Ra ta Tat Tat
Yes I understand that's hardly clever, but I'm not feeling all that glib today. I just wanted to leave a brief note that I've taken up yet another fiber technique. That would be tatting.
My first exposure to tatting was while sitting with my Grossmutter in her forest-green Studebaker outside of the local High school. We were waiting for my Aunt and I was incredibly bored. Watching Grossie add an ugly variegated pink and white lace border to an otherwise unimpressive cloth handkerchief eased the ennui. Slightly. I recall that I asked her what she was doing and if she would teach me, and the answers were "tatting" and "no."
I realize that a lot of what I do is a direct reaction to the word no. I'm not sure that is a good thing. I do know that when it comes to learning, saying no to me doesn't actually work. In this case though, over 50 years passed before I actually did something about that initial refusal. Frankly, if Grossie had attempted to teach me, I would have dropped tatting like a hot potato and never looked back. Instead, I headed down the fiber road and have been inflicting hand made items on my relatives ever since.
While I picked up a tatting shuttle here and there between that "no" and now, I never actually took the time to learn how to manipulate the shuttle to tie those types of knots. The picture directions one finds in quaint pamphlets on how to make your hands dance with shuttles and strings are less than informative. The directions of how to make rings and chains and picots, how many and in what order are cryptic. So I've been stymied until I learned about needle tatting.
Isn't YouTube a wonderful thing? I didn't want to expend any money for tatting needles since they are not cheap, and I admit there are quite a few things that I've picked up for a minute or two before dropping: Skiing, biking, painting, sculpting, to name a few. Some of those things cost good money that was never recouped.
After watching a couple of YouTube videos and realizing that a locker hook and heavy kitchen cotton yarn were precisely what I needed and precisely what I had on hand. Voila ... a small tatted motif, becomes a kitchen trivet. The beauty of using a locker hook is that it's the perfect size for heavy kitchen cotton, and if you don't find tatting to be compelling you can always use it to hook rugs or add a string tail to make it a very long Tunisian crochet hook. Three separate crafts to try and discard, for the price of one.
Actually, I am going to be using Tatting as an edging when I don't want to use the k1p1 ribbing, seed, moss or garter stitch to keep a piece from curling. So I've not gone completely over the edge, but yes, I do have tatting needles now.
