Thursday, March 15, 2007

Bouquets of Bookmarks


Here is a picture of the 18 Purple & White bookmarks I'll be turning in at our Guild meeting 17-Mar. These are in addition to the dozen I turned in last month. Our Guild is working on a project to complete 175 bookmarks by our May meeting. The results of our efforts are on behalf of the Daughters of the Nile. We've had such excellent response from our local members that I'm sure we'll be able to meet our goal.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

One of these days (Part Deux)

Well, that didn't work out very well so it's back to the drawing board. One of these days, I'll try to get the URL loaded into my profile but for now ... the photo in the previous post was one taken about 9 years ago. Hair is a little shorter (at the present time) and definitely thinner on top. Glasses are updated too. Maybe I should get someone to take a newer picture, huh?

One of these days ...


I might learn how to do some of this. Since I'm not sure yet about posting a picture that has to be hosted, I am trying to follow the instructions in the "help" section of blogspot. Now, as they say, the proof's in the pudding and we'll see if I've been successful.

Saturday, March 3, 2007

ASC Fund Raising


Every year, the company where I work conducts an annual fund raising campaign for the Arts & Sciences Council. This year I was asked to help conduct a silent auction. We had lots of stuff in the auction from a fox-trimmed leather coat to a gourmet, home-cooked French meal. A number of crafty things were entered and raised just over $1,300.00US. These two tri-color bookmarks (shown on the left) represent 2 of the 4 similar ones that I donated. I also donated 4 single-color bookmarks based on one of Mary Konior's crosses in her Tatting with Visual Patterns book.

Purple & White Bookmarks

Our guild is currently working on a project that will create 175 purple and white booksmarks for the Daughters of the Nile. We've had excellent response and I've even contributed some. These are the ones I turned in at our February meeting. These were done by winding 2 size 80 threads onto a shuttle and then working as a single thread. One of the threads is a solid color, i.e., white, lavendar, purple and the other is a variegated using the same color scheme ... white to a purple.

Thursday, March 1, 2007

Variation from Sadie's book


Here is a much clearer picture of the variation from Sadie's book. Not sure what the little "speckled" line through the picture is but I'm sure learning as I go. This was a fun piece to make up. Sadie's book is a lot of fun to go through and inspires lots of things.
Sadie was actually inspired by a session of tatting with Rose Mary Peel of the UK; Rose Mary certainly does inspire lots along with Mary Konior. I have several of Rose Mary's Lacet Publications as well as a number of the patterns she's published on the Internet. Mary's books are excellent too; in fact, Tatting with Visual Patterns is one of my favorite books and stays in my travel stuff, along with Jan Stawasz's book. Someday ... too many patterns/thread SIGH too little time.

Instructions for inspired cabone-ring ornament


The picture on the left (of the first post) actually goes with the second paragraph. JaneE is wanting the pattern but it's really a no-brainer ... cause sometimes I have no brain! I'm going to have to have my digital camera fixed or (get a new one) as the pictures are TERRIBLE. Here is a scanned picture ... much clearer and the color is actually the thread color not the orange that my camera indicated.

I did 5 SCh stitches onto the ring, then used my shuttle to make a
R 5 - 5 - 2 -- 2 - 5 - 5
*SCh 5 (onto ring)
R 5 + (previous ring) 5 - 2 -- 2 - 5 - 5*
repeating between the asterisks around the ring to the last ring.
SR 5 + (previous ring) 5 - 2 / 5 + (first picot on first ring) 5 - 2.
The chain is a josephine chain using the "over" stitch of a double stitch. The length is just over the height of the ornament piece, then I just covered another, smaller ring, tied the thread ends and hid them.


Of course, instead of picots, beads could always be introduced. I think the easiest way would be to have the beads on a ball shuttle and use a false ring or self-closing mock ring (ala Shuttle Brothers) to move the beads into position.