Tatterific Thursday

It's a doily! It's a basket! It's Disaster Doily!

I'm hard at work on my first commission, and I could not be more excited! The order is for a black doily somewhere between 5 and 8 inches. Aside from that, I have complete artistic free rein, and I've been trying to make good use of it. There were a few mockups in cheap old crochet cotton that helped me work out the second round. And then there was that little basket disaster...

At least now I know how to make a nice covering for Christmas tree ornaments! You never know when that might come in handy...or when I might need, you know, a tatted bra or something...it could happen, right?

Now with better behavior!

Fortunately I figured out the solution, and once I did, it seemed so obvious that I'm surprised I didn't think of it sooner. The clovers in the second round simply didn't need to be joined at the sides. This gave me nice, flat, well-behaved spokes. Or at least, they will be well-behaved, come blocking time. That's the exciting thing about lace--that is, if by exciting, you mean that you enjoy working on something that looks like crap on a string until you've cut it, knotted it, drowned it, and smashed it under a good heavy book. I like to think that the originator of the blocking process discovered it after months of frustration with an agonizingly complex lace project just begging to be drowned as punishment. Then, in my little fantasy, the punished project was stuffed under a book alone in the corner without supper. One day, while tidying, this Original Blocker discovered to her delight that the errant project had mended its ways, and she permitted it to rejoin society as an object of beauty and joy for all that beheld it.

As you can tell, this project is going to involve my (Least) Favorite Thing Ever: weaving in ends! I still haven't found any reliable method for dealing with them, although now there are some I can manage to tuck under the stitches while I'm working the project. Still, remembering to do so, and not getting frustrated enough to give up on doing so, both present additional challenges! How do you deal with ends? Share your ideas in the comments!

The new bracelet, in Lizbeth 20, colors 604 and 142.

Taking a bit of a break from the commission, I started a new bracelet this evening. It's a second one based on the belt pattern in "The Complete Book of Tatting" by Rebecca Jones. If you don't have this book, I definitely recommend it. It provides a good solid background in tatting history and techniques, and provides a wide range of useful patterns that should at the very least cover your basic and intermediate tatting needs. It was also my first tatting book, and I still find its charts to be the clearest and easiest to understand.

That's all for your Thursday dose of tatting goodness. I'd love to see your projects! Drop me a link. Until next time--stay knotty, my friends!