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.
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I was all ready to get some tatting done and then I checked on the pieces I thought I needed to make. Turns out they were all pieces that I had already made extras of in the past. I of course used this as an excuse to just work on the knotted lace doily for a while. I started out the day by pressing the medallions that I had made so far. In between laundry and dishes, I got about five more made during the day and apparently forgot to take any pictures of the progress. I did measure the piece though to see what the final dimension will likely be. It seem like it's going to top out between 13 and 14 inches. I also started to think about maybe framing it for the wall when I'm done. It's certainly full of mistakes, but it still looks rather neat I think.
