Tat's Heaven

I like to see what earrings people (generally women) are wearing because some of them fascinate me especially the elaborate and colourful ones.  Although saying that just simple stylish ones also draw my attention. Now I do not have pierced ears myself so when Jane gave me lots of clip-on findings I really wanted to have some new earrings.  These cross ones were originally for pierced ears and in my stash, I altered the findings so that I can wear them now.  It is a pattern I designed and my favourite earrings were a black pair ones, until I gave them away to a young girl who also did not have pierced ears.        Then I looked in my stash of beads and made these

Well this was all I managed just before Christmas, which is so sad as I have the shuttles and thread to do more, but sadly no time in my busy life to do much tatting, or for that matter any other craft work.   The pattern is called Chris' Broomstick Snowflake from Martha Ess's book 'Playing with picots' With the top two snowflakes I wound two 80 threads together, the bottom two are size 20. My new year resolution (which usually carriers on from year to year), is to be more tidier and do do more tatting!  

Well a bit of an exaggeration, shopping was extremely difficult when you have at least two men with you most of the time and because of transport, time and logistics there wasn't any opportunity of going it alone! My favourite place to visit for beads and findings is the People's Park Centre in China Town. An amazing place to buy such pretty things, there are many shops selling beautiful items that you never see in any other place. This time though I resisted  buying any more beads etc because I have too many, and unfortunately there wasn't a particular project I needed them for.  Instead this thread caught my eye.  It looked similar to the Lizbeth thread in appearance but as it was wrapped in cellophane could not even see what the strands looked like, or how thick they were, so decided to buy a reel and take a chance. Yesterday I tried to tat with it, it is lovely and works well and looks as though it is coming out as a 20 but need to tat more to really find out. Have no...