A last look at Christmas

Wendy is getting ready for Valentines day. Valentine's yo-yos anyone?

Connie has been tagged to post 7 weird or random facts and she posted her 17th and 18th motives all finshed, blocked ad looking pretty now next to their original pictures and I missed them, so here they are now.

Shay has posted a kitty photo for 2008.

Joyce shows us the tatting items she sent to Ellen for the exchange. Besides the tatted ornament Joyce did 2 little crocheted bags and a larger fabric bad appliqued with a tea cup to hold it all.

I have a new digital camera so maybe there's a podcast in the future.

Snowy shows us her shuttle collection and gives us the history on them. Much more interesting than mine, but I'll still stick to my Aeros. I love tatting with them and the noise doesn't bother me at all. It does scare hubby now and then when I unexpectedly reel off a lot of thread.

Marilee finished her holly snowflake in time for Three King's Day and it's 4.5 inches across done in size 30 DMC Cordonnet Special, tatted with white and Marilee's own hand dyed "Pizzazz" and "Fern". There is a new batch of threads done although the solids may not be completely solid the colours should blend well. They'll be available in her Etsy shop soon.

Laura took some final pictures of all of the snowflakes she tatted on the Christmas tree, then when she removed them she scanned the snowflakes so that she has a record of them all together. 32 done this year and plans for 30 more next year.

Melissa searched for a pattern for the doily she found and when she couldn't find one she worked from the existing doily. She's tatting it in size 80 thread and since the original looks to be dome in size 10 thread, there's quite a difference. She thinks that 3 repeats of the pattern would make a nice skirt for a belle or princess.

Sherry is back to designing and she's giving us a sneak peek at what she is working on. She received a notice about the tatted purse design that she submitted and anticipated a rejection, but what she received was notice that there weren't enough submissions to go through with the book. Sometimes self publishing is the only way to go. We need to get more people addicted.

Butterflies, Eagles, Jewellery and Delicate Laces

Riet posts a picture of the wonderful nativity set she sets up until the Sunday after January 6. She also show us a picture of the ornament done for an exchange that has a tatted angel with holly leaves and berries suspended in a clear ball. The real angel of course in Nora.

Meme loves the harmony of this pattern by Teiko Fujito that she did a while ago in 2 colours.

Wendy tatted a very simple edging and then combined it with crochet to make 24 inches of marvelous raspberry and white edging. She's working on yards of yo-yo garland in green for St Patrick's day and the exchange quilt blocks are in.

Laurie finished some socks on her UFO list but forgot to take pictures for the blog before they were given away. There was snow and cross country skiing and another pair of socks got completed. Laurie sent Dream Catcher fabric postcard to Barack Obama's campaign headquarters and has just received a semi personal reply. Definitely Cool!

Connie posted her first attempt at covering a cabone ring using Jon's pattern but now that it's done she wishes that she had switched threads for the alternate rings to emphasize the heart shapes. Also posted is a slide show of the tatting she has done so far.

Sapna is looking forward to a new year full of promise and she's optimistic about the future.

Iris created an easy one shuttle earring design and she shares the pattern with us. How pretty they are, and how generous Iris is for sharing them. Iris has been working hard on her book and testing out her patterns looking for mistakes. She re-did this square one in her favourite colour of sand and as she reflected on it, it occurred to her that it was Sand, Sea and Sky.

Norma has embroidered a jeans bag and worked on a CQ block that she embellished with some tatting. She has also shown us some of the shuttle collection most of which have been made for her. See how smooth these shuttles look? These babies have been used.

Bob has created 2 new designs, a Maltese cross and a round design. He has included the pattern for both these motives on his blog. Aren't we fortunate to have so many generous tatters?

Bev has mounted her card for Mary Konior to be sent off to Sue and shows it here along with some of her shuttles. The tatting that has filled her time lately will be going on a denim bag and she plans to join in Jane's Tat It and See. She had to grab her tatting bag and hide it from little, no make that big, puppy teeth when her granddaughter visited over Christmas.

Kelly is enthusiastic about the "Take it Further " embroidery challenge.

Mary created a beautiful paper magnolia for her homemade cards.

