Knitting presents

I have some friends from a former workplace who are getting married. They are lovely people and as they are older, they don't need a lot of things that most newlyweds need. So I decided to make them some dish clothes.

I asked them about colors, and they chose black and white.

Here is what I made for them:

This is a set of 6 dish clothes, two in each color. These are all in Lily Sugar & Cream and knitted in a pattern I referenced here.  

I hope they like them. I think this is a nice wedding gift. Personal without being TOO personal. And made with love!

Also - I recently met up with some members of my college class (I'm on the reunion committee) and I brought some dish clothes for them to chose from. They were all delighted with their gifts!

Here are some of the ones I brought - I've shown a number of the other ones.

I'm still knitting. I'm obsessed. And it helps keep me from eating!

More scrappy knitting....

I liked the scrappy knitting so much that I made more.

Behold:

A Sunset-on-Water dishcloth!

I really like how this one came out. Obviously I'm doing the same basic dish cloth pattern, but it's the color that makes a difference!

Speaking of the same pattern...

These three dish clothes are part of a set I'm making for a wedding gift. I'm working on the other black one, then on to 2 white ones. All made in Lily Sugar & Cream. I think it will be a nice gift, don't you?

Best of luck to those going to Palmetto Tat Days the weekend - I hope to be there again next year!

Some scrappy knitting

I'm still on a roll with knitting. Knitting cotton washcloths.

As I've been doing so much of this, I have a lot of small balls of the tail ends of various colors. So I decided to make good use of those leftovers.

Hence Scrappy Knitting!

Behold:

I made this one with more solids than variegated yarns. I like these! 

FYI - I experimented with several yarn joins before using a Russian Join. Lily Sugar & Cream is thicker than some yarn, and I didn't want to find a knot. So the Russian Join seemed best to me. 

Here's a pic with another scrappy washcloth.

My sons want some of these, so they must be cute.

What do you think?

I've been knitting

I've been keeping my fingers busy with a bit of knitting. Nothing fancy, just some wash cloths.

Full disclosure - during the pandemic, knitting kept me sane. I made many many dish cloths and gave almost all of them away.

I don't feel crazed right now, but knitting is productive in the evening and it keeps me from nibbling on food that I shouldn't eat!

These have all been given away. The patterns are (from top left, clockwise) Easy As Pie Dishcloth, An Almost Lost Washcloth, and the classic square diagonally knit cloth. 

I made another diagonal square in blue and promptly gave it away.

And then I knit two that I might keep. These are the Spa Washcloth pattern.

I just started on another! I have a ton of Lily Sugar & Cream cotton yarn!

Public tatting is now in view!

My tatting is on view at my church!

Here is my tatted cross on the pulpit during church service

Our church is diverse, which I like

I'm pleased - I think it looks good. People told me how much they like it.

FYI - that's not a minister in the pulpit - it's a student reading scripture. 

Also of note - the great banners on either side of the dais are our Creation banners, night and day.

And the stained glass in the back shows Jesus not as a White person. We have Black Jesus. Because Jesus wasn't White.

Also there are Black disciples - and women too!

 Enjoy - keep tatting!

Some public tatting

I spoke to a friend at my church and found that they were looking at replacing some of the pulpit scarves there.

(For those curious, these are the cloths that are hanging from the front of the pulpit. They are part of  church decorations known as paraments.)

Our green pulpit scarf and grown a bit tatty. This is the pulpit scarf used in most of the year, in the time after Pentecost and before Advent, so about June through November.

I was asked if I could tat a nice cross for this pulpit scarf, and of course I said yes.

I used Lizbeth size 10 white and a very simple pattern of mine.

Here is is with a penny for scale

Plain and simple. Easy breezy.

I gave the cross to my church friend and it was sewed onto the new pulpit cloth. She got some good upholstery material for the cloth.

Looks handsome

I'm pleased! 

It won't be seen publicly until the first Sunday in June, but I think this will work nicely.

I've offered to help with other tatting for church, possible doing tatting for clergy vestments. 

Oh - if anyone wants this super simple pattern, I can post it!

A letter in the post

Do you remember when I blogged about the collar I made?

You know - this one.

When I sent the collar off, I included a letter explaining how the collar was made, my personal history in tatting, and that I did this in tribute to a late member of the Supreme Court who was famous for wearing beautiful collars with her robes. Oh, and I gave information on the Care and Feeding of the collar.

I mailed it off to the recipient last fall and hadn't heard a word. I figured it had gotten lost in the pile of presents that officials get.

I had kind of hoped to get some kind of official acknowledgement, perhaps a form letter from a staff member. I would have been satisfied with this.

