A Plethora of Pliers

Beadsmith Chroma. Chain and flat nose pliers.

Well, ten sets and counting. I’ve been assured by other maillers that I haven’t gone overboard on pliers yet, so it’s not really a plethora, but it’s working toward becoming one! Currently, I have short nose, chain nose, needle nose, armorer’s, and a couple of others, all by various companies. The ones pictured are the Beadsmith Chroma pliers, and I freely admit it: I bought them more because they were pretty than that they were practical.

Don’t get me wrong; in a pinch, I can actually use them for chain maille, and I have, because I had to try them out as soon as they arrived, right? So they do work, but the grip is very, very slippery. I spent as much time picking them up as I did using them, because they would shoot out of my hands. If I can find some slip-on grips for them, they’ll be a lot better. I suppose I could always wrap the handles in some kind of self adhesive tape, but then they wouldn’t be pretty anymore.

I’ve found that each set of pliers works for me for different things. For example, for smaller rings, I love my Xurons. They have angled heads, so you can get more plier on the ring without the two pliers really messing with each other. My chain nose are my second choice for smaller rings. For larger rings, I like my Tronex flat nose pliers. And I haven’t tried it yet, but my thought is to use my armorer’s pliers for the titanium stash I’ve got. I did a Byzantine chain in titanium, and I used my flat nose pliers for it, and titanium being as strong as it is, it was very hard on my hands. With softer metals, I can maille for hours, but with something like that, I’m taking breaks every fifteen minutes. I’m hopeful that it’ll be better using the armorer’s pliers. They have the widest short nose of all my pliers…thus far lol. I have no doubt that I’ll gradually add more pliers to the herd!

A herd of Dreamlit shuttles

Moving on to tatting shuttles here, I’ve finally given the new Dreamlit shuttle a good run. My overall impression is that I like it, but I don’t love it. For one, it doesn’t carry as much thread as many of my other shuttles, so if I want to do a larger piece with fewer joins (which is always my preference, as joining on new thread is a pain for me), I’m going to go with one of my higher capacity shuttles. And it could be just me, but I seem to catch the hook at the end a lot more often with the Dreamlit than I do my other shuttles with hooks. That may be my fault, though, and not an issue with the shuttle at all.

I like how the shuttle comes apart to place or remove the bobbin. The magnet is just right, not too strong or too weak. Everything about the shuttle is easy, which is nice. If it had more thread capacity, it’d be perfect. For smaller projects, it is perfect.

And I should clarify my comments on thread capacity: the thinnest thread I use is size 20. Anything smaller is going to require me to have new eyeballs. Meaning that those who use size 40 and 80 thread may have no problem with the load it can carry. So, overall, I like it.

So there’s today’s two cents. Hope you enjoyed! Happy crafting!

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Winter Is Coming

A soon to be done chain maille bracelet in rainbow niobium.

Nope, I’m not a Game of Thrones fan. Before anyone who is flips out, I did read the books, years before the series, and didn’t like any of the characters. I’ve gotta be able to connect with a character, and pretty much none of them were really likable people. I re-read them again after the series began, and tried the series itself, and just couldn’t do it. The only characters I liked were the direwolves. Sorry, no converts here.

But the post is more about the fact that winter is coming, which means the holiday season, which starts with Halloween in this house. And which honestly didn’t occur to me until just this second. After I’ve started on the Yule-themed tatted bookmark. Well, it won’t be the first time I’ve had more than one project going at once! Time to find my Halloween thread!

I started Yule shopping for the kids a few months ago, so I’m just about done with that, except for two items. Which I’m not going to mention, as Aneira is now more internet connected and may read this! I’m pretty proud of the fact that I’m done a couple of months early, actually, and now I’m thinking in terms of handmade things I can add to the mix. Fall, winter, and holiday themed things maybe. Some amigurumi toys. Bracelets and necklaces. Bags, although I did that once already. Fortunately, they’re girls, and we can never have too many bags, bracelets, necklaces, or stuffed animals. And don’t think I don’t have my own stuffed animals, because you’d be dead wrong!! There’s a whole box up in my bedroom waiting to be unpacked as soon as I make enough room for them! And I’ve no shame in admitting it; I even sleep with a Stitch pillow, and no one better touch him!

L – R: beaded kumihimo, Byzantine in niobium, Byz in titanium, box weave in aluminum, JPL3 in aluminum, and three more JPL3 in niobium.

I’ve worked on a few things since we’ve been in the new house, all portable crafts, since I can’t justify tying myself to the looms just yet, until the house is fully unpacked, as much as I’d prefer not to wait that long. But I have to be a responsible adult for some things, so there you go.

