I was on the Amtrak train 2 weeks ago heading from Omaha to Grand Junction for a long-weekend vacation when I decided to take inventory of what I had in my tatting bag.  I love those little round,  ‘jewelry-travel’ bags.  My personal favorites are the ones without a rigid base—they squish-down better to stuff into my purse.  I have this tatting bag in my purse and with me ALL THE TIME!  In fact, if it accidentally gets left at home, I sort of freak out.  It feels  like a major part of my life is missing.

In regards to my shuttles:  I use the Boye plastic fixed-center post shuttles.  These are the shuttles I could find growing up in the 70’s (yikes I’m giving away my age!!) in rural NE Nebraska.  Thus I got use to them:  their feel in my hand, the (larger) amount of thread they hold, the usefulness of the point, etc.  If you look close you can see my tatting-in-progress, a SRT snowflake of my own design.  The ‘aero-type’ shuttles (the 2 colorful ones are HH Aerlits) are only in my tatting bag to be used as crochet hooks.  I recently purchased the 3 HH Moonlit shuttles on the lower right.  They seem to have everything I like in a shuttle:  larger size (I have larger hands), same size as the Boyes; holds a decent amount of thread–probably more than my beloved Boyes; & a built-in hook—something I’ve never had before in a center-post shuttle.  Pictured is also a Clover shuttle (my secondary-favorite shuttle) and a NAG (Needle Arts Goddess) handmade wood shuttle.

In regards to my Ancillary Tools (top to bottom):  A paper copy of my current pattern; my reading glasses in a hard case (I’m old!); pen & mechanical pencil (to jot-down new pattern ideas & correct current patterns); Uncle Bill’s Tweezers (for the occasional opening-a-closed-ring problem); safety pins (for pinning my work in progress out of the way); scissor-snip in an enclosed case (God’s gift to my tatting!); an old perfume-sample glass vial, probably from the 60’s to house my size 24 tapestry needles that I use to sew-in ends; metal tooth-pick & sheath (my irreplaceable Split Ring Tatting tool to encourage tiny ‘joining-picots’ to be big enough to get a crochet hook into to create a join); 2 pieces of plastic (used to unwind/wind thread to create ‘continuous thread method’ between two shuttles–See previous post http://survivalarchitecture.com/shuttlesmithblog/continuous-thread-method-my-tip/ for my how-to.