Tat's Heaven

It’s that time of year to collect and dry lavender. Last year I made lavender bags but in the last few days I have tried my hand at making lavender wands.  As you see not only did I weave ribbon in and out of the stems but I also added tatting and wound that around to finish them off. The aim was also to try and enclose more of the lavender especially as my weaving was not very precise. Making lavender wands is not easy to do, even though the videos show otherwise! 

  I love to see sunflowers as they a so big and bold and just remind you of smiley Summer faces. Each year I grow some with limited success, what usually happens is they get blown over whilst they are trying to make a break for the sun!   A red sunflower as well as a yellow one! Using the daisy pattern here they are tatted  

  Here are the latest pop-a-bobbin shuttles to be made, at the moment there are other woods to choose from but I thought you would be more interested in these from my last post. They are on a huge piece of cedar of Lebanon wood. As you can see from the rings (which are supposed to determine the age of a tree) it came from a tree over a hundred years old. The tree is still growing and this piece, along with many more good sized chunks,  came down in a storm. 

The yew wood is beautiful and we were fortunate to be given a chunk of it, which has been seasoning outside for many years. In ancient times yew wood was used for making bows, the trees were planted in graveyards so they are a common sight around our churches in the U.K. some going back at least a thousand years.  Here is a newly cut stack of blanks to make some more pop-a-bobbin shuttles with.  Resting on them is this pattern   http://janeeborall.freeservers.com/MotifFerrisWheel.pdf   and of course I have used the version with a button in the middle.   As you have gathered it is Jane's pattern.    Jane is actually helping me write out a pattern at the moment for a design of my own. I have been working on it for weeks and weeks and nearly given up many times as it is so very complicated.  It is going to be a very unique pattern based on something which is very well known, especially in our family. I don't think anyone has ever attempted ...