I know you're Jealous.....

I know you are jealous of my cute shuttle sockies.

It's ok. Sock envy is appropriate in this situation. And, if you can be the bigger person and admit your covetous need for such socks.....I might be willing to provide you with the contact information to the vendor from whom I aquired the socks at IOLI.

That is all I have to say.

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

In case you were wondering...

Yesterday I mentioned that I would today be heading off to I.O.L.I. and for those of you who don't know it stands for International Old Lacers, Inc. (the lace techniques are old, not necesserily the lacers themselves, however in some cases both are true.) It's their big convention this week, in Portland this year. Next year it is going to be in Maryland or some "M" state on the other coast, so I thought I would take advantage of the proximity this time around.



Most of what goes on all week will be dedicated to Bobbin and Needle laces. Most of the classes run for 12 hours over five days..... there are only two "mini classes" available for tatting, one of which I will be attending. Sandy, who you may have seen in my Shuttlebirds pictures, is someone I met at the Guild. We have become fast friends and she has invited me to tag along with her on this trip. We hope to see much in the way of displays and vendors!



Being just an overnight trip, I have packed only a small pouch of tatting supplies containing the needed supplies for the clunies class, and another of the bridal necklaces that i am working on, this time in a brown with beautiful bronzy beads. It will be amazing. I think I will make one for myself.



In this poor picture taken from my laptop, hopefully you will be able to see the pair of earrings I whipped up last night to wear to the big convention. I'll Be back tomorrow friends! Until then, happy tatting!

The bride's necklace in black

Had enough of these yet lol? Snarky self portraits for my etsy listings. I promise, I'll save the rest for etsy.

Anyway, this is the bridal necklace in black. I found the most wonderful Matte black beads. Darn thing takes three days to make, 26 ends to hide Yech! It is priced accordingly, and I suspect if it gets purchased it will be for a special occasion of some sort. Either way it's another notch on my way to having 100 items listed.

New fun things are going into the shop this week, I got some shoe clip findings, so black flower shoeclips are listed, and I got some ring bases to make 3-d flower rings. I'm trying for a very broad base of products, so you can bet that if tatting can be attached to it, I'll be doing it! :-) Hopefully some of my ideas will be original and unique.

You won't hear from me tomorrow(unless it's before I leave), but I will be going down to Portland for the day to the IOLI convention. Sandy from the guild is taking me along for the ride and we will be taking a class on clunies from Mimi Dillman. I will of course take copious amounts of photographs, and plaster them all here on the blog..............oh, and speaking of tatting conventions, guess who is going to Palmetto????? NOT ME!!! (pout, sniffle). Can't afford the plane ride, (it's too far to walk...) and hubby is out of vacation time anyways. But my Mama will be there! SO all you tatters better giver her a nice welcome for me, and tell her how you know me. Her name is Karrieann, and she resides in Toccoa.