Shuttling my projects

I have taken a hiatus from my onion ring projects. I am starting on a series of exercises that I hope will improve my tatting. For various reasons I should not discuss the various patterns and techniques publicly, so I will be even more limited on my thoughts here.

One strange turn of fate is that my first exercise uses size 10 thread. I used size 10 thread when I first tried tatting but almost everything thing after the first couple of edgings has been done in size 20 until my recent work on the onion rings.

The thing I did today was load my first shuttle. I am going to use the Jan Stawasz’s shuttles for this project. I have emptied the sapphire and the gold shuttles with the onion ring project and a few experiments, so today I loaded the pale yellow one.

The one thing I have learned using the Stawasz Shuttles is the importance of the stiffness of the material. The Plexiglas is fairly flexible so as I reduced the amount of thread in the shuttles the tips came closer together.

In loading the pale yellow shuttle I endeavored to not allow the thread to come in contact with the blades. This produced a very round profile to the winding. Now, once I load the other shuttle I am off to a new tatting adventure.

I still intend to return to the onion rings and a few other things as time goes by.

I am still not totally pleased with how this motif looks so I am thinking about it while I do other things.

I still think it is a very nice motif.