I’m finally getting back to a project I’ve had in progress for ages. It’s going to be used as a hanging inside the glass door to a cabinet in my bedroom. I’m making it up of four pineapple squares, the one on page 70 of the Harmony Guides 300 Crochet Stitches book. I’ve been joining them in the final round since any kind of joining that doesn’t leave ends is just dandy in my book.
I’ve had the first three squares done for quite a while, but I kept procrastinating about starting the fourth one. Last night, being frustrated with my tatting attempts (more on that below) and my poor Prairie Star, which I haven’t been able to bring myself to frog yet since I’m still not 100% sure where I went wrong, I decided I needed to do something non-frustrating and picked up my ecru thread and got going on the fourth square. Haven’t gotten all that far with it yet, just four or five rounds, but there are only 17 rounds total.
Tatting, tatting, tatting. I’ve apparently been doing something quite wrong. I’ve gotten to the point where I can make a respectable-looking ring, though I can’t seem to make picots that are the same size. But—and this is a big but—I have apparently not been successfully doing this esoteric “flip” thing that makes the knot form on the shuttle thread instead of on the ring, which means that I can’t close the ring by tightening the shuttle thread. (I misread somewhere, and I’d tightened the ring by tugging the other end of the thread, so I didn’t realize at first that I was going wrong.)
This means that I can’t get a second ring to close at all, either, until I figure things out, which leaves me stuck for the moment. Essentially I’ve been doing macrame in #10 thread. Heh. Anyway, I’ve found some sites, in particular Jen’s Tat-ra Sutra, that go about the beginner explanation from a completely different angle, so I’m going to try that once I chill out about it a little.
I’m trying to remind myself that I once found crochet to be this difficult, too.
On the plus side, I finally did get a real shuttle, and it was on sale even though I didn’t have a coupon, so it was only $2.00.