I finally learned some beaded kumihimo, which is somehow both challenging and yet easier than I expected it to be. I learned a couple of new chain maille weaves, and expanded the tatting shuttle collection a bit. One day, I’ll have to photograph that as a group. And the plier collection has grown as well.

I honestly thought I was crazy with that one. I think I have about ten sets of pliers currently, and I thought I was going overboard with that many, but I’ve since discovered that many maillers have a lot more than ten!!

Dreamlit tatting shuttle

As much as I usually say something pro/con about my many tools, it occurs to me that I’ve never said a word about my pliers! Never even thought about it! I think it’s because the other tools I’ve talked about here have been tools specifically made for fiber arts, where pliers are a common household tool almost from birth. Yes, the ones I have serve a specific purpose, but still fall into the category of pliers, and I’ve never thought much about them. So that’s an idea for a future post.

There’ll be one about the Dreamlit tatting shuttle too…those are new, and I’m just trying them out for the first time.

Ooooo, and I learned to make tandoori chicken!!! What a hit that was with the kids! Not the hubby, so much, but the kids loved it. Aneira and I had gone to lunch at a little Indian restaurant while waiting for her eye exam, and it was the first time we’d had tandoori chicken. SOOOOOO good! And Aneira asked me a month later to try making it, so I did. I didn’t expect it to come out all that great, not the first time, but it tasted just like the restaurant! Needless to say, that’s been added to the repertoire!

Well, the dogs have just put in a howling appearance, so I’d better go see what’s going on with them. Happy crafting!

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New Shuttles!

Bunny!!!

It’s been awhile since I added new tatting shuttles to the herd! Four arrived within the last two days, and I had nearly forgotten about them entirely. One was another bone shuttle from SergKostyukovDesign. This one is an adorable bunny, and brings my collection of his shuttles to ten. I’ve done practice runs with all of them and found them to be very nice to tat with.

The other three come from The Knotted Vine, another shop from which I’ve bought plenty of shuttles. These came about because she had made a beautiful purple shuttle, my favorite color, and I ordered it back in January. For some reason, PayPal presented her with my old address rather than my new one, so it was shipped there. Naturally, when confronted, the people at my old address claimed not to have it and that they returned it. Needless to say, that shuttle has never been seen again. I never received it, and it was never returned to her. I’d like to say I was surprised, but I’m not.

All gorgeous, but I LOVE the butterfly!

So I received a new shuttle design she had been working on, in the shape of a butterfly that is gorgeous and tats very well, and two others of a type I’ve bought before. I can’t say I’m unhappy! But I’m hoping she makes another purple chandelier shuttle soon!

The practice run with the butterfly

I really need to sit down with my shuttle collection and organize them according to where I bought them so I can keep groups together. Maybe I’ll be able to do that while the kids are out for summer break. Wait, who am I kidding? I’ll have two kids home arguing, day in and day out. I’ll be hard-pressed to maintain some level of sanity in this house lol!

Practice run with the bunny

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At a Loss

I don’t know what I want to do tonight. I’m sitting in my little studio, staring at Pinterest, and I don’t know what I want to do. I’ve got three bands in various stages of weaving on three different looms, and I’m looking at other patterns for another band. I’m also looking at tatting patterns, because it’s been awhile since I picked up a shuttle and my fingers are itching for one. I’ve also got two blankets on crochet hooks that could use some work, and I saw some interesting crochet stitches on Pinterest too.

And then there’s Valkyrie, with whom I’ve made some strides today and who is just cute as a button, and I want to play with her too. And Vanir has been very lovey-dovey since Valkyrie arrived, so cuddling him is a must, too. And I have to say, I don’t understand how it is that he is still as adorable as a puppy when he is an adult and nearly five years old now. Yeah, my dogs aren’t spoiled or anything!

There are also my adult coloring books, markers, and colored pencils…I could spend some time coloring with my kids. There’s so much I could be doing, so much I want to do, and can’t figure out which want is greater than the others! Sigh. So I think what I’m going to do is read more of Tablets at Work. I need to know more about how tablet weaving really works. I’ve made so many mistakes with the strap on the dragon loom that it’s not funny. If I lose my place, I generally end up cutting the weft thread and pulling it out back to the beginning of the pattern repeat, because I can’t figure out how to unweave it without compounding the problem. So studying is probably the best idea. It’s not like the book isn’t interesting, because it absolutely is, it’s just that I’d rather be doing than reading. Sometimes, though, you can’t jump ahead like that, and this is one of those times.

