Wandering Mind

I started out the day working on designing a small heart. Well, redesigning it actually. I had a heart designed and I was asked if I could make it no larger than an inch. Honestly I thought it would be harder since many pieces just can't easily be shrunken and keep their proportions correct, but it worked out after just two prototype attempts with smaller thread and altered stitch counts. In a stunning example of good fortune, the customer responded to my message of success quickly and I had an actual order from her for several of them within the hour. I spent the morning and a little of the afternoon on their creation.

It wasn't a quiet day though, my one niece babysitting gig that had been planned snowballed into two, then three and finally all four of them. This meant at one point there were six girls in the house between the ages of 8 and 12. It was loud. They are generally good kids so it didn't take much physical effort to watch them, but they were a little mentally exhausting. That did not stop me from trying to decide on a new bobbin lace piece.

I spent quite some time online searching for something that would grab my attention. Researching on topic led to another and before I knew it I was looking up needle lace and finally Romanian Point Lace. Since it seemed that this one required no materials that I didn't already have on hand, I thought I'd look a little further. It also seems that I should have all the prerequisite skills needed to combine into this one as well, so before I knew it I was crocheting a cord so I could try it out. I did however seriously underestimate the time needed to create a cord long enough to do the tutorial I found. I got nowhere near actually trying to make the lace, but I should get to it today.

Don't worry I'm not abandoning the bobbin lace, nor tatting, but without the funds to justify the purchase of a pillow and more bobbins, I'm stalled there and without some solid inspiration or a busy etsy shop I'm having trouble getting motivated to do a lot of tatting. I figure using the time for gaining new skills seems like a good idea and perhaps I can one day soon fold those skills together to reinvigorate my shop, because the one thing I really need is to go back to when my business was actually working. So I guess I'll just keep on teaching myself new things.

Weekend Recap

Well the weekend was neither productive, creative nor particularly lucrative. My husband did celebrate his birthday and that included seeing a movie, Inside Out, and having friends over for dinner and another movie. I did a little tatting as I sold a bracelet yesterday and I finished reading yet another novel and started one more. My entire Friday was spent cleaning in anticipation of the afore mentioned birthday so there was no bobbin lace. Then on Sunday there was another birthday dinner, this time with family and since I was so exhausted from the two days prior, I spent most the rest of my Sunday reading and trying to stay conscious.

I'm watching on of my nieces today for a spell and then I actually have a small tatting project to attend to. An old etsy friend has made a request and I need to do a little design work to see if it's possible. I'm also hoping to get some bobbin lace going as well. I don't want to stagnate on it, but as I'm sure I mentioned I really ought to acquire more bobbins if I'm going to continue learning from this point. So unless I sell a bunch of lace soon, I'll just be treading water with the bobbins. I guess that's about it for this morning. Hopefully the day brings something interesting at least.

All The Crafts

I started my day with a lovely email asking for bobbin lace information which put me in a nice mood for the day. Why? I'm not entirely certain maybe it was just so nice to hear something complimentary, or maybe it was just that I liked the person. Whatever it was it got me working. During my last sitting session for College for Kids, I just made lengths of lace, followed by a standalone rose. No, they're not meant to sit together as in the picture, I was just being weird with the bits. The strips will likely soon be chokers and the rose, I might just give away.

Once I was home and still in such a nice mood, I worked on the strip of bobbin lace I started yesterday. It worked up nice and fast and now I have yet another strip of something that I'll probably never do anything with. After that I tried desperately to find instructions for the type of bobbin lace that makes shapes and motifs. I'm not even certain that I could work that without a cookie pillow that I could turn, but I had a hell of a time trying to find instructions so for now it's a moot point.

I did go back in book I'm using to try and fail a technique I had skipped. I'll likely just undo what I have already tried with that one to save thread. Then I suppose I'll go searching again for more instruction. I suppose this is the point where have an actual instructor would be helpful. Oh, and one last thing before I go for the day. Here's an awful selfie of the tunic I crocheted over the last couple of weeks. I like it, but I do wish I could have sprung for better yarn for it, Oh well. Here's to a productive, creative, and if the Universe is feeling generous, lucrative weekend.

