I was planning to post something tatting related here this weekend but spent the weekend ‘down and out’. I got my second Covid shot (Moderna) on Friday at 11am. Due to bad weather, I decided not to go out to eat with friends after work and headed home. About 7pm I started getting chills and feverish and went to bed early. I tried to get out of bed on Saturday about noon-thirty and just wasn’t feeling good. I was sporting a 101.6 fever and even a bit nauseous. Spent all day and night, Saturday, in bed. Got up Sunday and my fever had gone but I felt ‘run over by a truck’ achy and just lazed around all day. Today, Monday, I’m back to work and feeing OK. Sure glad I got the shot on Friday and had the weekend to convalesce. The good news from what I read on the internet (you know how the internet is always right!) is that a reaction shows that the vaccine is working in your body.

In February 2019 my husband and I took a fantastic trip to 3 Italian cities: Venice, Florence, & Rome.

It was in Venice, our first stop on our adventure, that I found & purchased these lace pieces.

The true needlelace pieces were purchased in a shop called Il Merletto, just off the grand San Marcos Plaza. The lace shop was itself a marvel as it was in a very old ‘chapel’ and as such you could see the remnants of it’s previous use. Unfortunately, photography was not allowed, so I have no pictures to share with you.

Greek Key/Meander Designs in Padded Split Ring Tatting.

Use of 3 shuttles: 2 for main design element (dark blue) and one for the ancillary/fill-in element (light blue).

The main design path of the dark blue rings are continuous. The light blue (fill-in) rings are carried along (Padded) inside the main element rings and created using Take-Off Ring Technique.

The piece is tatted continuously (from start to end) in one round using Padded Split Ring Tatting (PSRT) Technique–will be taught in the book. The real trick is in how to tat PSRT Technique and not have blebs/blips of color show between elements!!!

I bought these 3 threads several years ago at one of the IOLI Conventions and have just recently pulled them out to use them on a project. I looked it up on the web and found that this thread is a 3-ply cotton, still being sold in the EU and comes in sizes of ‘6, 8, 12, 16, 20 & 25’.

At first I thought that they were a form of perle/pearl cotton (perle thread uses a numbering system of 3, 5, 8, 12), but upon closer examination I wasn’t completely sure what kind of thread they were. As you can see, my thread is labeled ’12’ which is why I thought it was a perle cotton. However, I was positive that this Freccia thread size 12 (thicker) did NOT match perle cotton-12 (thinner) in size.

So I tried to figure out what thread size my Freccia 12 most closely matched.

What I really need, but have been unable to find, is the book Threads in Lace by Brenda Paternoster. In this book, Brenda (scientifically) quantifies thread ‘size’.

I noticed that the Freccia labels specified that there was 285 meters of thread in the 50 gram ball. That started me on a road-of-discovery…. I was able to find yardage/meters on many different threads in different sizes including DMC Perle, Lizbeth, Anchor Cordonnet, DMC Cebelia, DMC Cordonnet and calculated out yardage per 50 grams of thread.

I was able to determine that the Anchor Freccia 12 thread is closest to a size 10 crochet cotton which is the left one in the next photo. The Anchor Liana 10 was 300 yards per 50 grams. The Anchor Freccia 12 was 312 yards per 50 grams.

To prove this sizing, I tatted a few rings in the two threads.

Since proving/learning about this thread type, I have embarked upon a large undertaking to quantify thread sizes. This is partly due to the fact that in my 4+ decades of tatting, I have used many different types of threads from many different manufactures and know that each thread has its own characteristics/personality. Even in the Size 20 cordonnet threads, that I have been using almost exclusively for my design work for my ‘Fun with Split Ring Tatting’ book series, I have noticed differences in ‘size’ between the same size of thread from various manufacturers. (Don’t get me started about the differences in size between different colors of the same size of thread from the same manufacturer!–that is for a future topic.)

To date, I have quantified almost 80 different threads based upon how many yards of thread in 50 grams of thread. Watch for this data in upcoming posts as I figure out how to use/publish my excel charts.

A recent study has indicated that threads give off certain pheromones that hypnotize women (and some men) and cause them to purchase ungodly amounts of thread. When stored in large quantities in enclosed spaces (ie. stores), the pheromones in the thread causes memory loss and induce ‘gathering syndrome’ (similar to the one’s in squirrels before the onset of winter).

