Flowery cards

The monster seems to have gone on a long break. Not really tatting a lot right now. First of all I am trying to keep up with Sharon's design course on Yahoo and secondly because I don't have an idea what to do next. Thirdly becuase I am awaiting new threads coming from the UK, some of those awesome variegated Lizbeth threads that everyone seems to talk about these days and love using. Soon it will be my turn to try them out. :-)Some friends are having birthdays soon and in stead of just buying a card I wanted to make some myself. So I found some flowers in the Stawasz book and for the flower pot I used the bottom of a Christmas tree that I turned upside down, roflol. It was fun to do them but also a bit fiddly not twisting them and having to work with glue etc. But that is what friends are for I think.
I think the white and yellow ones reminds me of daisies, lol.

The mother of one of my friends have a big birthday in September, I hope she will enjoy the bookmark at the bottom that I am putting into one of these flowery cards.

See you.

So far so good

If anyone is interested in the progress this is the monster doily so far. It has worked very good untill now.
But my challenge partner is behind me and think she might to have to start over again, so I am taking a break with this till I know how she will be doing.
But I wont sit around with empty hands, so we will see what I will come up with next.
I have also joined Sharon's design course and might have to spend some time on that.

I have been challenged

Liyarra have challenged me to do another long distance tatting. She knows that doilies larger than something like 25 cm is not my favourite size to do. I have done several doilies where I have not tatted all the rounds - not that there's anything wrong with that mostly. But now she wants me to tat a huge doily - and ALL of it. I reckon this will be a monster doily so that is what I call it - the monster.

In the picture here I have reached 25 cm in diameter. Unfortunately there's another round left with I think it is 24 motifs - yes it is true twentyfour motifs on the outer round. Gee I wonder if I will survive that, roflol.

The design is from the Jan Stawasz book, the thread is Flora size 20 variegated yellow, solid white and a variegated very light green. I had to choose something I had plenty of so I do not run out of thread when I am on the last round. If that happened I would give it up.

If you do not hear from me for the next many moons you'll know why - I will be engulfed in my monster (or perhaps by my monster, lol).

Same and yet so different

Last month when I wrote here about the big doily I had finished I said I would show a picture of the version that Liyarra in Australia have tatted and that we started together during one of our online sessions. I have been given permission to show her doily here next to mine so here they are.

Notice how different they are. It is the same design and I think it might be the same size thread too but yet they are completely different. It is so amazing what difference the choise of colour have etc.

Of course I like mine (:-D ) but I also like the one with the metallic center and the green and red very much.

Jenni, thank you for letting me show it here, you've done a great job with it even though that red round were almost driving you crazy at some point of time - that almost happened for me too, lol.

Thanks for the fun of doing it as one of our tat-sessions.

Cheering up

I needed some cheering up so I did another doily while I await starting the huge monster-doily. I have used white Coats size 40 and Rainbow thread from Tatskool in the same size. The diameter is 15 cm.

I think this design was my Aunt's favourite, at least I saw her tat it over and over for years, and I have more than one copy of the pattern. I have always had a hard time getting it to lie flat but this time it seems to work fine. Actually I think it is one of the very best I have done from this pattern.
Hhhmmm, I wonder why.

One of the mysteries of tatting is, that our tension and everything else changes almost all the time which means, that things that didn't work all of a sudden becomes a success. And the opposite is also possible of course. The pattern I only know from an old but still copyrighted Danish book.

Jon's "Magic Moment"

In the tatting community online there are a lot of generous tatters making their own designs available for free, one of those are Jon and she has just done a snowflake/small doily called "Magic Moment". You can see the pretty original here:
http://tatsaway.blogspot.com/
Now I have also done it, lol.

Isn't it just a little beautie! I really like it and I have the feeling it reminds me of another pattern but can not find out which one right now.
Thread is Altin Basak and the diameter is almost 9 cm.
Thanks Jon for making it available for me to do this.

Wrong combination of colours and a new try almost

I have recieved many nice comments about my tatting and have been told that the colours I have chosen for my work looked very good. I do know that I like to combine various solids and variegateds - often combined with a solid white.
But I want to show you below, that I am not always lucky when I choose colours. Another Stawasz design and these two colours do not look good together. I did it a couple of weeks ago and I don't like them.
The thread is Cebelia size 30, the colours are a green combined with a greyish-green. I will do the pattern credit and do it again soon and choose some nicer colours.

As you can see to the right just above I have done a larger variation now and I like this one better. I had decided ahead that variegateds were going to play an important role together with solid white. I almost succeeded.

Thread is Altin Basak and diameter is 25 cm. It has taken me something like almost 2 weeks to do it because some of the rounds are very slow to do = a lot of stitches to do. I suppose it is good training before doing the huge monster doily, lol.