My trip to England

Dear tatting friends,
Today I have a bit of time to do a relaxing work on my blog. So I will tell you about my wonderful trip to England at the end of september and show you some pictures.
As I'm not so much a photografer, I forgot to take pictures during my two workshops.
I was hosted so wonderful by Brenda Rebhorn, who had organized two workshops and a lot of meetings with tatting and lace people for me. She drove me around to show me a lot ot wonderful places and cooked for me typical english meals. She let me look at all her hundred tatting books and magazines and showed me all her tatting and other lace work. To my surprise she had tatted a lot of my patterns and I feeled really very honored. One afternoon, when she had organized a meeting with some lace ladies, she taught us needle tatting. At the start I was a bit sceptical about learning needle tatting, but then I saw immediately, that with the bead works there are some more possibilities, than with the shuttle, though I always like more the look of the shuttle tatting. I will show you later something I tried out.
Though the weather in England is often rainy and foggy, we had 12 wonderful sunny and warm days. So we could travel around on the open bus and on top of the ferry to visit London, which is the most impressive capital I ever saw in my life.
We visited Birmingham, which is also a very big and beautiful city. Then some smaller villages with their picturesque streets, houses and wonderful churches.
The last days of my stay also Ira from Wales joined us and we laughed a lot together, and Brenda took us to visit an old glas factory.

The cheep surely admired my beauty, or not?

Lichfield Cathedral, one of the most beautiful cathedrals in the world. More pictures on the next post.

More about the burda patterna

Here is a picture of the burda pattern. I did not like the look of the second round onf the flower, so I left it away and joined the pieces likt this. This morning I have to make a big cleaning in my kitchen and will tat in the afternoon.

Burda flower

My piece for the magazine is not yet ready, other things kept me away from working on it. An exhibition in my husbands village, where the persons had never seen the tatted yewellery and were delighted (but did not buy anything).
Yesterday I went through my magazines and found a Burda magazine from 1989, which has very intriguing patterns. I tried out the most difficult,which is made of a flower in 20 thread and a filling in 80 thread. It took me the whole day of yesterday to find out the right stich number. The description is very poor and the filling in fine thread did not fit. Perhaps the 20 thread used is thicker than mine. Anyway I had to change the stitchcount on the flower and also in the inner ring, because it also ruffled. Now it is perfect, here it is:

Dear friends,
I will soon post again, I'm tatting again. This time I can't show you the piece, because it is for a magazine. But in the later summer I have to make a ringpillow for a spouse, so I will show you this.

Dear tatting friends,
The diagram for the design challenge is ready. Print it out and make your design.
1)Be aware that you have four motifs to join in the center, where the lines cross each other. The joining of the 4 motifs will give a further nice motif.
2) Start your design on the foot ot the top rings to be able to make a continuous round with the inner one.
You can already see a beautiful different version on Vinnie's blog
I wish you to enjoy this!
Iris

Object of the design challenge

Here ist the joining center of the TIAS 2 motif. This joining center will be the object of our design challenge. I will post a diagram, which you can print out and design your joining center in. Perhaps there is somebody among you, who knows how to put a vote window on the blog. The most votated design will get a gift from me and I will also tat it and make the description for all of you.

diagram of 2nd version of TIAS

Dear friends,
the diagram for the 2nd version of TIAS is ready, but this time it is not a mistery any more for you. Anyway this gives the opportunity to make the TIAS also for those of you, who are not used to written instructions.