Waiting for the Judges' Ruling...

Can this sad, misshapen, tatted flower motif which only resembles, in part, the image presented next to its pattern (Minitats by Patti Duff, motif #6), with its thread ends dangling and not even tied together, count as #2? (casual whistling, feet shuffling, hands in pockets, head cocked to the side and eyes averted)

errrr ... no. We have to maintain standards after all.

But I did learn some stuff to pass on to future me (because if I don't do something for a while, I forget the details that made it work in the first place). I will not even attempt to explain tatting (I have some links to good tatting demos over on the left), but basically tatting is a series of two step knots (double stitch) and spaces between the knots (picot) which are used to make rings and chains which are then joined together. Anyway, this pattern showed me that when I join one section of tatting to another, it works better for me to treat the join as the first half of the double stitch and then do the second half of a double stitch to continue on. When I tried to do a full double stitch after the join, there wasn't enough room and the ring I was working on bunched up. Also, I realized once again that I need to work on hiding the beginning and ending ends of thread and figure out how to do a folded join which is needed at the end of some patterns or I will be tatting the same bookmark for the rest of my life.

So I've been working on my tatting to-do's at school pickup and doctor appointments this week and I can now hide my beginning ends. Baby steps...