More Done

I was ever so slightly more motivated yesterday, but just slightly. I only took my crochet with me in the morning and I was finished with it by the afternoon. I also managed to finish reading another novel during the day. I know that sounds like I accomplished things, but it really doesn't much feel like it. I plan on wearing the tunic I made today, so maybe if I'm not feeling too self conscious, I'll get a proper picture of the finished project later.

I also started another bobbin lace piece in the interest of keeping it up. I know what I really need to do is acquire more bobbins so that I can keep learning and gaining new skills. if I want to be competent at this I still have tons of work to do. In the meantime I put together another strip of torchon lace, playing with the placement of elements for practice.

This is the last day of College for Kids and I've finished both my books and my crochet, so that leaves tatting for my morning activity. The husband's birthday is also this weekend, so that means that cleaning will commence today or tomorrow. It'll probably be tomorrow though since I will have nothing better to do with my time. I miss feeling busy with my tatting, so I'm just going to put it out to the Universe that I really need some lace sales soon. It never hurts to ask, right?

Sigh

I was a special kind of lazy yesterday. I mean I tried to do some tatting in the morning while waiting for the kids, but it was a complete fail. It was a doodle that I won't even bother showing you. When we got home I spent most of the day reading and crocheting. I got one novel finished and I'm about three-fourths of the way through the second side of the tunic. I didn't even think about doing any bobbin lace and I didn't try any more tatting either.

I'll of course try again with the tatting this morning. There are only two more days of College for Kids to attend, so after that is done we'll have to go on morning walks or something to keep the kids moving. I'm pretty sure I won't be able to walk and tat, so I'll have to make time during the rest of the day. I guess we'll cross that bring when we come to it. Here's to something interesting happening today to get my motivation motivating.

Rose Necklace

So I decided to take my needle and thread with me yesterday morning along with my crochet project. I started out crocheting and then had a hint of an idea. It wasn't much, but it got me tatting and it grew into an interesting asymmetric necklace. There was literally no pattern involved here at all. I just started tatting a rose with random petals and then gave it a vine with whatever thread was leftover after I felt the rose was big enough. Then I just added a Josephine chain on either side. I actually finished this during the kids classes and went back to crochet when it was done.

I had every intention of finishing it up with some hardware when I got home, but instead I did yard work as requested by the husband. Well, not really yard work so much as pulling the weeds amongst the dying grass. Our water restrictions are killing the lawns, but the weeds seem to be cool with it. That means very dry ground holding tightly to weed roots. Consequently my hands still hurt today and I'm pretty sore all over from the effort. I hadn't the energy for bobbin lace either, so that rose necklace is the extent of my creative efforts.

I have no plans to pull weeds today, so hopefully I'll start a new bobbin lace project. Or maybe I'll get another tatting idea. Who knows what I'll actually get up to today, I just hope it doesn't hurt my hands anymore.

Long Lace

I did end up cleaning on Friday. I'm not entirely certain why, but once that was done, I knew I could waste much more time with the bobbin lace. I finished the long piece I started the day before and started searching for somewhere to go from there. I looked up the different styles and I really wanted to try out different shapes, but I wasn't having much luck finding patterns with instructions nor ones that only needed 12 pairs of bobbins.

I then returned to the patterns I'd already done. I flipped through the prickings and saw I had printed out some plain dot paper. So I decided to try my hand at making it up myself. Of course my 'making it up' consisted totally of putting the elements I liked in the order I liked on the background I liked. No real designing was being done here. I just want to be clear that I haven't the still set yet for real designing in this medium and I'm not going to pretend I do. That being said, I was pretty proud of the piece I made. In fact I was so proud that I actually took the time to hide all the ends when I finished the piece. I also learned a few lesson about how not to start a design, so it was a win.

Other than the bobbin lace, the weekend was spent doing family things and working on my crochet project while reading. I even managed to finish one half of the crochet project.

