Tea Time

An impending August birthday provided the impetus for me to revisit Tea is for Tatting by Martha Ess.  The tiny square teapot, in Lisbeth 20:

This seemed a good opportunity to use a single shuttle joined split ring to climb out of the first clover round.   T’ain’t perfect, but it served the purpose well.  I also added two Catherine wheel joins to the chain that forms the lid, so as to avoid the color blip of a lock join.  (I must confess to having become a total junkie for all mock double stitch applications – simply cannot get enough of them!)

The smart person would have kept it simple and tatted a padded tail of some kind.  Instead, I used a strip from Bobbie Demmer’s Vintage Bag Pattern to form the body of the bookmark.

Long story short, what should have been an evening’s  tat, took a number of days; and then I very nearly mangled the whole thing when I had a magic thread disaster at the end.  I’ll spare you a photo of my poor blackened thumbnail, which got bent right back when the thread end that was stuck suddenly slid through.  Ouch!  Who knew that magic thread could be hazardous to one’s hands?  It would appear that, even in tatting: ‘power is nothing without control’.

When you can’t see the forest for the trees

My first attempt at the homework for lesson 4 of Sharon’s Design-Tat class ended in a train wreck.  We were to tat an 8-ring and chain center and then build a second round onto it, while being mindful of creating interesting negative space; with the design restriction of attaching to the center only on alternate chains.  Within minutes of downloading the homework from the internet, I had a workable sketch, which I then proceeded to ignore completely and took off on a tangent trying to suspend clovers in the space between attach points…  After several hours of tat and snip, I had this

Quite discouraged,  frustrated, tired and hungry, I put the work aside.

The most valuable thing that I learned from this lesson was that if I cannot make a reasonable sketch of my idea, there is no way the tatting is going to head in that direction.  So, after a fresh session with  pencil and paper, I came up with this:

In my sketch, each arm was only two  internal rings long.  Had I adhered to that, the whole would have been less leggy (didn’t quite learn my lesson, did I?).  It is not yet clear whether we are going to be asked to tat a third round.  If so, the longer arms will give me  all kinds of room to add some interesting flourishes and salvage this motif from pathetic mediocrity.  Provided I remember to sketch it first.  Stay tuned…

Post the shuttle? add a half stitch? or both?

Tatting may be no more than a collection of rings and chains made up of double stitches, but making the work look really uniform requires more than a little finesse.  Krystledawne revisited the ongoing debate as to which method of finishing and closing a ring yields the most pleasing result in this blog post, and asked to see samples tatted by other people, so as to be able to compare results.

Without further ado, the same sequence of rings in the same order:

From left to right:

1) shuttle not posted prior to closing

2) shuttle posted prior to closing

3) additional first half stitch, post and close

4) additional first half stitch and close

5) additional second half stitch, post and close

6) additional second half stitch and close

My observations are similar to Krystledawne’s, but my final choice differs.

I continue to use option number 2 because, if done exactly correctly, the ds will not roll inward, and the ring is rounder.  The trick is in controlling the pinch, so that the core thread does not shift when you begin the next element.  I use the working thread exclusively to snug the first ds of the next element.  If that element is a chain, I do not slide the newly made stitches snug against the ring until I have two or three of them.  This usually prevents the roll.  In my sample, there is just a hint of the beginning of an inward roll on the last ds of ring 2.  Long story short, getting this right is endlessly challenging and can alleviate the boredom of a simple sequence of rings and chains.

My second choice would be option number 6.  The extra second half stitch rolls neatly to the back and pretty much disappears.  I use this method when I know that making the element that follows will lead to a fair amount of tugging on the core thread and I want to be sure that the last ds will not roll.  An example would be if I know that I am going to be joining to the base of the ring: the additional thread bulk will pull on the core and cause the last ds to roll inward.  Using option six effectively locks the ring and prevents this from happening.

In the final analysis, the correct choice will be the one that yields the best looking result for the individual tatter’s style and tension.  I look forward to reading what others have concluded in this matter.