Shay went home for the holidays and shares pictures of the journey.

Jeff has joined the challenge and it's nice to have another of our gentlemen tatters join in. His first posting is a wonderful golden eagle from the Be-stitched web site done is Flora size 20..
Diane fell on the ice and broke 2 bones near the wrist. She'll be in a cast for 6 weeks and then a brace, so no tatting for her.

Clyde has been tagged again and posts 7 weird or random facts.

Mark has another flower off his pillow and here are 3 different motives he did using the half ring braid. Two of the designs were done using Oliver Twist thread and the other with Valdani size 50. They all look gorgeous.

Laura has tatted a rainbow tree using Sherry's Grapefruit thread.Does that make it a Rainbow Grapefruit Sherbet tree? Laura was playing around with a design from the Blomqvist Persson book and got stuck. The other day she picked it up and started tatting with Marilee's Rhubarb Crisp and Sherry's Grapefruit and she has created her own unique design. Ah, Laura, I don't know how to tell you this, but now comes the hard part. You have to go back and document it. Then you have to do the same kind of things a bunch more times so that you can publish the patterns and we can all make our own rainbow trees full of tatting.

Marty is still designing butterflies and using Yellow DMC Cebelia size 30 thread. The first try was nearly perfect so she did it again and just tweaked in a little. Very pretty. The she did it again in Coats cotton quilting thread but she had a lot of difficulty getting the tiny rings to close. She wanted to try it with rayon thread but combined it with DMC size 80 to help keep it from stretching. The surprise is that the butterfly is almost the same size as the yellow one done in Cebelia.

Melissa found a lovely little tatted doily in an antique shop and she brought it home with her. She may use it as a doily or possibly add it to her crazy quilting. Melissa has created a series of lovely brooches made of silk ribbon embroidered roses on Dupioni silk for her Etsy shop.

Have you ever seen a shuttle bug? Sherry made the tatting bee for the TAT program and then she altered it a wee bit to create a cute winter bug.

A New Year of Tatting

Eva has plans to join Jane's "Tat it and See." Jane has proposed a pattern given in small sections where you won't know what it is that you are tatting until you actually tat it. Sounds like fun.

Meme wishes everyone Happy New Year, especially those who have commented on her blog.

Eliz has finished the Cecelia doily. An earlier picture, shown here has 40 motives completed of the 48 planned. She received a new Lacis shuttle for Christmas along with four new books: Dianna Stevens' Animal Bookmarks, A Tatted Zoo; Karey Solomon's Tatting Turns Over a New Leaf; Inga Madsen's 12 Tatted Fairy-Tales; and Nancy Tracy's Tat's Where I Stopped. This yellow Oak Leaf was one of the designs from Karey Solomon's Tatting Turns Over a New Leaf. The other 3 are from Dianna Stevens' Animal Bookmarks. The snake and the cockerel were designed by Dianna Stevens and the cat was designed by Diana Howe. The last image is butterfly variation 4A from Teri Dusenbury's book, Tatting Butterflies.

Wendy is making some jackets to cover the bare arms of her girls. Who's the idiot who manufactures children's dresses in warm winter fabrics and designs them without sleeves? She has posted links to her photos on Flicker and posts her reflections on last year.

Anne has just started on a new shawl and the colours are a lighter shade of the "sunset light" posted in her previous entry.

Iris has designed and tatted two pretty beaded hearts.

I've just clued in to the fact that Kate's blog has entries written by both her and Lars. Lars has posted his own review of 3 movies seen recently.

Mary has just found out that her son and his wife are expecting in the fall of 2008. Congratulations!

Mrs John was tagged to post 7 weird or random facts. She has finished and blocked the tatted pieces she had completed before starting the challenge. Isn't it amazing how a little blocking can take a nice piece of lace and turn it into a WOW! piece. In an effort to prompt us to use our delicately edged lace handkerchiefs, Karey Solomon asked the question "If your nose runs, can your fingers fly?", so how many hankies can you make/edge/or otherwise decorate in 2008? Debbie, sniffing with a cold while tatting admits that she uses Kleenex rather than a hanky because she doesn't have one yet. She modified an edging pattern from the Priscilla Tatting Book which she downloaded from the Antique Pattern Library and modified it to make a wonderful heart shaped bookmark. Did I mention that Debbie hasn't been tatting for long? and she's already designing? Way to go Mrs John. Now she's working on doing some 2 colour work.

