I will start this blog by posting a photo of my latest work. I’m really proud of it. I wanted to advance my tatting ability by learning something new so I decided to make one of yarnplayers pattern which required me to use two shuttles and make floating rings and self closing mock rings, which I’ve done before but with a lot of cursing and annoyance and still need a lot of practice doing them. This isn’t perfect but I love it. It has been nice being able to tat with stories and news about the volcanic eruption in my ears. I’ve been fascinated by it, I love volcanoes and eruptions. Since I live in Iceland I’m bound to experience them on and off through the years. Not so keen on the poisonous mist though since I’ve got asthma and it increases irritation in my lungs even though I haven’t experienced much discomfort from it so far. Hope it stays that way. Sorry, I just had to mention the volcano eruption somehow. I hope I am forgiven.
But to other things. To tell you a little bit about myself (Ingunn), I’ve always had this little quirk about collecting stuff. F.ex when I was a teenager I had to use the bus to and from school every day and always when I wanted to go do something. It became a habit to get “skiptimiða” which is this little piece of paper you get when you pay so you can switch buses within a certain duration. Those little tickets piled up in my pockets and when I got home they usually ended up on my desk, in my drawers or went to the washer and became this hard mass of washed paper in my pockets. When I was cleaning my room one day I counted my tickets and if I remember correctly they were over 20 then so I got this brilliant idea to start collecting them. I had this old ice cream box that I used to store them in and every time I put one in I drew a line in my diary. When I finally stopped this I had over 500 of them, near 600 and it almost filled a whole page in my diary.
Through the years I’ve also collected key chains, stamps, books, DVD’s, pens and on one point I collected the little paper stuff you pull from inside cigarette packs. That was to keep track of my smoking habits for some strange reason unknown to me today. And I’ve started collecting countless other stuff too. I still collect books though, oh yeah, and concert tickets. I still own my Metallica concert ticket from 2004 f.ex. I also keep little things that remind me of good days, nice trips, a certain person. They don’t have to be of any value, just trash really but they mean a lot to me. F.ex I went to a cabin trip with lots of people a few years ago and to prevent us from using ALL the plastic cups we brought one girl drew our names and a smiley, a toon or something on a little piece of paper and we jammed it between two cups (they were clear) and that was ours for the night, no mix up. And of course on Sunday when we were cleaning up I pulled mine from between the cups and secured it in my journal for my keepsake from that trip. It’s still there btw.
What I’m pointing out by telling you this is that now I have this new collecting mania and it’s all things tatting related. Beads, yarn and shuttles. I haven’t exactly been able to buy any fancy vintage shuttles yet but I can imagine in about 10-20 years I’ll have more shuttles than I’d care to admit. They are so cool. there are so many different materials used, different designs, colors, makers etc. Like the well known phrase from Pokémon, gotta catch them all – or gotta collect them all in my case. That’s my newest collecting mania. I’m kind of embarrassed to say that I’ve spent hours looking at shuttles online, decorative tips and all kinds of stuff concerning shuttles. I had no idea that there were this big sub culture of shuttle collectors. That really surprised me. All the forums, the facebook group (yes I joined of course) the photo galleries, the tutorials, I looked at it all.
But beads and yarn I’ve started to gather. I counted 15 different Lizbeth yarn colors – quite a collection compared to how little of it is delivered to Iceland and in the shops. And there’s only size 10 and 20 sold in Iceland btw, so everything smaller than 20 I’d have to buy online – which I’d rather not since I have no patience for that kind of stuff. But as the picture shows there are 15 Lizbeth yarn balls there (one without a bag – the brown one) and one golden yarn I have yet to try but included it in the picture. There needs to be so many more colors available here though. I saw something new in one of the craft shop earlier this month that I haven’t seen before. It was this twisted yarn, two colors twined together in one thread, looked very cool and very interesting to tat with it I think. I have to try that out soon. I have a huge problem picking out colors, I get very anxious when I’m in the shop and looking at all the colors, cause I don’t want to buy a color that people don’t like and it will just sit there, untatted and lonely in my bag. Am I being weird? I think I am.
The beads are no different, I own so many of them now but still need more (and more andmore). Me and my sister bought a pack of beads at the same time we bought our needles and the how to book on needle tatting – the shipment from Walmart that we waited ages for – and there are 24 cases of seed beads in it, 23 different colors and one a mix of all the others. They were all glassy and half clear and I wanted some matted beads as well so I bought another set with matted seed beads. Beside all those beads we needed some big ones too so I bought a lot of them too. There was this offer on a bag of different beads in all different sizes so I bought that and lots and lots and lots of beads that you can buy separately. Those are almost filling the biggest compartment in my toolbox that I converted to a tatbox or “my box of tricks” if you prefer a little mystique. Four of those compartments are dedicated to beads in different sizes and for different purposes. The rest of that box contains everything I need for my tatting, scissors, threaders, needles, shuttles, yarn, earrings, jump rings, paperclips etc. If I say so myself I think I’ve got quite a nice collection of tatting items in such a short period of time. I will sign off with a picture of my box of tricks. Hope you’re having a good one and happy tatting 🙂
Inka design - Tatting project 