Thursday, April 21, 2016

Ahead of schedule

Wow I have completely been slacking about posting anything. It has been a pretty busy last couple of weeks.  We have worked a couple of really fun shows, namely Keith Sweat and ZZ Top.  We did backline for Keith Sweat and we actually worked on the "local crew" for ZZ Top which means it was helping with the full production of the show.  We had some of hubbies family come and stay with us for a few days which was awesome. I have been more than a little home sick for quite some time now so it was great to be around family for at least a little while.  We had a couple of friends over for dinner this last weekend which is kind of a rare treat so that was pretty awesome as well.  In between all of this I have been tatting every spare minute I could find.  I have actually been trying to get a head start on the next holiday which is still several months away.  It is kind of a bummer that there is no holiday for a while because I am a big holiday decorator so when there isn't a holiday that means I have several bare shelves.  The bare shelves look silly and kind of makes me sad so thankfully I don't have to see them too often.
So working on my next holiday do-dads has been fantastic practice with the shuttle, I made a huge turn in mastering the little beastie.  The repetitiveness of making the same motif over and over again let me focus on the stitches rather than trying to keep track of the pattern. I am getting close to being done with the little motifs (well ahead of schedule for once) so I have been in search of a new project. I thought since the motifs are going so well I would try something a bit more ambitious. I have spend wayyyy to much time trying to find a doily pattern that I like and that I can understand the pattern.  Not such an easy task so I am still searching!

3 comments:

  1. Congratulations, Nikki. I tatted the same motif over and over for months and I really felt it made a difference. What size doily are you wanting to make?

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    1. Thanks so much for the encouragement! I have been looking for a doily that is easy to understand (I have only been tatting a few months), not a ton of picots,hopefully one that you can climb out of rows on as I dont like to hide the tails at the end and probably not more than 6 to 8 inches as this will be my first doily and I dont want to fight trying to hold so much extra thread.

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  2. This doily is pretty simple, but you will have ends after each round: http://www.georgiaseitz.com/classes2001/hallamdoily.html. I don't know of any patterns like you describe, but you can create one. Start with any center you like that you can crawl out of at a picot, then start chaining around joining into the first round and making some picots at regular intervals to join in as you circle back around. When you get back to your starting point, join into the first picot of the previous chain instead of into the start of the round. Increase your stitch count between picots by a few double stitches as you start around the second time. Do the same for each succeeding round. If you have any problems figuring it out, let me know.

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