Yuletide is rapidly approaching and while we don't think we will be in the new house by Christmas Day, preparing ornaments has been a priority.   We probably won't have a tree or any serious decorations this year, but I'll be ready for 2025!

Below you see 5 ornament balls with their tatted covers.  From left to right, there is a black satin-wrapped styrophone ball covered with Olympus Lame Metallic thread color # 408 Bronze with added gold-ish bugle beads.  The pattern for the central motif was adapted from pattern 19 in Frau Endruck's Tatting / Schiffchen-Spitzen  publication of 1920.  The second ornament is actually a pale blue egg-shaped ornament addorned with white Lizbeth thread, size 20 and navy blue beads.  This was truly nothing fancy - simply 4 p 4 p 4 p 4 rings with the 11/0 seed beads covering what would be the chain thread and white tear-drop beads between the ring segments.  The third ornament is created using Joelle Paulson's 2012 "Flowering Quatrain Bookmark" (available on her blog) as the central wrap of the motif. It was created using the Italian thread "Master Metallic" in the color red/gold a personal favorite because it holds its shape so well when working up a pattern.  Not widely available Master Metallic is a special metallic thread unlike most of the others of that type. 

Number 4 is a pattern found in a photograph on Pinterest that I had to work out independently.  It is placed over a frosted green glass ornament.  The fifth ornament is again worked over a satin-wrapped styrofoam ornament.  The pattern is one I have lost track of but was carried out using another Master Metallic thread.  In each case, there is a basic pattern of either a simple ring with picots, a clover pattern or simple snowflake with the appropriate number of picots that would allow for weaving individual thread between top or top and bottom, joining these motifs to the central ring.  

I'm not going to post any patterns here at this time.  Much of the motifs used were simply ones that were just worked from memory or from basic tatting design principles.  

Getting Ready for Christmas, 2024

 Over the past 6 months, we have been waiting for the completion of our new residence in Haywood County. The time has been filled up by spending time with our grandchildren and their parents as well as reaching out to get to know our new community.  As a bridge player, seeking out a group of like-minded card players also became a way to integrate into our new surroundings. Like a similar group that I am a part of, the local Haywood County bridge group has an annual Christmas outing that includes gifting with small tokens.  Tatting is a perfect way to carry this out while passing time in one of my favorite activities.

In 2022, those of us who attended Tat Days organized by and carried out by the Palmetto Tatters Guild in South Carolina were presented with some small tokens from tatting great Georgia Seitz's collection of findings or trinkets that could be used in tatting or other crafts.  What I left with was in a small zipper bag with a label:

For the past couple of years I have not known what to do with these charms.  By virtue of the fact that the bail or connecting hole on the finding is present on both the top and the bottom of this particular set of pendants, they could be connected together into a bracelet or similar chain of findings.  As a result, there is now a challenge to create somethiing to gift my friends.  Using these presented itself as( an opportunity to take them and other findings that I already had) to create something unique.  

Metallic thread or more traditional cotton thread used side-by-side with metallic or sythetic fillament.  Usually I rely on Lisbeth cotton in the sizes 20 or 40.  Lisbeth also has a metallic thread that is of blended nylon composition.  Other simiular threads are found as Razzle-Dazzle, Olympic Lame, Oren Basak and the older (and for the most part no longer available) Candlelight threads.  There are also much older cotton and fillament blended threads that can be very fragile and difficult to work with.  

While it too some time to develop a plan to use these findings, I am happy with the final product:

These can be used on sweater or jacket pulls, to mark keys or on wallet or Bibpe zipper.  These are just simple trinkets to gift friends for use as they see fit.  In this case, I added a few beads as well as the lobster clasps tatted with a colorful quilting thread that has a bronze fillament thread wrapped onto the shuttle Ankars style