The kids have one more week of classes at the college, so that's one more week of sitting outside with some project or other. I might just crochet, or I might bring my needle and thread and tat just for the sake of doing so. I still have no real projects, sales, or ideas to work on. The the summer is still young, so I still have hope.

This and That

It was another long day, but this time it was mostly of my own making. We had College for Kids in the morning of course and that's when I got his necklace made. It actually took me a bit longer than usual because I accidentally started the second row with a split chain. Apparently I was so anxious about getting that right, I did it far too early. After that was made I started in on my crochet project for the rest of my waiting time. As soon as we were home I put this pendant on a chain and it'll be out in the mail to its new owner today.

Once home it was straight to the bobbin lace since there was no homeschooling to get to. I did go up and do some cleaning later, but there was no rush on it. I finally figured out what I was doing wrong on this corner piece and got it finished. It should have been done faster as it's such a small piece, but I am sill quite full of mistakes when it comes to bobbin lace. This was actually the last piece in the book that I planned on doing. The real last one was a cross and I really have no interest in making that, even for the skills I could pick up from it.

So I went looking through the author's web site to find some more patterns suited to the 12 bobbin pairs that I own and I opted for this one. She calls it a sampler piece because it has so many different grounds between the cloth stitch fans. It's definitely good practice. I should get it done today because I have nothing else to do. No College for Kids, no homeschooling, no orders to fill, nothing that needs doing. I might take a walk with the kids, or I could do a bit of cleaning or reading. I know we'll all get really bored really fast with no structure, but a day of it can't hurt anyone, right?

Summer

What a relentlessly long day yesterday was. It started out the same as the previous two days, but stretched quite a bit longer in the schooling part. It was the last day as so they both had tests and the older child had essays to write for them. Though I'm happy to report little complaint and plenty of writing. It just took some time.

I did take my crochet project with me in the morning while I waited during the kid's classes. There's really nothing to show for it since the project is a long tunic. That means all I have right now is a rectangle that need to be much longer. I did get up to a little bobbin lace in the late afternoon, but I'm having issues with where to leave off the bobbins again and that's caused me to undo and redo more than once already. You'd think I would have all this figured out by now, but sometimes my brain stops functioning and nothing makes sense.

I woke up to a pendant order of my mermaid tail this morning. Lucky for me, it needs to be made in the color requested and that gives me at least one small task for today's waiting time. I'll likely bring the crochet again as well since the pendant isn't all that big nor complicated. Then with no schooling, it's time to clear out all the papers and books and clean up the schooling area. After that I plan on wasting some time just because I can. Don't worry it won't last long before boredom forces me to want to get back to lace making.

Tatting

Instead of bobbin lace, I managed to focus on a little tatting yesterday. I took my needle and thread with me to wait for the kids during their classes. I did not, however, have any plan for it. I ended up tatting around a metal ring and trying to do something just a little different with it. Usually I just do the out edging, but this time I came back and did some woven rings. I had initially intended to hang something in the middle there, but it didn't work out quite that way. No bother though, it gave me something to work at while sitting.

While I was there I got a message on etsy regarding a custom order. I couldn't finish setting it up there, so as soon as I got home I put up the listing. The customer messages later that she was having internet issues because of storms, but I was in such a tatting mood that I just went ahead and made the piece. A nice, simple, embellished piece meant to slide over a simple metal headband. Of course I shouldn't have been so quick to make it. Another message this morning regarding expensive storm damage will further delay the purchase. Don't get me wrong, I'm not mad. I should have patiently waited for the purchase before working, but I wanted to be tatting. I guess I'm a little antsy with the store so slow for so long and any miniscule twinkle that might be a sale gets me excited.

Today will be another repeat of yesterday. This is the kids last day of homeschooling for the year. The College for Kids classes are on for another week though. I might take crochet with me this morning instead of tatting since I feel a bit foolish regarding the tatting right now. Maybe I'll just take both and decide what I want to do when I'm in it.

