My Apologies

Alright, I get it...I'm an impatient schmuck. I blame the Internet. It has taught me to expect instant gratification in all things and I should know better. I am glad that folks do in fact like my little moth and so here's a much larger picture of one to help with the pattern. You should be able to click on the image and get a really big version of it. This one was tatted onto a lapel pin with a ring at the end. I simply worked the head stitches on the ring and though it was a tight fit toward the end they all fit.

I was also lucky enough yesterday to sell my eye patch, so I remade one. The whole time I was working on it though I was called by a piece of prototype scrap on the table. I knew I wanted to try something with the the pattern and as soon as I got a minute I started fiddling with the design.

It started as a bit of the pattern for my petite goth bracelet. I got rid of the individual small rings in exchange for one big one. I thought I could just keep going with the design, but I miscalculated a bit and I needed to go back and fill in the small middle diamonds. The change to the bigger rings did one great thing though, even with the fill in work, this sucker worked up really fast and with the extra decorative picots it still looks plenty detailed. I haven't even pressed it yet, but I hope to get it finished up and listed today.

We had park day for my daughters home school yesterday and the middle of the week event I fear has put an odd spin on the week. I woke up this morning with an awful headache, I assume brought on by heat or allergies, so I wish I could say I had high hopes for today, but I don't. I also had a strange evening exchange with a potential buyer for my Masquerade mask. A discount was requested in exchange for advertisement to a rather sizable Internet audience. I hemmed and hawed over it, finally offered what I was willing to knock off and after another short exchange, I still have not heard back. I really am not sure which way I wanted this to go. Sure, I would love to sell the mask, but I really don't want to compromise on price. This is that whole, if I want to be respected as an artist, I can't sell myself short and I know how much work went into it. They also inquired about just borrowing the piece, but when tatted mask meet makeup, the mask looses. With my other masks washing them is easy and the mask recovers, but this one is coated in crystals and sequins over more wire, even hand washing does not seem practical. So there is every possibility that the whole exchange will have been for naught. Though I do now feel encouraged to start on another show piece of some sort...not today, but perhaps in the let down after the holidays that's what I'll do. I will of course let you know if it goes the other way and where it has gone, should it go and now I think I shall go.

Free Luna Moth Pattern

You know all that stuff I said I might get to today? I know you're terribly shocked to learn that I did none of it, not a bit. I think I just faded into a zone where I had nothing that really 'needed' cleaning or doing. My motivation to work was completely used up I suppose and I needed a recharge day. Lucky for you though I had already written out the moth pattern and I already had some pictures so here we go.

Tatted Luna Moth Pattern

Some words before we begin. I used size 10 thread and a size 5 needle. On the body portion of the moth I employed the use of reverse/downward facing/inward picots. There are a lot of names for the technique and you can find a simple diagram of them from Jane as a pdf here. They are formed by using the first half of the double stitch twice adding the picot and then using the second half of the double stitch twice. The pattern as I wrote it does not expand into this, just know that the last ds before and the first after the downward picot are formed this way. Also when the downward facing picots are joined to, you will need to pull your stitches off the needle being careful to leave the loop at the beginning of the ring to join to at the end. Joining to the downward picots is simply pulling the needle through them, do not tie, but keep working stitches. When you join close the ring everything should pull together just fine. You may of course omit the inward facing picots entirely and make the body round, but I think it looks nicer the other way.

One more note before I let you have the pattern, To make the wings symmetrical, I started both at the top and tatted the second backwards. I honestly have no idea what the proper term for that is and didn't make an effort to go look. All this means to me, is that I started each chain section with the second half of a ds, reduced the number of full stitches by one and ended each section with the first half of a ds. I found doing this let the wings lay better. Having tried it without doing this as well, there is little difference expect to the perfectionist I suppose so you don't 'need' to do this either. I think that's all the notes I have for you so on we go.

Large moth

body
r - 4ds 1 long picot(antenna) 4ds close, do not turn
r - 1ds 1small picot 2ds 1 small picot 2ds inward picot, 2ds inward picot 2ds picot 2ds join to reverse picot, 2ds join to reverse picot 2ds small picot, 2ds small picot 1ds close, tie and cut.

Cut antenna in two.

Wings
join thread to top small picot on body ch - 20ds close rw ch 7ds close rw ch 2ds 1p 7ds join to next small picot on body do not reverse. ch 7ds join to picot on last chain 7ds close rw, ch 5ds 1p 5ds close rw, chain 7ds join to last picot 15ds join to same picot on body.

repeat for second wing.

You can choose to omit the inward facing picots making a simple r of 1-2-6-6-2-1. This will make for a rounder body though.

Please do let me know if I've made any glaring mistakes so I might fix them and as always this pattern is for personal use or offline sale only. There is of course a small chance that I will add the small moth variation as well as that video of the downward facing picots at some point. I would however not hold your breath. Today, I have one mask left to finish and thank the gods I made a couple of sakes yesterday so I will be getting a couple of things remade as well. You have no idea how much more motivated I am during the day when I have sales to take care of or pieces to remake. Sure,I can survive on the energy between especially when I'm designing, but only for so long before that malaise I described above kicks in. One last note, if you are facebook sort of people, I will be having yet another giveaway and a Halloween sale through my fan page if and only if I manage to increase my fan/like numbers to 1000. I know it's gimmicky, but no numbers no giveaway. There are over 125 left to get, so again no breath holding, but I thought I'd give you a heads up. The link to the page is on the left of the blog.

