Tat's Heaven

One of the things you learn in Scouting, apart from knots (not tatting!) is to save the most extraordinary things, in the hope that one day they may come in useful for handicrafts. This is especially relevant, if like me, you are with the younger section, Beaver Scouts who are aged 6-8 years old. Twenty years ago it was difficult to find decent craft supplies, unless you were prepared to pay a lot of money for them, so over the years I have looked at disposable household items such as packaging etc and thought, what can this be used for? Corks from wine bottles are very versatile, although nowadays they seem to be mostly plastic, the original cork ones though could be turned into trains, dogs and even the beaver animal. So it sort of became a habit to collect items that showed potential! That is why I collected the plastic rings from the Oral B electric toothbrushes, not for Scouting but for my own use, and now they have been re-incarnated into earrings! I’ve been influenced by the pat...

I won two shuttles on e.bay last week (yes still can’t break the habit!), they were being sold by the same person but with four days between listings. The first one is a Vintage Bone tatting shuttle 10 cm in length, 2 cm wide and 1cm in depth and described by the seller as “lovely to work with even though a bit larger than average. It is very comfortable and smooth in the hand.” She went on to say “a little stiffness in the fingers prevents me from using this shuttle now." It certainly is a larger than normal shuttle. Sad to think that as we get older ailments such as stiffness in the fingers may prevent us from tatting, hope that is a long time coming for me. Another comment that was made by the seller was this "The top view shows a tiny mark that is in the bone itself. The other side shows small very fine hairlines where the pins are. This has been like this for a very long time and has occurred through natural use over many years." A well used shuttle, that is what ...

A graduate student at Trinity Computed the square of infinity. But it gave him the fidgets To put down the digits, So he dropped maths and took up divinity. A Limmerick to start off this post. Thanks to Maureen and Isdihara for encouraging me, sadly not Edward Lear, but this is only the start! Trying to find a motif that would fit into this metal square wasn't easy, and gave me the fidgets! The samples in the first picture were part of the searching. The first two I found here , although the instructions for the second one do not correspond with the diagram, so if you plan to tat it make sure that on the corners there are six picots not three. The third one is one of Jane's designs, which she had completely forgotten about, so I'm sending her a copy and she might eventually put it on her pattern page?! To ensure the motif would fit the metal square I had to use 80 cotton. This is the necklace from which the metal square came from. I purchased it over two years ago, meani...

Lavender's blue, dilly, dilly, Lavender's green; When I am queen, dilly, dilly, You shall be king. This is all I remember of the old nursery rhyme, but apparently it has more verses. Lavender is one of my favourite plants, it smells beautiful and it is also so versatile. I've used it in cooking to give a unique flavour to biscuits and ice cream and of course in lavender bags to keep away moths from vunerable clothes. I started tatting the edging to the handkerchief whilst on holiday, taking some ancient cotton with me, I began to sew it on as I wasn't sure if I had enough cotton and sure enough I didn't and there was no more. This was a real blow as the colour matched the lavender motif. I was making it for a elderly lady who said she so liked to see lace/tatting around a handkerchief. Enter this bag, which I found in a charity shop, not a particularly wonderful bag, a canvas bag, but not wishing to just discard all the hours and hours of work I had put into the e...