Sound tests have also revealed that these threads emit a very high-pitched sound heard by only a select few (known as ‘tatters’). When played backward these sounds are heard as chants: ‘…BUY ME! TAT ME!….’

Furthermore, the pheromones seem to cause a pathological need to secret the thread purchases away when one takes them home and blend them into the existing stash.

In order to overcome the so-called feeding frenzy effect that these threads cause, one must wear a face mask and ear plugs when entering the primary acquisition facilities (stores or internet websites) to avoid being pulled into their grip. It is also beneficial to enter these facilities without the presence of cash or credit cards.

Sad to say, the addictive qualities of this compulsive behavior are cumulative and are ameliorated only by the purchase of more and more and more threads.

No cure is known at this time….

I found this fabric on the web quite a long time ago. The name of the design is ‘Lost & Found Love’ by Riley Blake Designs. It can still be found on eBay and Etsy to name a few places. It looks like it came in 3 different color options.

Several years ago I finally joined the neighborhood women’s book club. I will have to profess that in the last 20-30 years I have not been much of a reader. First and foremost, I spend my available free time either tatting, creating needlelace, teaching fiber art techniques, and/or designing/laying out/publishing my books. Keep in mind that I work full-time. But with the realization that I’m an empty-nester, I decided that it was time for me to expand my horizons via reading and what better way than to join a book club. In addition to the stimulation that reading a book gives me, the book club gave me a way to keep in touch with the neighborhood women. And as an added bonus, the get togethers feature goodies of wine and yummy snacks!!! For a long time, I wouldn’t even consider choosing a book for the group to read (they were all experienced readers, whereas I was new to reading). That was until I went to The Sunflower Lacemakers biannual lacemaking retreat and one of the members mentioned that they had found & joined a book club because she had been invited as a ‘lacemaking expert’ while the were reading/discussing a lace related book. This got me to thinking…’what if I used a lace related book to introduce my form of relaxation/interest (lace and lacemaking) to my book-reading friends’?

So I read 2 different books: The Lacemakers Daughter by Diane Keziah Robertson & The Lace Reader by Brumonia Barry. I asked one of the book club members to read both to help choose the most appropriate book for the group and she chose the latter one–The Lace Reader.

I set out a plan to utilize this opportunity to introduce these ‘readers’ to the world of lace. I have a collection of lace acquired through the years in various ways. Some pieces were collected because of my active study of the type: Romanian Point, Teneriffe, Nanduti. Some were ‘rescued’ from antique and thrift shops, some were gifts, etc. None of my pieces are extremely rare or expensive. But all are loved & appreciated. I filled my dining room table with representative pieces of different forms of lace including my own tatting, various needlelace types, bobbin lace, knitted, crocheted and machine lace.

In addition to my collection of lace, I asked my beautiful lacemaking friend, Jennifer Bartling to come in & demonstrate bobbin lacing technique. In the book, The Lace Reader, the characters did bobbin lacemaking. Jennifer drove over 30 miles one way to help me educate my bookclub friends about lacemaking. I regretfully do not have a photo of her demonstrating…..I was too busy that night being a hostess: food, wine, welcoming my guests, as well as giving a verbal/visual tutorial about what is lace, lace types, etc.. I didn’t take the time to take photographs of Jennifer as she was demonstrating.

To my knowledge, I didn’t find any willing recruits wanting to learn a lacemaking or fiber art technique, at least I did try to educate about lace and lacemaking. In the past I used to take tatting and needlelace-making techniques into a ‘cross-stitch’ festival/teaching environment. It was again my attempt to sway ‘cross-stitchers’ into becoming ‘tatters’ or ‘lacemakers’. But I will have to tell you that despite my best efforts, I have come to realize that for the most part, one’s first hobby (reading in the book club group; cross-stitching in the needlework show group) is usually where they choose to stay.

The Lace Reader has a complex enough story line that even the most advanced readers of the book club were sufficiently amused. The victim of the book was a lacemaker who was also a ‘lace reader’. She would hold up a piece of lace in front of a person and read their ‘fortune’. I had never heard of a ‘lace reader’ even though I have been in/around the lacemaking world for a long time (several decades). I did some research on the internet and the only reference to such a thing kept coming back to this book. Thus I believe that the author make it up–a fictional thing for a fictional book.