Perhaps we need a Star Wars/Star Trek type salutation to use among ourselves; along the lines of: ‘May your rings be round and flat and your shuttles full’

9/21/09 ETA:  Since this post was published, it has been brought to my attention that Tatters Across Time, Inc. neither recognizes, nor approves the term “posting” to describe the action of dropping the shuttle through the ring, toward the back of the work, prior to closing.

Extracting order from chaos

If asked why they tat, knit, crochet or stitch, the vast majority of needleworkers would likely respond that it is an excellent form of relaxation.  We cannot control, or indeed maintain perfect order among, the many moving parts that comprise our life but, in craft, we can.  Each little stitch or bead that slips neatly into place within a whole is not only a means of creative expression, but also a manifestation of our control over the medium.  This, in and of itself, is extremely satisfying and empowering.

It might be hard to believe (sometimes I hardly believe it myself) by I am still here and still tatting.  The weeks since the fire have been spent in upheaval as I divide my time between Idaho and Santa Barbara, living out of a carry-on bag, while we figure out the logistics of moving the remainder of the beef herd to summer pasture.  There were many obstacles to overcome, and now it is almost too late, as temperatures soar to the triple digits  in the Central Valley.  Do I dare hope that it will all finally come together?

The only tatting that seemed to soothe my agitated psyche was T.A.T. related and I cannot show it to you here.  You’ll just have to take my word for it that my split chains are now beautiful and seamless links between one round and the next.  Somehow the intense focus required to master the phase II curriculum, which is presented in the form of small sampler projects, was the right thing for this dislocated time.

A small observation for those of you who joined Krystledawne in the May challenge to finish phase I: the Apprentice phase is about completing projects to demonstrate basic skills; Artisan is about fully assimilating more advanced techniques into one’s repertoire.  Fox and I started phase II at the same time, and I intended to do my best to keep pace with her as she worked through the projects.  As usual, she pulled ahead of me quite quickly.  Somehow, around the sixth project, I changed my approach to the work.  All of a sudden, it occurred to me that I wanted to make a second version of most of the samples and that, invariably, the second one was better – a lot better – which gave me great satisfaction.  Then I added further experiments with the techniques involved, and had even more fun.  Those of you who choose to tackle the second phase will obviously find your own rhythm (that is the whole point of a program without time limits), but I thought it might be useful to point out that Fox had a small crisis of confidence right after completing the program, while I have had, and transcended, mine in the course of  the work (as early as the second project).  Not that this will be the last time I hit the wall in tatting…  This is, without a doubt, the most challenging and frustrating form of fiber manipulation that I have tried thus far.

In between T.A.T. projects, there has been more AT thread doodling.  Working with two colors at once is actually very addictive.  Now ordinary rings seem terribly blah.

Of course, I could not resist tossing in a split chain and three single shuttle split rings (two used as a color-bearing bridge between elements, the other to hide ends).  Can you spot them?

Off to the airport again…

My workspace

Presented, as is, in response to Krystledawne’s challenge

Taking thread play to the next level

So you think you have a handle on rings and chains, do you?  Yeah, so did I.  That is until last weekend when Gary Houtz stood all my preconceptions on their ear with an introduction to Alternate Thread techniques, as outlined in the Shuttle Brothers new book: Tatting GR-8 Alternate Threads.  Now, we get to tat rings and chains at the same time, in multiple colors!   Below, are the doodles I made in class:

AT and dsop doodles

If the motif on the lower right appears to be made up of what you think of as a ‘daisy picot’, you are right.  The Shuttle Brothers call this technique: dsop, or double stitches on picots.  As you know, the petals of a daisy picot/dsop are usually made of direct tatted stitches (unflipped) However, I bet you didn’t know that you can also flip the stitches of a daisy picot, thus switching colors and producing a two-color petal.  (Yes, you read that correctly: flipped and unflipped stitches are formed on or by the ring thread and the ring will still close correctly.  I’ll admit that this is a bit of a mind bender at first.)

The doodle on the left has an inner ring of petals that would stand up if it were not being squashed in the scanner.  Done in yellow or orange, with more petals, it would make an outstanding sunflower.

