Another St Patrick's Day!

Time goes so quickly nowadays.I cant believe that it's the middle of March already.

Time to wish all my friends

A HAPPY ST PATRICK'S DAY

I wonder how Fergal is celebrating the day, here at Lep HQ we would love to hear from him.

Thomas Brown is wearing his gear again and flying the flag.

I am having a ME day

Have watched the Dublin Parade on TV.

It must be one of the best in the world.

If you get a chance to watch the highlights, maybe on line.....do!

Have tatted some bookmarks I wrote for a class I was giving at my Lace Guild, nothing new there but they do look lovely.

 

Tatting a Pineapple Doiley designed by Camelia Crapo Lambert

 

7 rounds finished,10 to go and it's got to be perfect!

Then it's out to my Dye Studio......yes I am dyeing again!

Haven't dyed since last summer.

Mixing up some GREEN dye,

for  

CORAL REEF 

one of my all time favourite colourways.

So watch this space.

A new colourway to be announced soon.

 

More about the Caribbean!

So glad that you found the last post interesting.

Expecting to see some tatting

ok then

had to tat something in Lizbeth Caribbean 20

Beautiful, I love this design looks good in any colour combo.....I have shown it before...many times....

here and here and here,and even here and here!

The Geckos are up and running along the beam...

...and there is room for MORE!

I couldn't resist a look at eBay last night and there are lots of Caribbean Geckos for sale and we were right..they are made from recycled oil drums...that's brilliant. Also found the Brown Wooden Gecko type that comes decorated with multicoloured dots Aborigional style. They are hand crafted in Bali.

It's great to be able to buy genuine handcrafted souvenirs.

While in Martinique we got to gorge ourselves on our favourite vegetable Taro, also called Dalo, we can get yams,cassava  and sweet potatoes here nowadays but have never seen taro outside the pacific islands so it was a joy to see it in the Caribbean....but we did buy ornamental taro plants last year in a garden center here .

We came across a vegetable we had never seen before...'Christophine'

Apparently used like courgettes, we had it' au gratin' and it was very pale green...and good.
Just found the recipe here.

Also came home with a packet of Columbo spice mix....a Caribbean Curry speciality.

More tatting soon, I promise.

Wedding Stuff. Part 5d! Bookmark Marathon!

It has been like running a marathon

but I won!

I received another envelope of hearts....thanks a million Suneeti...that did help a lot.

So I knew what was left to do....of course I did get carried away...as usual!

I kept coming across Treble Clefs and Hearts in unexpected places and finally thought what the heck, I will tat 'till I drop!!

That should probably have read 'till my fingers drop off.

I can speed tat and these hearts I can do in my sleep!

Found that I could tat one heart in about 20 mins, that's if I breathe at the same time!!
and could tat 11 (5.5 pairs!)in an evenings TV watching.....jeepers that 3 hrs 40 mins!!

I must have clocked up an extra 25 pairs...and then my fingers fell off! ouch.

94 bookmarks

the 4 at the bottom are for ME!

They are a motley assortment, of colours and shapes and sizes......but then so are wedding guests.

I think every one is a winner, thank you so much my tatting gnomes, I couldn't have done it without you....or the designers Jane and Sherry for their inspiration, .

Even the glueing and sleeving took days.

But now I can concentrate on my fun project.

Wedding Stuff. Part 5c.....Today's job!

 Thanks to everyone who commented what a great idea this was....and how nice it was to have participation from other tatters.

It's like a big warm hug to have such friends out there.

Today

was the time to lay them all out and see how many I have.

At the top are the finished ones ready for the plastic sleeves, in piles of 10.

Next row are in process of glueing, hearts are on and waiting to have the Treble Clef glued on.

Then I come down to a few more recently arrived hearts to glue on as well.

Finally...horror of horrors 15 bookmarks with no hearts

oops! 

that's bad!

Next to them are a pile of Treble Clefs to spare,

that's good!

as I want to make some extras.

So it's back to tatting hearts....while waiting for the dentist for a start!

I will knock off 15 pairs and more...easy peasy....I do have 2 weeks left....almost!

and I will be able to make hearts to match the new treble clefs in the 'gone wrong' Turquoise Teal...which is gorgeous.

Byee, must get on!

Wedding stuff. Part 5b

Did you guess what I was making???????????????
Well
My DIL to be sorted out what she wanted to be given to all the wedding guests as 'favours'....and so I was most surprised when my son asked me....

Would I make bookmarks like I did for his sisters wedding?

Wowee! he likes his mother's tatting so much .

Well it seems that flattery will get him anywhere!

What would you have said!!!

OK so let's go back in time 4 years to her wedding time.

My very good friend Jane Eborall had told me that she had made intertwined hearts for her daughter's wedding and sent me her design...and even offered to help me make them. (Which she did!)
What more can you ask of a friend.

