Great News! - Christmas Tree

I can't believe I'm talking about the "C Word" on a 1st of October but I was eager to share my news and also this will give more time to people who may want to tat this for Christmas.

Several years ago now, I made a blogpost about a lovely Christmas tree pattern designed by Edith Roesti-Holenstein which a friend from Germany had helped me obtain.  I had several comments and enquiries by tatters who wanted to make it but the designer was not online and only sold paper copies locally or by post if I remember correctly.

However, I am delighted to say that after exchanges and with help from my friend as the intermediary, I was given permission to share it here on my blog!  It's taken me a while to get around to tatting it afresh and I thought it was more complex to tat than it actually is.  You do have to cut and tie after some of the rounds but to be honest this is then hidden underneath and you could just knot and cut the ends if you wished instead of sewing them in.  However, I'm trying to see if there is a way of making it in one pass which would always be my preference!  The "snow" is added afterward with crochet.

Quick update:  I've been working on this tonight and it IS doable in one pass, with the use of split rings and split chains.  I often use split rings but split chains a lot less often so this will be a good opportunity to practice them!

I will try my best to get the pattern together as soon as possible and make a new blogpost about it when it's ready.  So keep checking back if you'd like to tat the little tree!

The tree in the background is the one I made many years ago and the one in the foreground is the one I just made.

The other thing I need to figure out is how to share the pattern as I've had many problems with Google Docs over the years and people telling me they can't access my patterns there.  If anyone has good suggestions on how best to do that, I'd be grateful.  I'll see if I can just post the pattern straight here into a blogpost.

To be continued...

Best wishes,

Frivole

Tatted Flowers & Lavender

Oh I can barely believe we're already in September!  My last post was back in July, I'm really neglecting my blog.  It was a wonderful busy summer filled with travel, sunshine and happy family reunions.  How was yours?

I found this tatted double flower motif by Jan Stawasz (from his second book "Tatted Treasures") while I was tidying. What does one do with such pretties?  I have a box full of them and am really not sure how to use them.  Maybe decorate an Alice band for my niece?

While on holiday, I picked some wonderful fresh lavender and decided to make "lavender bottles". They are such a nice way to preserve lavender and the fragrance lasts for years.  They eventually dry up but if you press them a bit between your fingers the fragrance is released anew.  Great to keep in your clothes drawers.

I tried different materials to weave them with but in the end, the nicest is probably very thin ribbon as in the ones below.  I think they make the pretties diamond pattern.  The very dark purple doesn't come out very well in the photo unfortunately.

I hope you all had a lovely summer too.  After fresher rainy weather recently, we're back to sunshine and warmer temperatures this week so I'm making the most of it.  I love autumn too but always feel a little sad when summer comes to an end.

Best wishes,

Frivole

One More Pair

I just didn't have the right earrings for today's dress... so had to make some!  Following on from the previous post, here is another lovely beaded earring pattern.  It is a free pattern from the Blog "Linda's Crafty Inspirations" and they are her Peyote Fan Earrings.  She has many free patterns on her blog so if you like beading, I'd recommend checking her blog out.

I love tatted earrings of course but I'm also a big fan of beaded earrings and always enjoy making them.  Do you have a go-to beaded earring pattern?

Summer is finally here today after a lot of cool rainy weather here in the UK so I'm making the most of the  welcome sunshine!  

Best wishes,

Frivole

Beading & Large Lace

Oh dear, where does the time go??  I can't believe I hadn't posted since Easter!  Maybe it's because I've done very little tatting lately (standard size tatting) although I'm currently working on another large lace lamp.

In the meantime, a little beading interlude... I always enjoy making earrings and when I last visited my local bead shop, I found a few kits I fancied having a go at, also because I had some birthday gifts to make and I always like making earrings as gifts.

So here are four pairs I made, different models, different colours.  

Summer has been slow to arrive but I hope you are enjoying some sunshine and happy days wherever you are!

Best wishes,

Frivole

Easter Egg

I unfortunately ran out of time to complete the second egg as I ended up having an impromptu invitation to go away for the weekend but I managed to decorate one of them!

Happy Easter!

Wishing you all a lovely time with family and friends this holiday weekend.

 Best wishes,

Frivole

Easter

I found these little ceramic eggs in my local charity shop yesterday...  I thought they were shouting to be decorated with tatting!

I'm using a vintage edging from the Tatters Treasure Chest and I think I will combine it with one of my patterns.  We'll see if it works out!

Best wishes,

Frivole

Flower Earrings

First of all, thank you very much to all of you who responded to my posts about missing comments.  I'm so glad and really appreciate every single one of your answers.  I apologise if I don't respond to each individually but for some reason Blogger has become incredibly slow at loading!  When I want to respond to comments, it takes ages to load up the response box and then more ages to load up my answer so sometimes I just give up.  Does anyone have that problem who's on Blogger also?  Not sure why it has changed as this never was a problem until a few months ago.

I removed comment moderation but straight away started received spam again!  Grrrrrr.  So I'm afraid I'll have to re-instate it... and this time will try to remember to go approve comments when they come in!  (Silly me).

Now, you've seen these earrings on several occasions as it is one of my favourite pattern to make as a gift (and for myself because I also have several pairs in different colours).  I made this pair for my son's girlfriend, the colour is "Maple Syrup" which I couldn't resist buying as I'm such a maple fan!  And the shade was just in her colour palette.

I've not tatted any bigger projects for a while now so I hope you don't mind seeing the little ones I manage to make here and there.  I've got crochet and knitting on the go but not so much tatting at the moment.  I always like to hear what you are working on too! 

Best wishes,

Frivole