tatted up.  On the card, the colors look so bright and you miss that gradual change in shades. As I moved on to the 2nd half of the first earring and saw how the colors played out, it really did remind me of that drink, tequila sunrise, how it's all different layers and then you stir it and it's so pretty as the colors blend.  I wondered also if the 2nd earring would follow the same course so that they matched or if it would be off a bit but they match".

Don't you just love it when a length of thread tats up relatively symmetrically without having to engineer it!

Tequila Sunrise is such a beautiful name...I wish I had thought of it.

I fact I had planned to change the name when I dyed another batch.

You can read about why I called it Flame Lantana here and see what I tatted with it.

So today I got up off my backside and went into the dye studio for the first time in so many months and mixed up some dyes for......

GINA'S TEQUILA SUNRISE

My essence of Gina.

Gina I see you tatting with the angels brewing up one heck of a sunrise for us all.

I will never forget you.

Easter Eggstravaganza 15!

Tatted Easter Eggs by Kirsten Wind Hansen

Onwards and upwards!

Easter Egg number 15 had left me a bit cold when I first saw it...like so many of the designs in this book! I don't know why these designs didn't appeal to me...must be the lack of colour.

Until I saw what others had done with it.....Barbara Gordon had tatted a white butterfly with a variegated surround. Umi and Tsuru had tatted a variegated pink butterfly with a pale green surround.

Ok then...on to the practice piece....I forgot to make the joining picot on the antennae so mine are a bit too short. the dimpled rings were difficult to close....I could have made them a different way but decided to stick to Kirtsen's pattern...for now!

The rings in the trefoils are not connected so tend not to lie very flat...really needed blocking to put on my tree.

For the next one I chose to tat the butterfly in my Blue Lagoon HDT with flowers round the outside in my Berry Burst HDT and chains in my  Daffodil Green HDT all in Lizbeth 40 and it looks lovely and very delicate.

I like this a lot. What a difference using different colours makes.

Easter Eggstravaganza 14!

Tatted Easter Eggs by Kirsten Wind Hansen

 Easter Egg number 14 had a new challenge hidden up it's sleeve...

....Roll Tatting.....

something that I have never tried before.

Of course i went straight away to Google to see what I could find out about this technique.

I found instructions from Jennifer Williams and Jane Eborall and a very recent blog post by Jon entitled
Rolling! Rolling! Rolling off the Shuttle

followed by an even more interesting post 

Rolling a Stumpy

she points to a video by 

Karen Cabrera's video 

It was well worth a look but i did find her method rather overcomplicated. 

So Off i went armed with this knowledge and of course Kirsten's explanation in her book.

Well

it was really easy..once I held on tight to the roll stitches that I had made. 

Karen's video was great for showing how quickly they can unroll!

Time now for some fun!

I tatted the inner chain in My Daffodil Green  and the rings in my  Just Daffodils HDT.

 It looks so pretty, one of my favourite colour combinations.

This one was tatted in Coats Mercer size 30.

Here is a size comparison...

 Here is a close up of my roll tatting

I am dying to try it on something else now, Jon's idea of Kersti's  Stumpy sounds great. 

I have made that before.

The Mary Konior Lupins look great too. 

Easter Eggstravaganza 9!

Tatted Easter Eggs by Kirsten Wind Hansen

If I was beginning to get a little jaded then Number 9 raised my spirits...

it's a little cracker.
I HAD to tat this in 2 colours at the very beginning.

Flora 20.

Second one is in Lizbeth 40 in my Berry Burst with white and lemon.

I am afraid we are back to food again!
It was meant to represent Berry Burst dessert with vanilla ice cream topped with custard!
Then of course I wondered what it would look like with the colours in a different order....
so here is dessert No 2.

 This one has the fruit in the middle in a solid block with the ice cream and custard round the outside.
I am hard pushed to say which of these I like the best. I like the solid block of Berries better in the middle but on the other hand I like the contrast on the outside of the one with the custard in the middle.mmm!
Funny how that contrast makes that one look bigger as your eyes are drawn to the outside.
These eggs have a natural tendency to curve upwards so I had to squash them on the scanner...and then photograph them to show this curve which is very pleasant.