An unbelievable number of hearts later and a lot of printing, stamping, cutting and glueing and I had about 130 beautiful bookmarks made and put into plastic sleeves.

They even did double duty as place cards as I had the names printed sideways on the reverse. 

Cool or what!
I was so proud of these.

Her theme was Burgundy and Fuchsias.
It was a good job that I had made extras to keep as after the meal her day andIi got up for a photo shoot....when we got back our bookmarks and wedding souvenir CD's had been cleared away and put into the bin! and were never seen again.

This time the theme is Teal and Music.

80 + bookmarks to make

what have I let myself in for!

First job was to dye some thread to match the colour of the Bridesmaid's dresses.

Being a thread dyer of course I wanted a variegated thread.

It took oh! so many trails, I had to keep going darker, darker, bluer, greener!!

I had a tiny tiny piece of material to match...a very dark teal blue.

Finally I arrived at two threads that I really liked...a green teal and a blue teal. Neither of which were like the sample of material.....but this wedding is going to have a lot of dfferent teals anyway.

What the heck I thought, the bookmarks don't have to be all the same!

This is a 'Hope' butterfly by Sherry Pence in my teal green that I never showed you. It's one of my favourites.

These are the two threads and my favourite Hearts Desire by Susan Fuller.

Impossible to show you the true colours.

I did end up with a third variation ...a beautiful Turquoise Teal...when the green washed right out of the thread I had had the dye made up so long with all the trials!!

I was so taken aback....beautiful but unrepeatable...easily that is.

I had offers to tat hearts for me from Suneeti and Isdihara and they worked like trojans.

We tatted over 170 hearts between us.

The next thing to think about was what to put at the bottom of the bookmark with a music theme.

I was just about to buy a music rubber stamp when Sherry Pence showed her Treble Clef design.

Woopeee! How cool....

BUT

I didn't really think that I would have time or the stamina! to tat 80+ treble clefs....

My trojan tatters rose to the challenge and were joined by Fox and my tat lassies here.....

and so a sample was sent to the bride...

and she liked it!

During our tatting, one of my friends came up with a modified version using chains instead of the folded ring. We couldn't decide if the chain should run down the back of the clef or in front so we I ended up with a huge variety of clefs using Sherry's original and Jackie's version.

I hope that Sherry doesn't mind us modifying her design.... I really don't like messing with someone else's design.

Tomorrow....I really can't put it off any longer I must see if I have enough!!
See you then!

Transitions No 2. OYG!

Remember my first post about my Rainbow Bright Transitions. A month and a half ago ROY turned into Flame Lantana and wowed you all. Well it wowed me!!

Finally OYG is finished!(Orange,Yellow,Green).

Just in case you don't remember and haven't looked at my ROY post....this is what it is all about.

Take 3 adjacent colours from Rainbow Bright...exactly as they are....dye a 15 yds skein, tat up a heart and some butterflies......look at it critically.....to see what does it remind me of.......look for photos to inspire me.......and then decide what I should do to make it into a WOW!!

SIMPLE isn't it!!!

Well it's much more fun....and if it isn't fun then I don't do it.....with IsDihara testing and looking up what it reminds her of.....even if I do tend to go with the idea I first thought of!!

So what did my first tatting look like!!

Well I thought that it looked promising..but what did it remind me of??

Our first thoughts were citrus...oranges and lemons....well at least something tropical.

But the green was wrong for citrus leaves. Looking at it I could see that Rainbow Bright Green had drifted and become a blue green..that happens sometimes..I will correct that.

That blue green can also be seen in Rainbow 'Lite' Sweet Shop...but I actually quite like it as the' lite' green looks like mint and is edible!!

After we dismissed Citrus the next thing to explode into my mind was Daffodils...it just shouted Spring at us.....and we needed Spring!!

Off to the internet for us to find Daffodils to see if I was right.....lots of gorgeous images....one of them appealed to me so much that the name of the thread was born.

Daffodil Dell

http://www.pastelwood.co.uk/SMALL_P_GALLERIES/Cheshire/pages/sp044-ep-daffodil%20dell.html

I couldn't get this beautiful image out of my mind, two badgers drinking at a little pond with a host of Daffodils behind them. What could be more idyllic. I also noticed that the foliage was a blue green....Daffodils really are like that.

I also chanced upon this site.....a little village with woods that were named Daffodil Dell. It was even more nostalgic for me as it was very near, less than a dozen miles from where that I lived as a teenager and is where my son will be getting married later this year.

So I set my heart on finding a Daffodil Dell to photograph and to bring it to life in thread.

But Spring was still not Sprung and there was not a Daffodil to be seen.