 

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Distaff Day

Saturday was Distaff Day, a day when a whole bunch of spinners get together somewhere and spin all day, and vendors have tables displaying their various fiber goodies. And I went, but without my beautiful Anansi, my Kromski Sonata. I haven’t maintenanced him in months. Between being in storage, the move, the unpacking, and the children, I haven’t had time. So I attended my first Distaff Day wheelless.

On the other hand, I scored a bunch of silk fiber, targhee, and yarn. I can’t complain. Then, while waiting for my lunch to be ready at a downtown restaurant, I found several tatting shuttles that weren’t in my collection, some tatting thread, and a book on knitting cables.

I needed the break that day. Bryony has been home sick since last Friday, and the PIP has it now as well. I absolutely needed to be away from the house and family for awhile.

So. Many. Wheels. Quite a few spinners turned out with their wheels, and it made me really wish I’d done the maintenance on mine sooner. There were wheels that I had looked at in the past, before Anansi joined the family, that I had not bought primarily because they were expensive. No, allow me to rephrase: Anansi was expensive. The wheels I had looked at and not bought were way outside my wheel budget. As in over $1000. As in ouch.

I’m realizing, though, that I may actually need a second wheel. Anansi always has Siberian Husky fur loaded up, being my primary (read, only) wheel. I have a ton of other fiber I’d like to spin up (case in point, the quiviut sitting in my fiber box right now). A second wheel would come in handy. I would love to have the Golding Celtic Queen wheel, but the price tag on that one starts at $11,500. They carry floor looms too, and those start at nearly the same. I can look, and I can daydream, but reality dictates that I can’t buy. And I’m pretty sure that even used, they would still be prohibitively expensive. Le sigh.

But I am on the lookout for a reasonably priced secondhand wheel. Good thing I’m not in a hurry.

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Tatting Shuttle Review

Flat, carved bone tatting shuttles from the Ukraine

It’s review time!!! I found these fabulous-looking shuttles…okay, they were found by someone in the tatting shuttle group on Facebook, not me, per-se, but that doesn’t make them less fabulous, and I’ve been collecting them since I saw the first one.

They come from an artist in the Ukraine, who has a store on Etsy: SergKostyukovDesign. They’re carved of bone, and they’re flat shuttles, as opposed to most of my others. They’re mostly carved into animal shapes, as you can see from the photo: one carries two different colors of thread at the same time (I haven’t figured out how to use it yet!), then there’s a mackerel, an owl, a crocodile, and a hedgehog. He’s made others, but I haven’t ordered any more yet, though I plan to.

I’ve discovered there’s a learning curve here. I’ve never used a flat shuttle for tatting before, and I also generally tat with size 3 or 10 thread, and this shuttle is made for much thinner thread. I have one ball of size 20 thread, and it was almost too thick for the shuttle. But once I got the hang of

Crocodile shuttle, locked, loaded, and ready to rock!

threading it, I got the job done. It was slower going than with my other shuttles, but it’s the first time I’ve used a flat shuttle, so that could have been it.

Once loaded, working with it was no different than any other shuttle, and it works beautifully. I only did a little practice piece, a couple of rings, so I can’t wait to work with it for real!

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Intervention

Tatting hooks, lacquered shuttles, bone shuttles, and Celtic shuttles

I need an intervention, and I already know that I cannot count on all of you other fiber arts nuts out there to give me one! You will enable me, one and all, lol! My tatting shuttles bred again, like I mentioned in a previous post. Those shuttles and Japanese hook tatting tools arrived today, and after I oohed and ahhhed over these six items, I counted up my tatting shuttles. Forty-six!!! How did I lose so much control? Where did I go wrong? Did the rabbits rub off on the shuttles? What’s going on here???

I didn’t know, when I started this, how much I was going to enjoy tatting. In fact, in all honesty, I wasn’t sure that I would like it at all, but like all the other fiber arts I’ve picked up over the last five years, I underestimated myself. By no means am I great at it, but I’m having fun with it. With time, I’m hoping to get better at it.

Now that wrestling is over for the night–I had to watch with the kids, of course, and they never miss an opportunity to see Roman (Okay, neither do I)–I’m going to make an attempt at Celtic tatting. We’ll see how this goes. If you hear a frustrated scream in about a half hour or so, don’t worry. It’s probably me. It will almost certainly be me. I bought a book for beginners with this technique, and it looks a little daunting. So I’m going to try the first project in the book, since it at least appears to be the simplest.

