In Which I Learn A Lesson

Such horribleness nearly occurred yesterday. I was remaking a necklace and thought I'd double check my stitch count so I looked at my table to grab my tatting notebook. It wasn't there. How odd. I spent the next half an hour in a frenzy looking for the thing and realizing how utterly irreplaceable it is. It is full of stretches, patterns and the small vital changes made to other patterns. It is an utter mess and completely unreadable by anyone else. It is everything I haven't memorized. I did finally locate it...in the small trash next to my nest. It apparently fell in unnoticed. Luckily I have a strict no wet garbage rule for this trash bin. So I needed to archive these pages immediately, you know like I should have done eons ago. I was going to scan them all in when it occurred to me that my iphone takes a pretty sharp picture. In a fraction of the time I would have spent scanning, the whole book was in my phone. Ah, I feel better now. Now, if I could only remember to write all the patterns down int he first place. One success at a time huh?

I finished the orders in queue and decided that I needed to make something new. Instead of giving it any thought, I just reached over, grabbed a vintage pattern book, quickly picked a pattern and went to work. This one was the corner of a rectangular tray mat and ever since I first saw it, reminded me of a macrame owl. The book is from the seventies and they were overly descriptive with their pattern writing. This would not be a bad thing, except what they describe in great detail is what's happening with each shuttle and thread. This made it very difficult for me, a needle tatter, to get to the heart of the pattern. All I need is the numbers people, just the numbers. I was able to make a few adjustments to make it work, but it was as if I was fighting the pattern the whole time. I opted to add a josephine chain and a few extra rings to finish this one. 

I made the whole piece a second time in gray to really get the pattern right and opted for Victorian sets instead. I think that's the one I'll get listed later today. I really do enjoy resurrecting older designs for new purposes. I might even play with this design some more and see what else it's got hiding within. Oh and I thought I should let you know that the mask shipping drama has been finally resolved. I wish that all my customers were as understanding and wonderful as this one was. Now off to tat.