I hadn't thought about this in a while. I had given up on hearing something.

UNTIL YESTERDAY!

Yesterday when I checked the mail I found this letter!

Please note the return address

(I checked my mail on the way to run errands. I HAD to open it immediately!)

And inside I found this lovely, handwritten note - from the Justice herself! And on her personalized official notecards, much more informal than official stationary!

And there was more - she had to continue on the other side!

OMG! OMG! OMG!

I am ecstatic! To receive such a personal thank you from such a high official is really unheard of these days. Usually the best one might get is a member of staff sending out a nice letter on official stationary.

For those who live elsewhere, this is as if you might have sent something tatted to your Home Secretary and got a hand written thank you note in return.

I look forward to seeing her wear this collar on the bench. When I do, I'll post about it!

Sad news about a tatting friend

I think most of you remember our tatting friend in Toronto, Fox. She had a blog for many years called tat-ology.

I saw recently that she is with us no more. Carlie died February 22 2023 after a brief battle with cancer.

I saw this on Instagram under her account, torontofox.

This makes me very sad. Carlie was very creative, and I enjoyed her descriptions of her life and surroundings. I especially enjoyed her pictures of her cats. The last cat was a gorgeous Siamese she called Mr. G.

Bless you Carlie. You will be remembered.

Tatting Editha

I actually do tat. Really, I do.

One of my physicians is retiring and I wanted to thank him for his help. So I decided to tat him a nice bookmark

Tatted in Altin Basik 50

This is Editha, a pattern I found from Christiane Eichler's site. I think he'll like it!

Christiane has this tatted in two rounds. I rewrote it to tat in one round.

Here is my rewritten version of her Editha pattern. Take a look at her pattern for the diagram:

2 shuttles wound CTM

Center ring 7-7-7-7-7-7

Row 2 (two shuttles): 

R1 (SR) 2-2-2/2-2-2.

*Ch1 5.

R2 2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2  (11 picots)

Ch2 4-4-4-4

R3 2-2-2 + 2nd p of R2 2-2-2

Ch3 4-4-4

 SS R4 4-4 SS

Ch4 4-4-4

R5 2-2-2 + 4th p of R2 2-2-2

Ch5 4-4-4-4 +6^th p of R2

Ch6 5

SS R6 6+3^rd p of Ch4 4-6 SS

**

R7 2-2-2 +next p of center R 2-2-2

*

Repeat 5 more times from * to *. On 5^th repeat, tat Ch6 and lock join to R1. Then tat R6, joining to Ch5 of prior round and Ch2 of 1^st round. Stop at **

Enjoy!

Reorganizing can clear one's head

I don't know about you, but I'm a creative person. Which means - I'm kind of a messy and cluttered person.

Sometimes this makes me nuts. And like most messy people, I look at the mess and think 'I've got to DO something about this!' 

And then I procrastinate. It sounds like too much work. Pain and suffering. Ugh! Not having it.

Not today!

So the mess continues to make me crazy.

Until I lose it and decide to REALLY do something. 

Here is what was making me crazy:

So pretty!

This is where most of my tatting and other hobby materials exist. Mind you, I live in a flat with limited storage - and this is the one and only hall I have. And it's the thing you have to pass to come in.

Obviously MUCH has been dumped in these shelves. And not just tatting - work things, sewing and knitting/crochet tools, and a ton of miscellaneous junk.

(I'm not going to discuss my Pez dispensers now. I collect them because they amuse me. Sue me.)

A couple of those boxes on lower shelves were full of tatting thread and other supplies. 

So.... I finally got off my arse and went to work.

Corralling the thread

First I took charge of my thread - which was WAY outta control! I sorted it by brand, size, and color combination. Some time ago I got these nice boxes from Handy Hands and they are now a big help. I labeled all the boxes on the ends. The crochet sized balls went into other containers.

Then I looked at the beads and findings. Most were dumped into a big plastic container but there were a bunch in other locations. I didn't need everything so I contacted a friend who is a beader and have shipped her a box full. She should be happy!

A tiny selection of the beads

I put all the UFOs together.(Be honest - we all have UFOs.) I found I have a ton of tatting bags so I put those together too. Then I got all my shuttles in one box and found another to put tatting tools like picot gauges and crochet hooks. 

I never need to buy any crochet hooks again. And probably not any shuttles either. It will be a very long time until I need to get thread. 

And I sorted through all the miscellaneous stuff, giving some away and throwing out an ginormous amount of trash and junk.

Tidy!

Ta-da! SO MUCH BETTER! I freed up two whole shelves and several big containers! 

More importantly - I can FIND things when I need them. 

And I feel a big weight off. Whew!

Now onto the Pez collection....