Yarnification

Just thought I’d share the pain. This is the incomplete Prairie Star, which I believe is going to have to be frogged back something like five to seven rounds (sob!) in order to fix the mistake I made:

On the tatting front, after I got home from work last night, I dug out the Reader’s Digest needlework book and sat down with it. I got a little further this time. It’s still awful but more like the beginner awful that I’d expect to come up with on a first try, as opposed to the horrific tangled mess I came up with earlier. Note the homemade cardstock shuttle. It’s a little difficult to use, so I really do need to run to Joann’s and get one of their cheapie shuttles. (Apologies for the extreme blurriness; this camera does not have zoom or megapixels or anything, and the directions say it won’t focus properly unless it’s two feet away, but it was too little to show up well from that distance. Er, never mind. I took a picture that’s a bit less blurry.)

There are three picots on there, even, not that there’s much visible difference between the picots and some of the looser stitches. I actually got a little worse as I went along, but that’s probably to be expected since it was after one o’clock in the morning and I was tired (but determined to finish that ring!)

I couldn’t figure out what to do from there to start a new ring based on the instructions in the Reader’s Digest book. I believe I’ve finally justified the $3 I spent on this one several months back:

I couldn’t resist picking it up, even though it duplicated a lot of the things I already had in the Reader’s Digest book. And now it’s definitely turned out to be useful because the tatting instructions seem to be a bit clearer. The other book seemed like it was missing a step somewhere (or maybe I was just tired!), but this one seems clearer, and it has photos instead of illustrations which is sometimes helpful for me.

Maybe I’ll run out to Joann’s and pick up a shuttle during the day today; I already have to go to Walmart for cat food and dog food, and Joann’s isn’t that far. I’ve tried Walmart, but they don’t seem to sell tatting shuttles. Or maybe they just hide them, who knows? I just the other day found where they hide the sale yarn, and the day I went in looking for Red Heart Tiki I found it hidden on the bottom shelf at the cutting desk. Crazy.