Hexagon

What a long day we had around here. We left early to walk to the college for the kids classes. It's about a thirty minute walk and the classes are an hour and twenty minutes, so I decided to just hang out there and read while they were in class. Then it was the walk back and they still had a full schedule of home schooling to get through when we got home. To their credit, they only complained a bit. Then in the afternoon we attended a school board meeting to see the husband receive an employee of the quarter award. This would have been fine except with the car out of commission for the time being we had to rely on a ride which meant errand running on the way home. So, yeah long day.

Between those two things I did get some bobbin lace work in. I actually much prefer the 60º turning of this piece over the 90º turns of a square one. Plus without the gimp thread to worry about the pattern was a breeze. I even managed to get it finished with no complications tying it together. When I showed this picture on Facebook yesterday, I was warned that these pins may rust and it's better to use the small stainless steel ones. Honestly I've never had a straight pin rust on me ever, of course I do live in a very low humidity area, so maybe that helps. I know it's harder to see the lace through these as I work, but they are so much easier to handle than the tiny headed ones. I also doubt that I'll be working on any pieces big enough to take the time that would be needed for rust to occur, but I'm being foolish and you know better, please share.

Today will be a repeat of yesterday save for the afternoon. I'm thinking of taking tatting to the college this morning, if for no other reason than to confuse people with my giant needle. I don't have any projects that really need working on, but maybe I just need to do it anyway. I guess we'll see how I feel in a couple of hours.

Done, Done, and Almost Done

I managed to keep incredibly busy over the weekend. I kind of felt like a shark, you know if they stop moving they die. Except to be honest most of my busy involved sitting, so I suppose the analogy is false. Anyway the first thing I finished was the square border piece. I was right to be worried about joining at the end. I had not prepared well and on top of that the board that came with my kit is far too thin to push the needles all the way down. I made do and got it done anyway, but I had learned some valuable lessons for the the next time. This did come off the board fine and once I trimmed up the loose ends, it looked pretty good.

Not one to rest on my laurels and since we were spending a lot of time inside hiding from the heat, I got right to work on the next pattern in the book, a small mat. It has to be small because the author made sure that all the patterns could be worked with just 12 pairs of bobbins. Good thing too, because that's all I have right now. I used what I learned from the border piece and this one worked up rather quickly. I know I still made some solid errors, but it still managed to come out, I also came up with an awkward plan to push in the needles that involved placing the board on another large piece of packaging foam from a computer box. It looked ridiculous and it was pretty awkward, but it got the job done and this one joined with little problem.

All this time I was also taking short breaks to crochet a tunic pattern that I liked as well as read a couple new books. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention more major car issues. So you know that joke I made about finding a wealthy benefactor to solve our money woes, it's becoming less of a joke. I digress though, there was in fact more lace. I got a little further than the picture shows on this one, but not much. This one is bucks point lace, so I was actually hesitant to start it. I thought that it would be too much, but I made one change and I started. I left off the gimp thread. I know that it makes a striking design within the lace, but it's just such a pain the arse to deal with. My plan is to see what it looks like when it's done and if I think it needs the gimp, I'll just sew it in. Sure it's cheating and I can't even say that no one will know because I just told you all, but whatever works, right?

Today is going to be busy in a different way. The kids still have a few more days of school and they also have college for kids classes for the next two weeks which we'll be walking to partly because of the afore mentioned car issues. I'm sure I'll still get a little lace time, but what I'll finish I don't know. Well, I'm off to it then.

Needle and Bobbin

Well, we did have quite a long morning of schooling followed by the kids awards ceremony and pot luck lunch at the park. I actually do enjoy seeing the diversity of all the families in our homeschooling program and of course it gives the kids a chance to be acknowledged among their peers. I do wish it were cooler outside when we did it all though.

When we got home I got back to work on the custom mask order. I had fewer problems with it once I got back into the groove. I mean I have made this piece dozens of times at this point, it has just been awhile. I actually managed to finish this early enough in the evening to sit down with the bobbin lace for a little while as well. I'll still need to so some finishing work on the mask, but I'll definitely have it the post by tomorrow morning.