Or at least I’ll try it if I can tolerate the hordes of gnats that have gotten into the house through the screens due to all the rain we’ve been having. Gah!!! How do you get rid of these little pests?! They’re everywhere, and I don’t want to close the windows because it’s too hot, but they’re driving me nuts! I feel like they’re crawling all over me, and I’ve got the heebie-jeebies. Everyone in the family is complaining about them, but what can you do? They’re small enough to slip through the screens. There were tons of them in the rabbit cages tonight, and I’m just hoping they were all gnats and not something else. There’s a cloud of them by my lamp right now, and there isn’t an ounce of bug spray in the house. Guess what I’m buying tomorrow?!

Definitely time to distract myself. I’m so grossed out. One of the best things about living in states with four actual seasons is the fact that you get several months of the year almost entirely bug-free. I wish that applied to spiders, too, but there’s no escaping those. Okay, I’m out of here before I give myself a worse case of creepy-crawlies!

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Corn and Chaff

I couldn’t get a better photo, but isn’t it a pretty pattern?

I finally got the pattern for the Corn and Chaff design by Mary Konior!! Apparently Corn and Chaff is considered a braid and is worked from side to side, so the “RW” in the pattern, which means “reverse work” and generally means to flip it upside down, in this case means flip from left to right! Good thing someone informed me of that, because I would never have gotten it right otherwise!

I had a very hard time getting this pattern going. According to the pattern, there are four rings labeled A through D. A and C are exactly the same, and B and D are exactly the same also, so really, it’s only two rings, and you’re repeating the pattern until you reach the length you want. I had to rewrite the pattern to grasp it in my head, because when it said to attach a ring to ring A, it threw me off. Which ring A? Because as you’re repeating the pattern, every other ring is ring A. I know it seems stupid that I didn’t automatically assume it was the ring A that I had just completed, but I really couldn’t grasp the idea until I re-labeled the rings A through H and rewrote the pattern using those designations. In hindsight, now that I have the pattern working right, it’s not a difficult pattern at all and it’s very pretty, but because it was worked differently from everything I’ve tried up until now, I just couldn’t wrap my head around it.

This is a single-shuttle pattern. Now, everything I’ve done up until now has technically been a single-shuttle pattern, but has included a ball thread. Because I have so much trouble with working thread right off the ball, I’ve adopted working from two shuttles instead, with the second replacing the ball. This pattern really is single-shuttle!! There is no ball thread, only the one shuttle and whatever thread you’ve loaded it with. That’s another reason I had so much trouble; it was so not the way I had gotten used to working!!

I’ve also found a few Celtic tatting projects I’d like to try, which essentially means lots of chains made and woven into the work, so it’s actually Celtic knotwork. It looks beautiful, and it looks complicated as all get out, so I’m dying to try it, though I’m pretty sure I’m going to be frustrated sooner rather than later!

My gripfids for ply-split braiding came in yesterday too, along with some cord, and I can now see that when I make my own cord, it has to be a good bit tighter than I’ve been making it. I was also advised that when I do make my own cord, I need to put the aglets on each end while the cord is still under tension, and the end that is anchored should have all four cords on cup hooks in the same configuration as my cordmaker. The configuration can be more spread apart than the cordmaker, but not closer, so once I find a way to create an anchoring end, I’ll be giving that a try. As skeins go, the cord I bought is expensive, so it’ll be much more cost effective to make my own. I’m looking forward to trying it. It’s not rocket science, but there’s still more to doing it than I expected. When I say expensive, I’m speaking relativity. The skein is only $3.25, but it’s not very much cord when you look at the length. On the other hand, what I’ve been using, the perle cotton I already had in my stash from my cross-stitching days, is a little over $1 per skein, and you need four of them to make a cord. Of course, after you’ve unwound the skein in order to make the cord, lengthwise you get more out of it. It’s really a case of 6 on one hand, half a dozen on the other. In other words, I’d probably break even no matter which way I go on this. The biggest plus to making my own cord, though, is color selection. The online store I ordered the cord from has a selection of eleven colors. I’ve got to have more choice than that: enter the perle cotton!

So, since I’m up so early today (okay, I haven’t gone to bed yet. Or rather, I did, but couldn’t sleep), I’m going to work some more on Corn and Chaff until I finally get sleepy! If I’m lucky, it won’t be long!

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Complexity

More complex? But not loved.

So, as mentioned before, I’ve been looking for new, more complex patterns to try tatting. Part of the problem I’ve had so far is that I really do better if I not only have a diagrammed chart, but also the written out instructions, so I can bounce back and forth when I’m not sure I understand something. So far, I’ve only yet found one pattern on Pinterest that satisfied that criteria. It was an edging pattern that I don’t really like all that much by itself, but it had the written instructions and two charts, which was awesome, so I did it in a couple of repeats before deciding I really don’t like that particular pattern. I don’t know if it really counts as more complex…it’s still simple rings and chains, and simple joins, but it was more complex to me in that the configuration was different from the bookmark that I’ve done umpteen times now.