The thing that I find most appealing about alternate thread work is that it is very colorful and adds a bit of density and interest to a basic tatted motif (much as block tatting can really punch up a simple design of rings and chains).  The book contains many examples of AT applications that are sure to jump start your creativity, and it is a worthwhile addition to one’s tatting library.  Follow the link above to order the book directly from Gary or Randy.

Gently wheeling up to a split chain

When faced with a task that seems too difficult, there are three options: run away from it, break it up into manageable bites or, gradually creep up on it.  Me, I generally opt for the ‘run away’ category; except in the matter of tatting, where I am fearless and determined.

In recent weeks, there has been a bit of sighing and moaning in tatland about the slightly unwieldy nature of the split chain (pdf).  If one does not use them often, it is difficult to remember how; and then it is awkward and fumbly in the execution.  However, the general consensus is that it is worth it not to have to cut and tie.

In this case, I decided to use the ‘creep up on it’ approach.  It had not escaped my notice that the Catherine Wheel join (pdf) formed the double stitch in exactly the same manner as it is formed in the split chain and, a big plus, did not cause the pronounced dip in the chain that one gets with a lock join.  So, I decided to start using this join wherever I wanted a nice clean line and, in so doing, have become completely at ease with the mechanics of executing a split chain.

Below, you see Ruth Perry’s new Celtic Cross pattern (pdf), in Lizbeth size 20, color #s 634 and 635.  In the outer round, I used Catherine Wheel joins in all but 4 places (where I wanted a sharp dip in the chain).  If my technique were perfect, the stitches that link to the picots of the previous round should be indistinguishable from their neighbors.  Not quite there yet, but the outline of the cross is nice and smooth.

I wish you all a very happy holiday weekend.  There will probably not be a blog post next Tuesday because I will be on the road to Idaho.

Two calves

First, the tatted one, designed by Christel Weidmann, from her book: Tatting Farm Animals.  The thread is Olympus 40, color # 455.

Next, the real thing:  ‘Edgar K.B. Montrose’ at 2 and a half months

I would say that Christel has effectively captured the essence of a calf.  She is one very talented designer!

Jesusita fire: was there – fled the flames – passed up the T-shirt

Yes, my friends, by the end of the afternoon on Sunday, there was a commemorative T-shirt.  A colorful and bold graphic, with flames licking up and over the shoulder, on a ground approximately the color of adobe.  Said T-shirt was being peddled out of the back of a truck to firefighters from out of the area, who were departing the Live Oak Fire Camp.

By now, you have all seen the media coverage of our third big wildfire in the space of less than 12 months.  That is definitely two too many!  This time, it was not quite as close a call as last July – when the Gap fire burned right up to the road on our north boundary.  However, things did get bad enough that we had to evacuate the cattle and pets to the other side of the Santa Ynez range.  Had the dry and windy weather pattern not broken on Saturday, we probably would have lost at least a portion of the farm.  The bad news is that the Maria Ygnacia Creek drainage is about the only fuel rich terrain left to burn on this portion of the South Coast, so the next wildfire will be directly at our back door and this farm the last line of defense before it sweeps down into the neighborhood.

You don’t need to hear about the smoke and leaping flames but, as fellow craftspersons, you might be curious as to what I deemed essential to take with me when I fled.  I have always read disaster preparedness lists with some degree of skepticism.  Three days’ worth of clothing, water and food is only going to be enough if you get to come home again.  If you lose your house, you are going to need a lot more than that!

As some of you know, I divide my time between North Idaho and the Central Coast of California.  Twelve years of moving every six months or so has given me an edge for just this type of situation:  I know exactly what I generally deem essential to my comfort and happiness, and how many of those possessions will actually fit in the car.  What I did not know was how I might react emotionally to having to pick up and leave on short notice.  I feared that there would be much indecisive pacing and hand wringing.  There wasn’t.