Arlene is still in a glow about her baby being engaged.

Mark had the opportunity to do some bobbinlace over the holidays. His current big project is making a scale model of the high school auditorium and stage so that the music director has a better idea of how things will look. Just to start the year off right he began with his morning exercises. I skipped mine in favour of shovelling a lot of snow.

Jon has started with her New Year's resolutions and they all sound good to me, especially the one about getting a book published. I love Jon's attitude. The crocheted tablecloth is looking great but still a long way from completion and she thinks one way of speeding up it's progress is to get a smaller table. Works for me.

I posted some information on tatting shuttles.

Snowy's Christmas present to herself is a pretty pair of Shuttle Shop shuttles. She has been using them to tat Sadie's heart from Teri Dusenbury's site, she's not sure about it and thinks she might do it again in a solid colour.

Laura tatted the Christmas tree from the Be-stitched newsletter and she used DMC Cebelia which is a bit soft to hold it's shape. Laura thinks it would look good with pearl beads added to the tips like snow on a branch. Laura is really excited to be able to do her own scans of her tatting. It's nice to have someone do it for you, but nothing beats being able to do it for yourself how you want, when you want and with the background you want. Isaac is in his second year of being spoiled by grandma. Laura wishes all of her tatty friends a Happy New Year.Charlene has posted her reflections on 2007.

Melissa shows us some sweet ornaments given and received in an exchange.

Sherry continues to work on the TAT program and tatted a very beady motif as part of the exercise. She has a new Shuttle of the Month for January which will probably be the last for a while due to her upcoming move. She has also dyed a new thread this one is called "Tie Dye Purple" and similar "Tie Dye Rust" is in the works.

Administration Post

In order to keep up with all the lovely laces being made, I keep a spreadsheet with people's names, blog addresses, and if I have them, email addresses. Different people work at different speeds and as we all know, stuff happens. Some people post a new motif every couple of weeks and others post a lot of motives at once and then they don't post again for a long while. I need to visit the sites to update the challenge page, and to keep things in order I use my spreadsheet.

Some people have gone long periods of time without any posts, or without any posts that have tatting content, so to start the new year off right, I'm doing another clean up and removing the people who haven't been tatting and blogging for 6 months or more from my spreadsheet and from the links list in the sidebar to the right. Those people that I have email addresses for I am writing to let them know that I am removing them and why. Those that I don't have email addresses for can read about why they've been removed here. Anyone who doesn't want to be removed, and plans to get back to tatting and blogging, can let me know and I'll add their names back in.

Just so that everybody knows what my criteria is for keeping people in the links list, it's very simple. They tat and blog. Some people joined the challenge and when they were finished with their 25 motives they quit blogging. Some people found it so much fun to tat and share what they were working on that they just kept on doing it for another 25, or 50 or 100 motives. Some people branched out into tatting other things but kept on blogging about what they were tatting. As long as there is tatting on the blogs I kept adding the information here and kept their link in the list on the side bar. That is why you see their names with the word 'done' in the list.

It is important that the people who have joined the challenge for the first time are displayed here because that is what this blog is all about, but at the same time we have begun to follow what different people are doing and it's nice to see how their work is progressing even if they have finished the challenge.

My current spreadsheet has about 60 people on it and that will decrease when I remove everyone who hasn't posted any tatting in the last 6 months. I have decided that if we have a lot more people join and it gets to be more that I have the time to handle, I will only actively update those who are doing the challenge for the first time. In other words, I may skip the people whose names have the word 'done' after them in the links list. That way, the people in the challenge for the first time will get showcased here and the people who have done it all before will get updated as I have the time. (They will get updated, but only as I have the time.)

So, if things get crazy you may see that the posts don't contain much info from the blogs of people who have already completed the challenge until I have the time to blog about them again.

Anyone who wants to can join the 25 Motif Challenge. Email me at sharon at gagechek dot com or leave a comment with your name and blog address on any of the posts.