With the center filled in this would make a cracking little hat pattern.

Easter Eggstravaganza 2!

The second design the the book Tatted Easter Eggs by Kirsten Wind Hansen is very much like the first one.The difference being the addition of an extra ring at the base of the egg and josephine knots all around the edge. 

Great practise doing josephine knots. I prefer to use the second half stitch for these and to pass the shuttle around the thread after every  five half knots.

First trial looks like this ....

I must admit that the additional ring at the bottom really foxed me! Try as I might to remember to make it after I had tatted the one above  I forgot and on the second attempt I still forgot! So the ring is stitched on with fine thread.

For my second one I was dying to use my new batch of Raspberry Ripple with Vanilla...

 This one does look prettier in real life....hard to capture. this one is tatted in size 30.

I did stiffen and shape these...

This shows the colours much better.

Thank you so much to those who took the trouble to give their opinion on whether to shape the eggs or not. I tend to agree that they would look better flat hanging on the tree and have flattened my no 1 eggs.

Funnily enough when I asked my tatting lassies for their opinion every one said 'shape them' and are going to shape theirs.

In size 20 they take about 3.75m on each shuttle.

Easter Eggstravaganza 1!

Happy Easter to all my friends

I intended to start writing this series of posts well before Easter but as you all know time runs away so quickly.

This is our last tat day and one of my lassies brought us all Easter chicks from her trip to Holland.

Gorgeous aren't they?

IsDihara asked if we have special chocolatey goodies for Easter here.

We have the usual Eggs, either  shells only or filled with cream/toffee etc. Also lots of Chocolate Bunnies and Chicks. 

Back to tatting.....this year I resolved to tat something from the multitude of tatting books that I have never used

This time it was the turn of another of the wonderful books published by Akacia

Tatting Easter Eggs by Kirsten Wind Hansen

There are 24 designs in this inexpensive book. Black and white photos and great diagrams but the minimum of instruction for each design...except for the instructions at the beginning of the book.

I intended in my own silly way to tat my way through the book in order starting at number one and finishing at Easter or when I ran out of enthusiasm...which ever came first!

 There is one design which particularly takes my fancy and my friend urge me to skip ahead to it.....should I, will I...

So Staring with 

Easter Egg No 1

Once again I am doing trials of all the eggs in the same thread...I love doing that...not only to it let me work out how much thread to use when I use my good stuff...but it lets the design show through on each different pattern.

Once again I must say

PLEASE DO NOT USE MY PHOTOS TO TRY TO TAT THE PATTERNS

A LOT OF TIME AND EFFORT HAS GONE INTO DESIGNING THEM
PLEASE IF YOU LIKE THEM

BUY THE BOOK

This is where I show you my first mistake!!!

I made too many rings in the central section, didn't realise until I was this far round in the outer section and wondered why it didn't look right!

 

Memo to self...look more carefully at the diagram!

Second try in a pretty melon and light green Flora 20

Third one is in a cherry coloured Flora 20 with Robin's egg blue Flora contrast and Rainbow Ruby beads size 11. The beads made the whole egg come out a little larger.

For my fourth egg I used my latest dye batch of Berry Burst HDT. I had been asked by a friend in UK to dye this again. It's quite difficult to dye due to the intensity of the colour, getting even and complete penetration of the dye is difficult and it has to be perfect for me!

The beads are purple lined the thread is size 30.

The eggs made in Flora 20 measure about 2 inches.

Thread used was shuttle , 3.6m and Shuttle 2.2 m when using all one colour.

There will be more eggs in Berry Burst later .

It's very much a summer fruits colour.....raspberries,redcurrants,cranberries,loganberries and strawberries, add in the purples of bilberries and blackcurrants and then the blues of blackberries and blueberries.....gosh making my mouth water again.....how come my dyeing seems to be mainly about food!

I stiffened the eggs on a polystyrene egg and hung them on my tree.

I am not sure if I like them shaped or not...what do you think?

This is day one of my Easter Egg tree....the real eggs on the tree I showed first in 2009 follow the link to see them....not sure if I ever showed you the others.