The Collar Grows

I had a bit of an odd day. I remember when I used to work retail and I began carrying myself in a certain way that conveyed to people that I knew what I was doing. Unfortunately I couldn't turn it off and was more than occasionally accosted while shopping in other stores by other customers who assumed, despite my"street" clothes, that I worked there. Yesterday was one of those days. I fielded questions from a slew of people I have never met, communicated with nor even run across online that I'm aware of, asking for my help in areas which I am most certainly not an expert. It's like when someone asks you an easily googled question while they are sitting in front of a computer and you have to stifle a comment about them looking it up their damn selves. Yeah, it was that sort of day, very odd. I mean, I do try to be as helpful as I can, but shockingly I am usually pretty busy and low on patience.

The rest of the day was at least productive though. I decided on adding a couple of scalloped rows to the collar before the clover row. Since the piece is meant to sit lower on the neck, it is really long at this point so every row takes longer than I wish. My brain is already onto the next section, but my fingers are far from done with the current one.

After the scallops, I reworked the clover pattern again and once more after that to get all the lengths and proportions correct.  That gave me plenty of little sample pieces to double check the concept with the base row. Once I was sure it was going to work I started tatting the clovers starting at the center of the base to make sure that it lined up right. I could have just done some math first, but it's math, so I opted for the easy way out. I finished the clover row, but it did take the entire rest of the day so I don't have a picture of it.

There are still more elements I want to add to the piece. At the very least, there will be one more row after the clovers. Those old collars were lousy with elements and I want mine to be as well. Of course it will only be wearable in a strapless or spaghetti strapped top by the time I'm done because it is huge. I'm also tempted to hang some crystals from the small space created between the low clover and the scallops. I won't play with that idea until I'm done with the lace itself though. So much more work to do on this. At least it's distracting me from the slow shop.