Happy New Year, Tat-Land!

The last post of the year and what better way to tie it all up but in a pair of little, beaded socks for the Mini-Boss, whose arrival will seem even closer tomorrow, with the beginning of a new month in a brand spanking new year!

Lady ShuttleMaker's Peach Pandora,#20

and a vintage border pattern from... ?

I scanned it ages ago and now forget!

The border of these socks brings my Motif Challenge number to 13. Not bad!
Anon,

Loving Dr. Von Threadmore's Gorgeous Green

Lucky for me, this time I had enough of Krystledawn's  new HDT on the shuttles to finish the motif, which is much larger than I thought it would be.The finished piece is over four and a half inches across. I seriously fretted towards the end...

But, no worries!

The pattern is The Second Day of December from Lene Bjørn's 24 Snowflakes in Tatting.  I used green and silver beads that appear all silver when tatted.  This was very satisfying to tat, perhaps because of the larger dimensions.

The green and teal tones in the thread are beautiful.  I have not used a lot of green and I would order this colour again, but not this kind of thread! This was a test run for the good Doctor, as she was perfecting her bubbling experiments and this happens to be a soft - maybe #20 Cébélia, which was brutal to un-tat;: it kept splitting. But, the colour...Yum!

The good Doctor had warned us about this;  I am just giving you an update! Her colour rocks!

As usual, it took me hours to figure out the directions and I tatted the whole thing backwards - but how would anyone but me know that!  Oh, I do so love dyslexia!

Anon,

After A Week of Calamitous Tatting...

It may not be beautiful, but it is complete, and there is the miniscule, remaining remnant of Sherry's HDT!
Anon,

As Tiny Tim said, "A Merry Christmas to us all; God bless us, every one!""

I wish you all a wonderful Holiday Season,
whatever holiday you hold dear.

While in NYC, I had a dreadful tatting time.  Everything I touched went wrong.  I did more un-tatting than the good stuff, and I have NOTHING to show for all the hours!

The above was to be the first part of a bauble decoration that I intended to finish in New York.The night before my early a.m. flight, I spilled the bottle of beads all over my apartment floor!

Although only half the container escaped, it felt like I had dropped a milk container of little, red beads; I thought I would never be able to pick them all up!  Took well over an hour to clean up....

Needless to say, I was so disgusted with the project after the midnight mess that I left it behind.

I packed this pattern by Mary Konior, taken from an early book that had only written directions - no diagram.

Can you believe I wasted a whole skein of beautiful HDT - Himalayan Poppy by LadyShuttleMaker, trying with absolutely NO success to tat this?

I haven't the heart to post pictures of the rejected bits and pieces that I have since thrown away.  Sigh.....  I should have put away my shuttles till the dark cloud passed, but no, I stubbornly kept on  trekking - creating one atrocious disaster after another, laying waste to all Sherry's lovely thread.

The only bit of that thread that remains is the centre of one of Jon's snowflakes that I have managed to almost  finish, after much retro-tatting.

Those chains that lead in and out of the cloverleaf had me baffled for ages.  I just cannot ever do the directional thing correctly the first, second or even third time around.  I always have such difficulty with this.

However, it is nearly done and I will tell you I will never use this thread  again: Oren Bayan Salmaz #12. Loathe it!  So soft and floppy and difficult to undo. Yech!

Ohhh, I am so grumpy tonight!
Anon,