The bobbin lace is still slow going, but I think I might have gotten the pattern mostly down. Unlike tatting, I really can't stop work anywhere though. I find that If I'm distracted before I finish an element, I can't remember which bobbin was going which direction. I generally end up undoing something to get my bearings again. I did turn one more corner last night after this photo. It went without incident, but I'm starting to get really nervous about joining the end and the beginning since I can see it coming soon enough.

I just wanted to also say thank you to everyone who has been commenting on my bobbin lace progress, the advice and encouragement has been wonderful! Hopefully I'll get to put more of that advice to use soon, but for now I'll just keep working on it with what I have and hoping for more tatting sales at the same time.

Tatting Again

What a truly lovely day. The day before it had reached 105º, but yesterday it was cool and windy all day. I had nearly every window in the house flung open to suck in all the cool. On top of that I got a message on etsy inquiring about customizing a mask with different crystals. After responding and assuming that it would go the way of most questions, the customer made the purchase! I know I shouldn't be so excited, but this is my first non-pattern sale in weeks and my largest piece sold in an even longer length of time.

So after schooling, instead of making bobbin lace, I still don't have a good verb for that, I got to tatting. First I had to plan out the crystals for the design. I used the opportunity to show the kids real world math application. I'm not certain they appreciated it, but I can't stop teaching all the time. I hadn't made this mask in so long that I made more that one mistake that required me to go back and fix something. That just means it's slower going than usual. I just started the second round of it when I had to wrap it up to make dinner. I cannot tell you how happy I am to be tatting and to have gotten an actual lace order in the shop. Business has been so abysmal lately that the only thing keeping me from complaining here about my stress level everyday has been focusing on making bobbin lace. It will continue to do so as I've no illusions that this is anything but an aberration from the norm. It would be nice if it were the beginning of a sea change, but I'll just keep on as is.

The kids have their end of year celebration today even though there is still five more days of school. That event should take up a mighty chunk of the day. The rest of it should be working on this mask. Any free time and it's back to the big bobbin lace piece. It is nice to have so much in queue to get done. I guess I really do hope there's change in the air. I much prefer making things to go to good homes, than for my own growing pile of useless lace.

Turned

As expected, I spent much of the day upstairs again while the child wrote her paper. I started the day of bobbin lace just a tad before I took this picture. I was determined to not give up on this one this time. That was hard to do though. I just kept getting one too many bobbins on one side or the other, not to mention the annoyance as the bobbins started hanging off the edge of my clearly too small of this nonsense, foam board. The design has to be turned so I pinned it in the middle. I guess what that really means is that I'm going to be annoyed over and over as I work on each side and the bobbins hang down over the edges.

By the end of the day this is where I was. I had successfully turned a corner though I was still having to undo an element here and there to get a bobbin back where it belongs. You'd think after repeating the same things over and over again that I'd eventually understand where the bobbins need to end up. At this point I see myself finally getting it as I finish the last side.

There is yet another paper for the the child to write today, so you can guess what I'll be doing. I don't mind of course, except that it is ungodly hot around these parts and I'm trying to avoid using the air conditioning as much as possible. This means it's a bit warm inside and especially so upstairs. As much as I like our house, it was not built for temperature consistency. No matter though, I'll bobbin lace(is there a better verb for that?) and she'll write. Only one week left of schooling now.

I've Almost Got It

It was another long day of schooling. The poor child has four different papers she has to write before the end of the school year and writing is probably her least favorite thing to do, after math of course. I've been spending much of the day upstairs with her to provide support and keep her on task. Luckily I can take the bobbin lace with me, so I worked on that all day. In this first picture here are some of the pieces I got done over the weekend. I was pretty proud of the way all of them are coming out now. I think along with the weight from the spangles, I got the match between the size of the pattern and the size of the thread giving me the right balance of negative and positive space.

