Tat's Heaven

Last Friday I went to see Jane to deliver some tatting shuttles and the next day she took me to a village in Gloucester called Churchdown, where we joined a group who had come together to tat.    It was fun to be with others and spend the day tatting and nattering. A display of people's work was put on tables, there were some lovely tatted pieces to delight us all. I hope to join them next year if my big sister will take me again!

So I have now tatted six kaleidoscopes and joined them together, and was quite happy with the effect until I almost finished and noticed that the work was not lying very well.  By the time I had joined the last one my disappointment was quite marked.  However, after damping and pressing it does not look too bad.  My aim was to continue with more kaleidoscope motifs using a plain colour edged with black and placing them in-between these, but really don't know whether it is going to be worth the effort.   May be I will tat something else and come back to it or just put it away in the cupboard!

After seeing so many ice-drops on tatting blogs I did not quite understand how they were made until I saw that Bernice had a link to Diane's pattern and so decided to have a quick go and make one myself.  There were also some handy suggestions about useful items to tat around. This is my first and only ice-drop, so far!  I might do more, who knows? Over 10 years ago I bought these vintage chandelier glass drops and was at the time attracted by their colour and shape, but have never really put them to good use.    I suppose I could have used a more interesting thread to tat around them but did not want to distract from the beauty of the glass. So now, at last, I have a wearable item from this vintage glass after learning how to make an ice-drop, thank you Diane for starting this craze.  

I won this little lot, and no one placed a bid other than me, which was kind of a surprise, where were you tatting people?  I know that it can become expensive when posting to other countries but I was surprised that no one in the UK wanted them. So there are two books and five shuttles, a strange selection of thread and some absolutely ancient pieces of tatting.   It always makes me wonder about the history of such items. However, I looked at the seller and it seems that she is one of those people who specialises in selling lace, embroidery etc and so would have possibly got them from another source other than from family or friends.   I paid £6.99 plus postage and was rather pleased with the purchase.

Many thanks to all who entered this little competition, it was so good to hear from people who had never commented before and equally nice to hear from the regulars.   Four of you were correct, and although there was a bit of confusion as to when the shuttles started to be made, I really was looking for their introduction date when they were named as pop-a-bobbin which was 2010, some of you gave that along with the initial work on them in 2009.   The number of different woods in the picture were 9. So to make this as fair as possible I wrote the names and numbers on a piece of paper scanned the numbers only and e.mailed them to Jane, she then picked one of the numbers. She picked number 4  Which is Maureen! Congratulations