Tales of An Intrepid Tatter

恭喜发财

Wishing you a 

Happy  Chinese New Year 

Of The Goat!

Now for my adventure in Korea-Town:

There I was, standing in line with my store-made Kimchee at the Korean Supermarket, when I saw an unusual item beside of the check-out line.

The little plastic thing was too intriguing not to pick up. There were a multitude of them hanging, in a strip. I managed to free one and was baffled to see it was an earpick... hmmmm.

Well, for $2.00 I knew I couldn’t go far wrong; I was remembering the photo I stored in my tatting brain that promised possibilities. 

This photo from Jan Stawasz’s 

book and has always attracted me:

 

Did Jan use it as a pick or a hook? Anyway, I immediately remembered it when I saw the earpick.

When it was my turn to pay, the woman at the cash seemed puzzled and asked if I wanted the earpick. I suppose not many of my peeps customarily purchase these little lovelies.

With as much nonchalance as I could muster I assured her that I most certainly did. I smiled. She did not. Off I went, clutching my kimchee and a new potentially tatting toy.

Upon arriving home, I pulled out my trusty metal-cutting pliers, chopped off the “ear” part, then filed the end smooth.

It was the size I had envisioned. Crochet hooks are all to wide for using to standardize picots. I have imagined that might have been Jan’s use for his instrument.

I tried it out...

It worked reasonably well on this #40 to make all the picots pretty much the same size. It stretched them a tad too large for my liking. 

However, on a motif with a lot of picots it could work. Eyeballing many, many picots on a piece for me doesn’t produce the best uniformity. This could be a possible remedy. Not sure about #80 though. Might make the picots way to large.