The last challenge before I was going to try the square border, was this sampler style one. It started from a point which I completely botched the first go around mostly because I hadn't grasped the concept of twisting the thread together at the beginning. The illustration in the book made it seem like a complicated maneuver. I was drastically over thinking it. I also had problems coming and going from the zig zag last time. I would leave off bobbins in all the wrong spots making the next batch of the pattern not work right at all. I'm proud to say that this time everything ended up in the right spots.

After that was off the board, I started prepping for the big piece again. Someone had asked if bobbin lace was slower than tatting and though my experience is quite limited, there is at the very least, much more prep work for it. Pricking out the pattern and winding all the bobbins takes quite some time. I barely got started with the new piece before it was dinner time. I'm also, definitely still making mistakes on the big one. There are just so many elements bumped right up next to each other that I'm still playing the 'which bobbin where?' game. I'm already off to a better start though, so here's to getting through more of it today while the child continues writing paper and we all hide from the too hot sun for the day.

Weighted

Well, we had a bit of an unexpected hiccup on Friday. The husband's car decided that running was for chumps while he was at work. The running about to get the car to the shop kind of ate up a huge chunk of the day. Also we're still waiting to hear what might be wrong with it, so I'm feeling very fiscally frightened right now. You don't want to hear about all that though, unless of course one of you is hugely wealthy and want to gift me copious amounts of money to fix all my problems. No? Yeah, I'll just get back to the lace making.

The bobbins are a bit clunkier to work with now that they have the spangles, but with the addition of them and the use of some older, thicker cotton thread I had on hand, the pieces are working up faster and I think better. I just went back to some of the first pieces I worked on to see how it felt and I guess the verdict is yes, bobbins work better with weights on the bottom. Though the addition of what are probably too large spangles has more thoroughly illustrated the limitations of the foam board I've been using from the Lacis kit in lieu of a proper pillow. It does not have the room to hold all these bobbins and then weight kept tilting the board one way or the other a bit. Though the spangles do seem to keep the bobbins where they ought to be easier. So I suppose the minus is countered by the plus there.

I certainly won't be getting a pillow anytime soon (see 1st paragraph) and though it's been suggested that I could make my own, I'm fairly certain I would botch that job wholly. I'll just keep working with what I've got and after a few more practice pieces I'm going to tackle that damn square piece again.

We still have a week and a half of homeschooling left before summer, so I'll just keep working on the bobbin lace until that's over and I have even more time to kill. I'm hoping by then that either my etsy shop will start selling things again or I have some tatting epiphany that leads to new pieces. Really, I'd love both but for now, I'll just keep on as is.

Spangles

Oh, the frustration. I was getting ready to work on the bobbin lace piece and as I worked from the freshly turned corner I realized that I had made a mistake well before that turn. I hemmed and hawed over whether I could undo back around that corner and then I just grabbed the scissors and started cutting. Yep, I just lost it and said never bloody mind. I think I just need more practice on prior techniques before I'm going to get this one done right.

I was going to start another piece straight away when I remembered that I had planned on spangling my bobbins. I really had no idea what I was doing, but I did it anyway. I grabbed my Dremel and drilled holes in the ends, probably too big, but I did mention that I had no real clue. I'd seen plenty of spangles in photos so I knew they were rounded, usually with a larger element in the center, So I grabbed some flexible wire and my box of random beads from years of Fire Mountain grab bags. I tried my best to go with pairs colors, but like I said, the beads are random, so some match better than others, but none of them are exact pairs.

I got 20 of them made up yesterday so there's just four more to go. I'm down to the dregs in the bead box, so the rest might be less matchy, but I'm told that's not really the point of the spangles anyway. I also made sure that the construction of these spangles was done in such a way that I can eventually cut them off and do new ones should I acquire better beads for the purpose. I have no idea if these are too small, too big, too bulky, or too anything wrong, but I suppose I'll figure that out as I work with them. So today I'm hoping to get those last four done and then I'll pin something on the board to test them. Of course the best part is that I spent no money on this experiment, so if they turn out to be a failure, all I've lost is a day or so. Here's hoping the day wasn't a waste.

