IOLI report.

Yes everyone, I have returned. My visit to the IOLI lace conference was short but sweet. Sandy overcame a major obstacle to get there, she ended up having two root canals on Monday. Eesssh. But she braved through the pain and she drove us down to Portland for the big day.

We had two objectives in making the trip. One, was Mimi Dillman's class on clunies. (I'll do another post on that) and the other was of course the vendors. The room pictured above was where all the goodies were housed, and as expected, probably 80% was bobbin lace oriented supples, but there was a smattering of tatting items available, including some Lizbeth, but no one seemed to have the newest colors.

I did make it home with a few balls of thread......my favorite find is the five balls of Altin Basak that you see in the middle. This is the first time I've seen a whole bin full of it, and I had to resist the urge to climb in and swim around in it.

One of the other highlights was the exhibit room. These beautiful tatted and beaded jewelry pieces are done by Karen Miner, and Sandy and I are going to try to get her to guild to teach a class for us.







This beautiful butterfly is something that caught my particular attention. It is done in Romanian Point Lace. Now, I have seen different laces at Guild meetings, but not anything I wanted to learn. This type of lace is very textural, and is built on a crocheted cording. It is couched to muslin, and then the filling needle lace stitches are connecting the cords together. The cording is very unique and I can see many applications in jewelry. The disappointment about Romanian Point lace, is the lack of availability in patterns and information. There was one teacher at the conference, and I did purchase her beginning book as well as a kit. Once I got home I looked around online, and discovered that I had become interested in something even more obscure than tatting it would seem. There has been one other book published on RPL, but it is out of print and unavailable. I do have Sylvia Murariu's website for patterns and information, and there are gals at guild who have taken her classes so all is not lost.

On our way back home we stopped by Shipwreck beads and did a little more damage.

I will need to do another post to show what we did in our clunies class, and show another goodie that I got, but am too lazy to go take a picture of right now. :-0

Tired of these yet?

I think it's time to start giving some of these away......

My tatting bag is quickly filling with earrings! There is a baby shower being held for me this week, so I think the ladies who are planning it should each have a pair.

Both are my own design, done in some of the fabulous Altin Basak (edit-whoopse I keep saying altin Basak, but it's Oren Bayan actually!)I recently aquired. The first pair I was going for a new shape, and is the pair that is making me crave a strawberry smoothie. The second is done on a wire shape I made. Oddly enough, during an early "nesting" period I organized ALL of my craft supplies, and both my wire Jig and all my pliers are gone! So I improvised with a bottle of beads. I do have half a mind to open an etsy, but the other half is fully occupied with the impending special delivery :-) Today I just need to survive another day of what I affectionately refer to as my husband's "nesting period".