Another use for tatting...

...a sturdy button loop!

I used 2 strands of size 10 together here for a strong, decorative loop on a handwoven tapestry bag.

Progress on holly snowflake...and some frogs

Some progress on the holly snowflake idea. Something I found out is that the Josephine chains will flop around till they are secured. So I'm trying to turn the rings to face the way I want them before joining. It was a bit tedious to tat each spoke separately, but by the time I got to the 4th one I started to feel that I was almost done...hurray! For the outer round I'm using my own hand dyed "Fern" color. I can see that I'm going to need more double stitches for that long curve, in order make all the spokes even. So the outer round I'm probably going to start over.

Frog closures...I just got the notion to make some! I think these are cute and I put them into my shop to market to people who sew. These are my own simple designs, but there is a pattern for a really elaborate one in the "Priscilla 2" book reprint, otherwise known as "Tatting Patterns" by Julia Sanders.

Snow day, and how the idea's coming...

There is a bit of the holly idea in this, which is the start of a snowflake. In theory, I should be able to put spokes like the one finished all around the center, and do chains around that which should look something like a holly leaf snowflake. At least I'm trying! It's going to have a lot of ends to hide -- but I'm not going to let that stop me!
Here is a view of our snow outside!

Holly, possibly...

Started working on an idea for a holly leaf. A challenging little thing! This will need more work...

"Tigereye" and "Fern"

Got these added to the shop today!

The "Tigereye" is slightly different from the batch I made a few months ago with the same name. Not quite as much distance between color changes, and the colors are slightly lighter, but still very similar.

The "Fern" thread has more variations of greens than did the "Leafy" batch of a while back. It seems different enough to deserve its own name.

Whenever the skeins appear "striped" like this, it means that there is longer distance between color changes than my more "solid looking" skeins.

Notice the real Tigereye gemstone in the top photo? No fern frond available for the "Fern" photo, though - I didn't feel like trudging out in the snow to get to the flower shop to buy one!

Brown + gold

Talk about "natural variation"! (Not matching, are they?!) I still like 'em, though of course I would. Hey, they do go together - and are obviously handmade!

Half-baked Idea

Somehow...these polymer clay teardrop and tatting earrings showed up in my imagination and in my hands.
I thought they were sort of pretty! Then I thought that some other tatters might think this would be a fun thing to do, so I added a few of the polyclay shapes to my Etsy shop.

The green ones were done with a chain on top. However, I prefer not to have to hide the ends in chains. So I modified the pattern to end with a ring.

Hope this half-baked idea leads to other ones!