Frog n Fish

First off, TWO motifs today! Wootwootwootwootwoot!

That's right... I've been both restless and presumptuous, and had been staring (enviously) at all the lovely tatted stuff fellow tatters on the 25-Motif Challenge (link on the right, darling readers) have been coming up with, the classics and the adventurous new ones, which are so great.

Someone's doing a piece of a geisha in different textures... so amazing. Another tatter did a dragon. A dragon!

So yours truly decided to take the plunge and try (I told you, presumptuous) at designing. Or more like "let's make things up as I go and see how it looks". This is Motif no 2... a CraftyPretender/EeKoon original tatted design. My first self-design! Quite proud of myself, even if it looks quite ... wonky. Er, does this qualify as a proper motif?

It also looks like ****. Believe it or not, this design, which I'll just call "Ribbit" (inspired by Chinese frog buttons, hehehe), actually marks a number of firsts.
1) first time doing Josephine Knots... you wouldn't imagine those little rounded boogers were giving me trouble but trust me, they twist in mid-knot and end up looking like a cross stitcher's French Knot nightmare... I hadda untwist it a couple times. Undoing tatting is even worse than frogging on high count fabby!
2) First time using Size 30 thread... never done anything so fine before, I knew it could have been a mistake when I started grappling with the threads and felt my palm starting to get wet frorm all the finger-picot wrestling... eucch. Liberace had a better time playing scales.
3) First time trying to see if a chain, a JK and a little seed-looking round works ... it works ... sorta.. but I think the tying leaves a lot to be desired. Hopefully this comes with practice!

I put in a photo of this, together with REAL frog buttons from one of my Chinese cheongsams, to show some semblance of inspiration. (Motif no. 3 is at the bottom of this post, btw)

Next up -- Cross Stitch
A return to HAED's Conversation Around Fish. Once again (for those who want a reference for stitching HAED, you know who you are, esp since we were yakking at it on Gmail, on, might I add, working hours) this is
done using tent stitch
2 strands over 1
on 28-count evenweave
This is Page 3 of the piece,originally painted by James Christensen. When am I gonna finish this? Hopefully before menopause hits... I'm 32, which means there could be another good 20 years left. Nice to return to this after a stitching slump ... encouraged by a MYS member to return to it too ("I missed seeing CAF grow" were her words, while e-yakking on Gmail... love Gmail... it lets me fart off, er, I mean, communicate with important contacts, while staring at a sluggish stock market)



Finally, back to tatting. Motif no. 3!!!! 22 more to go. This is from the Blomquist-Dover tome (too lazy to find the correct title, as is almost 3am and I have an oil and gas thing to go for tomorrow morning). This one was what I went to (back to Size 20 thread) after grappling and struggling with Ribbit. Spent all evening doing this one because it was just a relief not untangling chains and rings from Ribbit and enjoyed every minute of it. Think those picots are improving.

Pretty, yeah? *i have no shame*

Hey, d'you think I shuld keep on trying to design some tatting stufff.. it is, oddly enough, easier to play with (with designs) than cross stitch. Nothing beats a craft that encourages you to get all knotted up.