There is a pattern I really want to try very badly, and I can’t find it anywhere: Mary Konior’s Corn and Chaff pattern. It’s gorgeous, at least to me, and I’ve seen it pop up any number of times on Pinterest, but there’s just one problem. The only books that the pattern can be found in, while they can still be purchased on Amazon, are priced well into the realm of the ridiculous. Apparently the author passed away, so there will be no more books forthcoming, obviously, and I’m not either willing or able to pay $100+ for one book!!! I tend to think twice or three times when a book is $30, but there’s a far better chance that I will buy that book than there is when the book goes past that, which is my personal limit. Which kind of sucks for me, as the pattern itself has never yet popped up anywhere, and I don’t yet have enough experience to reverse engineer it from a photograph. So I keep eyeing it and sighing over it, and hoping that at some point, someone will put it online where I can see it!

I did have some fun with my allowance this month, so the shuttles are breeding again, and I ordered some Japanese cro-tatting hooks from Lacis. Not the expensive ones, which are about $60 for four hooks, but their own, much less expensive brand! And the gripfids and some cord for ply-split braiding. And I sent an email asking for help with making my own cord, since I am apparently doing something wrong when I try it myself. The Lacis cordmaker I have will do the job,  but I need to figure out how to do it correctly, which is the issue here. There are actually better cordmakers available, but the least expensive one is $119, and you still need a drill to operate it, which is easy enough to get, and get with your wallet pretty much unscathed–it doesn’t have to be a high end drill, after all–but it’s that initial outlay of money that isn’t an option right now!! This girl is on a budget, and probably always will be. Vet techs may be happy and love our careers, but we will never be rich. (Which actually causes a rant I may have posted before: doctors and nurses only have to learn one species of living being, where we have to learn all but that one. And in a general practice, we are the anesthetist, the X-ray tech, the lab tech, the janitor, the receptionist, and a zillion other things at once, and we don’t get paid anywhere near as much!!! Grrr…) But I digress. So I’m waiting to hear back about what I may be doing wrong. With all the yarn and floss in my stash, it’d be much more cost effective to make my own cords!!!

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The Explosion

An abundance of shuttles

I have a herd of shuttles now. Or is that a flock? A pack? A pod? I’m not sure of the proper terminology for a ton of tatting shuttles. But there are an awful lot of them, and yes, I did add another abalone shell, and another horn to even out the numbers. I still need another metal Celtic to even out that number there. Maybe next month. Maybe. There are a lot of things needing to be paid next month, so my allowance may have to go by the wayside for now. It’s going to hurt, too, because I kind of feel like I deserve to treat myself to a new shuttle. The broken tooth that has been a back and forth issue for months finally turned itself into an emergency by becoming so infected that my entire face swelled up, resulting in a run to the dentist to get a prescription for antibiotics, followed the next day by a run to the ER to have antibiotics given IV, since my body chose to laugh at the oral meds and continue swelling up. After that, yesterday, the tooth was finally removed even though the infection was still present, and today my face is still swollen, though I don’t look quite as much like Frankenstein’s bride as I did before. However, the extraction was followed by lots of rocking and crying once I got home while waiting for the painkillers to kick in. Holy cow, if you can avoid it, never have an extraction done if the tooth is infected. I have never felt anything like it before.

Simple barefoot sandals

In short, I feel like I deserve a new, pretty shuttle because I didn’t kick the dentist or the assistant, I mostly took it like a grown woman, and I resisted acting like a three year old until I got home. Those are justifiable reasons, right?

I’ve also made a couple pairs of very simple barefoot sandals recently. And I learned some things while doing them. One, the loop through which you put your toe needs to be fairly small, just large enough to fit your toe through it. Any larger, and the sandals will slide right off at some point, flopping around your ankles. Two, you need to secure the sandals at any joint. If your sandals go up your calf from your toe, you have to secure them flat at the ankle and secure them again at the top of your calf. Otherwise they will fall off. Three, even as simple as they are, they were fun to make. Absolutely useless, really, in the grand scheme of things, but fun nonetheless.

Now, I’d like to try my hand at a more complex pattern. I think it’s time. It’s just a matter of finding one that really tugs at me. I’ve gotta graduate sometime, and now’s as good a time as any. A friend of mine has asked me to submit some tatting for next year’s county fair, as they haven’t had any tatting submissions in some time, and that means that I need to push my own limits in order to have something worth submitting. So, off I go on the hunt!

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