Just before sunset on Thursday, it became abundantly clear that the fire was headed our way at great speed.  We gathered all the cattle and pushed them down to a holding pen by the creek.  Another check of the progress of the fire from the top of the property confirmed that we did not have a lot of time.  Bill loaded the first group into the stock trailer, while I started packing some possessions up and loading the car.  What did I pack?  Two suitcases of clothing (one for me and one for Bill), file box, checkbooks and paperwork, jewelry, my tatting thread, tools, and modest tatting library.  There was a moment of hand wringing in front of the knitting stash (I would normally load one box with needles, tools and books and another with yarn) but, with the suitcase for Bill and all the peripherals for the pets, there would not be room.  In the end, I grabbed only the current project (Theodora), the Signature needle set, and my favorite Green Mountain Knitting bag.  I also packed the computer, toiletries, 4 gallons of drinking water, and a couple of grocery bags of food.

Somewhere in the midst of all this, Bill appeared, to announce that he had had  terrible trouble getting the trailer loaded (the cattle – confused by the hour and irregular loading setup – kept popping back out of the trailer) and feared that he no longer had time to make two trips over to the valley with the livestock.

This town is not our home and we have very few friends here.  However, it turns out that it truly is the quality, not the quantity, that is important.  I immediately picked up the phone and called the one person I knew could help, and would not hesitate to do so.   The man is an amazing individual: a ‘real deal’ cowboy, who specializes in rounding up wild cattle.  He raises beef and bucking horses, and operates a bulldozer, preparing land for vineyards or, at times like this, making fire breaks.  A generous person, with a heart of gold, he had come to our rescue last year when we had 5 renegade steers on the loose and rampaging from farm to farm through the suburbs of Santa Barbara; and had also provided pasture when we had to evacuate the cattle during the Gap fire.  Within minutes, another stock trailer was on its way over from the valley.

While these preparations went forward, the smoke got ever thicker, as a light rain of ash misted down through the spray of all the sprinklers and rainbirds that we had running to thoroughly soak the hilltop on which the house sits.  After the unpleasant heat of the day, the mist felt delightfully cool and refreshing – even if it did tend to blacken the clothes and face.  The almost full moon was hanging deep red in a gunmetal grey smoke shroud.  I did take the time to admire it, but did not take any pictures.

I think it was around 1 a.m. that I decided I was as ready as I was going to be.  So, with no idea where I would go when I left, I took a shower and ate a bowl of cereal.  Bill and our cowboy friend set out over the San Marcos pass with two full stock trailers around 2 a.m., and I followed a few minutes later.  An irrepressible  optimist, I started the dishwasher on the way out the door!  By that time, they had closed off access to the upper portion of the San Marcos Rd, so I had to go the long way around up the coast and through Gaviota pass on highway 101.  Everywhere along my route, I came across people in cars that were loaded to the gills with personal possessions and pet carriers.  Almost all of them were driving slowly, in a daze, while they dialed various numbers on their cell phone; trying to find somewhere to go.  All the hotels in Solvang were sporting ‘No Vacancy’ signs.  Apparently, they were full before the evacuation because of a large marathon event scheduled to take place on Saturday.  At 3:30 a.m., I arrived at the cowboy’s house and was reunited with Bill, who showed me to the guest bedroom (the cowboy had gone to bed to grab two hours of sleep before having to go back to work, but had invited us to stay as long as we needed to).  Bill then informed me he was going back to the farm and would remain there until the fire got really close, so he could turn the irrigation back on around the house as he was leaving.

Sleep was impossible.  I was way too keyed up, and so was the cat, who agitated endlessly to go home.  So, I lay quietly in the peace of a strange house, trying to wrap my mind around the situation.  It seemed as if more than two hours elapsed before there were pale aqua light shapes between the limbs of the giant oak outside the window.  Then a clock/radio went off in another part of the house.  After 20 minutes or so of movement and activity, all went quiet again.  I crept out to explore my surroundings…

Sweet!  I found myself in a charming old California ranch house, framed by large oak trees and  perched on a bench overlooking the river valley.  There were horses in the field below, and wild turkeys and a pea hen cruising the yard.  The house itself was spare, masculine, and tidy, and completely in keeping with the personality of its owner.  The cowboy décor and art were genuine, and related to a life spent in the saddle (for example, the reata coiled on top of the television was well used, not just for show), and there were lots of rodeo photographs and some trophies.  I could hardly believe my luck to have been able to evacuate to such a perfect spot!  Without network television  or internet connection, there was nothing to disturb the peace (apart from the constant helicopter traffic to and from the fire).