The Smallest You Can Think Of

I just spent the last ten minutes all confused because yesterdays post was dated for Wednesday and I wondered where yesterdays post had gone. Then I realized that it was yesterdays post, but because I had started writing it the night before it dated it that day which is very confusing since I definitely posted it yesterday. Clearly I am not awake enough to deal with these inconsistencies so I'm just going to move on now.

Unfortunately, I don't really have much to show you. I spent the morning after schooling working on a pattern to shrink the moth I had made for a wedding. I was actually quite impressed with myself as my very first attempt seemed right on the money. This is just the prototype next to prototype of the moth on the lapel pin. I just guessed the new stitch count as I worked instead of attempting something as horrid as moth and save for one added stitch along the top wing the final piece was exactly the same. One of the mall moths was also put on a pin which means I just tatted the head onto the small ring.

After that I spent the rest of the tatting day getting a mask made. One sold during my stint on the front page of etsy but has yet to be paid for. I know I should not bother making it as it has already been over a day and I've heard nothing back, but it was a good excuse to get another mask on the 'ready to ship' list so I soldier on. I'll get the moths ready to list and ship this morning and hopefully finish up the mask so I can get the new idea tried out before I forget all about it. I wanted to try and put a frilly edge on the most recent design using the same technique I use in one of my bracelets only a little more extreme. Not sure how frilly will fly, but I want to try it out anyway. No other pressing plans this weekend other than a neighbors birthday party to attend so maybe I'll get around to some interesting something and some point. That was sure a lot of 'some' I just wrote there, but you get the idea. I'm rambling and I should just stop now so, well...I will.

On Sleep and Moths

So, something you might not know about me is that I've been a bit of an attachment parent. What does that mean? Well for us, it meant extended nursing, carrying my children in a sling rather than a stroller and for over six years now, a family bed. Last night I tried the impossible, to get my kids to sleep in their own room at night. They take their naps in there with no problem and they are just getting too big for us all to have a useful nights sleep together. I decided to sleep in there with them on the floor as a transitional thing. As you might have guessed, I did not have a great nights sleep. The oldest slept perfectly, the youngest woke up and wanted to cuddle once during the night and whimper cried a bit, but I think it shouldn't take too many floor sleeping nights to get them settled. This is where you tell me I'm right and this is really easy.

Back to the tatting, I sussed out the design for the graduated arm band and was pretty proud of myself, but the larger the piece looked like it was going to be, the higher I had to raise the price. When I shared that bit with the customer, though understanding, they were unable to agree to the price. I might still make one up to sell at some point just to see how it would turn out for certain. Then it was more Luna Moth madness. There were a couple more prototypes and then this one. It laid the way I wanted and a couple of inward facing picots pulled the body together nicely. There is just one more adjustment I made on another prototype and that was a tension thing to make the lower wings a bit straighter on the inside bringing the tips closer together. Now I wait until my perfectly hand dyed thread arrives and I get these made as well as a few other wedding pieces.

My goal today is to first of all stay awake, then I have a necklace to finish remaking and list. I still want to get a black version of my cat mask done, but I still haven't decided what color to make the eyes, green, I suppose.Oh and then there are the ears, do I use the dark gray for a subtle color difference or go all the way to pink...likely gray I think. I will likely not get to the mask yet and there are a few too many of them listed as custom orders anyway. I do think it's time to pull out the spider necklaces from last year and get them listed as everyone has mentally moved onto Halloween...yeah, who knows what I'll get done today, if I stay awake.

The Moth

It was one of those days where I was waiting for something to happen so I would have something to share with you in the morning, but it was a fairly dull day. Of course it started out with my cat unintentionally biting my index finger as I gave her medicine...hard. Then as I neglected my coffee to nurse my wounds, a fly decided to go for a swim in my coffee of course. Lucky for me there was a bit of coffee left in the pot, but this is how you set a negative tone for the day.

Then there was school and I spent much of the rest of the day working slowly on a mask because of my finger wound. The mask is going to take a Gothic cruise. I know, goths and a boat seem like an odd idea, but hey why not. I did get my new boutonniere pictures up and they do enhance the listing a great deal. It was a fabulous idea to get more colors made up to show in the listing, but I was just too busy, so I used pictures of the existing colors and called it a custom listing. I keep thinking I should take a large 'color choices' picture to link to in the shop, but that would mean I'd have to dig out all the balls of thread and take said pictures...yeah, I'm too lazy for that.

I've also got a couple of custom orders waiting for me to suss out design details. First I have a wedding that wishes for Luna moths. I could have just phoned it in and used the simple butterfly pattern that we all know, but I decided to go ahead and try for moth. The first go was not it, so I stopped after the first side. Then I tried again and while this one is definitely almost there, I think the top wings need to be a bit bigger and I wish I could get the body to flatten into itself a bit better. Though I haven't pressed it yet and I can fix that bit there.

I'll probably fiddle with this design a bit more this morning and then I've got another bride to take care of. This one is a pair of long gauntlets and so I get to work out the best way to graduate a design over 8 inches to look natural. This is the same challenge I faced when making the gloves which I stopped doing from stress. The one I worked on is still about here somewhere though, so if I figure out this arm thing well, I might pull it back out and try to finish it. Then I've still got a couple of pieces waiting to be remade. I do love being busy when it has nothing to do with cleaning anyway.