Mystery

Sorry for not writing yesterday. I honestly didn't think anyone would really notice, but at least one person did, and contacted me, and that actually kind of made my day. The reason I wasn't here was that my husband had a doctor's appointment at Stanford in the morning. It's a couple of hours away from us, in the morning, and through Bay Area traffic, so we left ridiculously early, too early to give me enough time to write a post. We also just make these appointments into family trips and this time we stopped by the Winchester Mystery House, It's one of those places that you see billboards for all over the highways growing up, but we just never went before.

It was a bit expensive will all four of us, but we made a day out of it and spent more hours than I thought we would touring the odd place. The kids quite enjoyed all the strange bits of architecture and the tour guides stories. You are only allowed to take pictures outside, so you get the door to nowhere and the front of the house which really makes the place look far more normal than it is.

Obviously I didn't get any tatting, nor bobbin lace done. We didn't get back home until dinner time and then it was pretty much straight to bed as we were pretty wiped out. I did work more on the bobbin lace on Monday though. I manged to turn one more corner in the piece. I'm not going to go into how very many times I've messed it up though. I'm just soldiering through to the end. I suppose that's the plan for today, just to make it through some more of the bobbin lace, so I can finish it and really evaluate my errors and work out how not to do them again. Other than that and schooling the kids, I'm looking forward to sitting about for the day to undo all that walking and adventuring from yesterday.

Needle and Bobbin

Let's see, After schooling I worked on the bobbin lace for awhile upstairs while the oldest child did research for a history paper on Zoroastrianism. I don't think she realizes that it's almost as hard for me to not help as she thinks it is to do this sort of work on her own. I love looking stuff up and learning new things. I know, it's a sickness. I did manage to get all the way to turning a corner in this bobbin lace piece while I didn't help and that wasn't so bad as I thought it would be. I mean I'm still have constant issues with which direction a bobbin ought to do when there are so many adjacent elements, but it's all just an issue of practice, right?

Once we were back downstairs for the day, I finally got to some tatting. This is a pair of barefoot sandals with silver beads. Even though it looks like a simple vine pattern, there are a lot of little stitch changes throughout to make the design curve the way I wanted it to. That just means that I have to really pay attention to where I am in the vine. And yes, I do find working with all this white thread a bit disconcerting. I did mange to finish the pair and get back to the bobbin lace again. Once I finish this piece in a few days or so, I'm going to take some advice and add some spangles to the ends of my bobbins. There are no holes in them, but I do have a drill, so I'll make do. Of course I'm also not overly fond of most of the colorful spangles I've seen thus far, so I'm likely going to try and get creative. That's all going to have to wait until I'm finished with this one though, so no use over thinking it now.

Thanks

Sometimes we plan busy weekends and sometimes they just become that without planning. This one was the latter. In the morning we attended a violin recital for my niece which was equal parts awesome and awful. In the late afternoon we went out to the movies with one of our favorite people. There wasn't much time between there, but what there was we used for errands. On Sunday we visited family and were visited by other family for much of the day.

So as you might have guessed I made little progress on anything. I did however, finish the bobbin lace piece I was working with on Friday. I'm not going to point out my most glaring mistake here. I am going to say that working around is much less fun than I hoped. I know that's most due to the equipment I'm working with, but I really can't do anything about that right now.

I did get a lovely email over the weekend with some wonderful bobbin lace advice. Of course I cannot find the email now to save my life...man, I hope my reply went through. Anyway, if I rudely did not email back, I wanted to say thank you so much for the helpful advice. I have yet to be able to put any of it into practice, but I will. Also I am glad to hear that tension in bobbin lace is like any other fiber art in that it just requires practice.

I do have a pair of tatted barefoot sandals to remake today, so I'll get those made as well as work on the current piece of bobbin lace I've got pinned up. It's currently kicking my butt a bit now so I may not have anything nice to day about it tomorrow. Time will tell.