Oops

It happened. I made a bad design choice and went with it for a while. Then of course I realized what a horrible mistake I had made and the scissors came out. Snip, snip. It took a good half an hour to then pick out all the now freed knots and remove the error. I know I could have pretended that this had not occurred and perpetuated the myth that I actually know what I'm doing here, but that seemed disingenuous. I can make quality mistakes on a regular basis. In fact, I'm quite shocked that it took this long to get to one with this piece.

I didn't stop there though. I was was tempted to call it a day because either the allergies or the medication I'm taking to combat them had wholly sapped my energy, but I had to give it another go. I rethought my approach to the next round and kept it going. It's reached about 15.5 inches at this point and it actually getting a little unwieldy to carry about with me. I'm using a large loop design that is honestly much better suited for the center of a piece than out on the edge like this. Keeping the loops large enough requires that I lay the piece out on my lap and gently close each loop while it's on a surface to make sure it's not snugged too close.




As the evening wore on, I changed tactics again and
now I'm going back to small loops, though I think it'll be straight onto something like fancy side loops. I don't really know at this point. I'm just determined to keep it up. It already larger than any Armenian lace piece I've done, but I've still tatted larger pieces, so I guess I'm trying to outdo myself at least.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Things were going so good yesterday. I was hard at work tatting up the pieces for the matching ankle corsets. I had decided due to fog, that I wouldn't even bother dong the finishing work on the necklace. Anyway, I'm doing both pieces at the same time. Well really I'm doing one center motif, then the other followed by the smaller motifs around each one. See all that progress there.

Then as I started the second rounds of the smaller motifs, my mistake showed itself. I had attached every single one of the smaller motifs in the wrong orientation. At first I thought, well maybe it won't make that big a difference and I'll just  make some small adjustments. So I went ahead and did the second round on a couple of them to see. Turns out I was really wrong, the difference was significant and the results would have been an entirely different looking piece.

Since I'm making these to match the necklace, that wouldn't do at all, so out came the scissors and I clipped them down to the center motif. The sense of defeat kept me from picking them back up and starting over. Instead I just read my novel, which is incredibly near the end, and ignored the lace for the rest of the day. Thankfully the day was already close to over, so I didn't lose too much time.

Today I'll start fresh, pay more attention and hopefully get these made up. No sun is really expected today either though, so it will still be a while before I finish up the necklace and get it in the shop. I also thought perhaps the motif might make an appearance as a new lapel pin or hair pin. I also have yet to just make it up as a plain pendant. Maybe I'll just get all these pieces made up and photograph them at the same time. Then I can put them all in the store and pretend it's a 'collection'. That sounds fancy, right? Who knows, I do have to get them all made first and that should take a while so I can decide all that later.

Oops

I sat down after schooling yesterday and I picked up the scrap of lace that is slowly becoming a necklace. My plan was to contemplate the final step and work it up on the side that's already done and then set it aside to work on a final version. That's when I finally saw my mistake. Can you spot it? Yep, the motifs on the new section are facing the wrong way. The photo is actually the backside and the two newest motifs  added to it, including the one at the top of the photo are wrong. This wouldn't have been a problem with the first version of the motif, but these have joins between the larger rings and lock those small ones to one side.

 Even though I had already decided that this was going to be a prototype piece, finding this mistake made me so annoyed with myself that I couldn't concentrate on the new part. All I could see was the mistake and if I kept looking at it, I was going to waste time ripping it apart and starting that whole last section over. So, instead I put it down and decided to distract myself with some knitting and just come back to it tomorrow, which is today, so hopefully I suppress my instinct to destroy and create now that I've better accepted my error.

The knitting went well though and I managed some reading and some catching up on recorded television shows. I'm making another pair of boot cuffs because I have more leftover yarn from the family's glove projects. They make a nice distraction and they knit up fairly quickly so even with getting back to the tatting, I should be able to knit up the second cuff today. I finished the first one while I cooked dinner last night. For some reason this faux cable pattern I found on raverly makes me happy. Sometimes it's the little things.

So here's hoping that today's tatting time is more productive. I suppose that it couldn't be any less productive than getting nothing done, so there's that.