The Universe Gives

I learned on Friday that the Universe helps those who help themselves. Yes, I'm aware that's sort of a universal theme, but it was clearly at work that day. Instead of picking up the white thread after schooling wrapped, I picked up my pile of antique and vintage pattern books and went looking for inspiration. I ran across a motif with an interesting use of negative space and decided to start there.

First I made the motif without the outside row, but just as written. Then I stared at it for awhile trying to decided what to change. I liked that it seemed to make a swirl, but disliked how unbalanced it was. So I changed the center and some of the elements entirely and some stitch changes elsewhere. I still wasn't happy with the way the piece laid, so I changed a few more elements entirely. The picture shows the first few iterations, the newer one on the bottom  and the original design on the top left.

I still wasn't happy at that point so I changed some more stitch counts and added some picots at the center and that got me what I decided was the final piece. I didn't get the final necklace put together until Saturday morning, but I think the activity of creation is responsible for the couple of small sales I got Friday evening. The moral of the story is, get creative, work hard and the sales might just come to perk up your weekend.

The rest of the weekend was mostly remaking the couple of small things that sold and working on the most recent crochet afghan. Well that and just spending time with the family. I didn't pull out the white thread once. I guess the monotony really was taking its toll. On Sunday I did finish up the last day of the TIAS. I really have no use for the finished piece that I can think of, but I'm still kind of sad that it's over. I was having a good time learning new techniques and a little patience waiting for something to be completed. I'm sure that I'll be able to use some of my newly acquired skills at some point and I'll definitely play next time as well.

So that brings us to today. My tatting queue for the shop is empty again, so I will bring out that white thread, at least for a little while. The kids have the day off of schooling, so we might run some errands as well. Hopefully at some point in the day I'll get inspired to create something else. Maybe I'll see what else I can do with the new motif. You know I love to exploit them as much as possible before letting them go. Either way, I have a feeling this should be a better week than the last one.