In the course of the next couple of days, there was some time for tatting, in between tending the cat, the parrot and the cattle and meeting some very interesting people at the Fire Camp.  Given the setting, teapots, doilies or edgings would have been really out of place; it seemed only right to start this:

from Tatting Farm Animals by Christel Weidmann

The fire was stopped just about half a mile to the east of our eastern canyon rim, and a mile north of our north line. We were allowed to come back to the farm on Sunday evening.  Now to clean up an incredible mess of ash, soot,  and debris… and continue to prepare for the next fire.

The taming of the rolling double stitch

Look around your world pretty baby
Is it everything you hoped itd be
The wrong guy, the wrong situation
The right time to roll to me                – Roll to Me by Del Amitri

Just can’t seem to  get this tune out of my head as I struggle to overcome my latest tatting hurdle.

A couple of months ago, the Shuttlebirds Tatting Guild’s newsletter included a fun  little questionnaire entitled:  “What about your tatting bedevils you the most?” (sorry, Patti, I didn’t return it).  Examples given included: misreading the pattern, miscounting double stitches, forgetting a picot, putting a picot in the wrong place, finding a mistake after closing the ring, etc.  Nowhere in the list did I find my personal bête noire: the rolling double stitch.  Now I do not know if this the proper term for the phenomenon because I have never seen it discussed  in a book or on the internet.  However, it is not possible to produce impeccable tatting without addressing this issue; whether it be consciously or not.

All of you gentle readers who consistently produce impeccable tatting can stop reading right here and move on.  You already know the answer to the problem.  There are other, more interesting, blog posts awaiting you.

Those of you who are still reading: bear in mind that I have been tatting for just eighteen months, and most of what I have learned I have gleaned from books, the internet, and the apprentice phase of T.A.T.  In short, I am no master tatter – just an aspiring artisan.

Once the new tatter has mastered basic rings and chains and is able to produce fairly even stitches, the next thing to address is leaving a minimal thread space between elements.  It is in closing up these gaps, that one can inadvertently cause the last stitch of the ring just completed to scrunch and roll forward; sometimes to the point where the stitch almost disappears.  This is not impeccable tatting!  I knew what was happening but, since the roll forward occurred after I had left the ring and was not very apparent until I was quite a bit further along, I was powerless to remedy the problem.

That is until one day a few months ago when I was waiting for a surveyor on the east rim of the canyon. Taking in the lovely panorama of the coast and islands kept me entertained for a little while.  But then I started rifling through the pockets of my jean jacket in pursuit of some diversion.  Ah!  A nice long length of pretty blue baling twine.  I wrapped it around my hand and began finger tatting a 10 ds ring.  Closed the ring and began a chain. Aha! I actually saw the last double stitch of the ring roll forward as I pulled a little too hard on the core thread starting the chain.  By the time the surveyor arrived, I had a tatted fob made of baling twine and a deeper understanding of the rolling ds.

The remedy to the problem, as is so often the case, lies in the pinch itself.  Enough pressure must be maintained on the ring just completed to prevent the core thread from shifting as one snugs the first stitch of the next element against it.  Care must be taken to use the working thread to snug the new stitch against the base of the ring, while keeping the core thread taut; then keep those threads exactly where they are while forming the second half of the stitch.  There is probably also an optimum angle at which to hold the work to accomplish this, but I am still exploring that theory.

What is torturing me this week is that there is another layer to this.  I can produce a pretty circle of rings and chains without allowing stitches to roll but, adding more  horizontal pressure to the ring by attaching a subsequent round by means of a lock join will also cause the last double stitch to roll!

The lock join has caused the ds to roll

So, I must figure out just how much slack to leave in the ring in order to prevent this.  In the meantime, what started as an exercise in direct method block tatting (pdf) of a single motif in two shades of pink  (Lizbeth 20 in 626 and 627) appears to be growing into a doily.  Just one more motif… Surely, I’ll get it right this time!

Marguerite by Judith Connors

What bedevils you about tatting?