I had to bring my Daffodils to life from memory...and then go out and see if I was right.

My very favourite ones are those with a orange trumpet...and the Narcissi which have creamy petals and an orange trumpet....in my garden they flower after the main golden Daffodils have finished.

Finally this last week....Daffodils were out in all their glory.

The first one to catch my eye was close to where I live. Gosh..and I only had my camera phone with me.

Last week we went on a trip to Northern Ireland and my passion was to find my Daffodil Dell.....or at least lots of different Daffodils.

Oh there were Daffodils in abundance, I only had eyes for them.....do please excuse my enthusiasm and all these photos.

First there were the dwarf Daffodil/Narcissus Tete á Tete with a long trumpet and backward facing petals, and really tiny.

What could be more perfect for a Daffodil fanatic's Tatting Tea Tuesday than a Cup Of Miniature Daffodils.

 

Then there were the beautiful large creamy petals with a short filly lemon trumpet.....

  

...the large showy golden daffodils with a long trumpet....

Still searching for my imagined Daffodil Dell this was the nearest that I got ....a beautiful woodland planting in a country estate garden.

But what did I spy in there....but the most intense orange Daffodil that I have ever seen....

...golden petals...short frilly trumpet.

Back home my garden was coming to life ...and an orange Daffodil that I had forgotten about...

with a longer trumpet in much more subdued colours. This really shows what I was trying to achieve. You can see the subtle change of colour with the orange getting paler and paler until it blends with the golden yellow.

On the trip we bought miniature Narcissii for the garden....this one is called 'Jetfire'..backward facing petals and a long medium orange trumpet.

This all gives me a much clearer impression of what I want to achieve......a gradation from a rich orange.....lighter until it becomes a golden orange...turning to golden yellow...through to a more buttercup yellow....getting lighter until it blends into a light green and finally a rich dark green.

For my second trial of OYG I used a new pot of dye...a ready made orange to give a bit of zing.....tatted some butterflies and LadyShuttlemaker's Hope butterfly....

...... while it does look nice in the tiny butterflies....I took an immediate dislike to the orange for my masterpiece!!  The green was not what I wanted either. The green in the Hope butterfly for the chains is a Flora mid green.....I really like that, so I decided to make that green for my Daffodil Dell.
What works best for me is to keep the number of basic colours to a minimum and mix all my colours from them...then they are sure to harmonise.
By trial 4 I had exactly what I wanted. IsDihara can tell you how much I agonise about getting it just right.
So ta da...drum roll
here is
Daffodil Dell

Compare it with my original test piece....

....and Daffodil Dell just zings with umph!
When we got home, I potted up my miniature Daffodil/Narcissi purchases into a hedgerow basket of willow...made when that was my one of my passions.
So a good test of Daffodil Dell would be to see how it looks among real Daffodils!

I LOVE IT!!
Warning...this thread is BRIGHT!

One more thing.
It occurred to me that while Daffodil Dell is a stand alone thread....that there may be times when I wanted to put it with a green thread for my chains to represent the foliage.
Therefore I wouldn't want dark green in my varig thread.

So I designed another thread with just the flower colours, it goes through the colours to a very pale lime green so is still OYG!....and is called.....
Just Daffodils.

I tatted Julie Pattersons design in it with Flora Green for the contrast.

I LOVE THIS ONE TOO!

Let's see this one among the Daffodils ....

Last but not least... I tatted Jon Yusoff's Heart 'O Daisies again in Just Daffodils and Flora.

WOW!
Spring is here in Tatskool land!

Eleventh Day of December!

24 Snowflakes in Tatting by Lene Bjorn

11th day of December and I am still tatting. I wish it really was the 11th, then I might have a fighting chance of completing my challenge.

Snowflakes are beginning to get thin on the ground...tho it is just possible that we might have a White Christmas...how cool would that be....probably very. We have had almost a week of dry sunny weather, blue skies...but gradually getting colder.

On to Snowflake 11...this was really very easy, if you can tat a trefoil then you can tat this, you can even avoid a split ring if necessary.



...the instructions say to make it in 2 rounds but since there are split rings...the 2 rounds are continuous...something she says in other patterns but not this one. I guess it's just happened in the translation from Danish.

Pretty snowflake....don't like my colour choice much...a varig' Flora 20...looks better in the scan than in real life. A bit clunky in 20, next time I will make it in 30 or 40.

It measures 10cm....interesting fact is that if you tat a snowflake in size 20 it will be the same size as the diagram in the book!

Thread amounts, Sh1 6m, Sh2 7.

An extra treat today....look what I got in the post from my dear friend Sally from Tats Heaven....tucked inside the Christmas card was a simply divine be-jewelled butterfly bookmark designed by her very own sister.



Hope to see ya tomorrow, better get down to it!