Wow! I had an interesting weekend with my balls of Curio and tatting instruction books. My hands might remember the motions for tatting but my mind has certainly filed away the technical understanding way back in a mental file drawer. I’m not looking for excuses for my high learning curve but I have to say the tatting world is a bit complicit.
Tatting is just now enjoying a resurgence in popularity. But, the lesson and pattern information is a bit challenging. Sort of like when I first started to knit and there weren’t many books filled with excellent photos and detailed instructions.
The good news is that tatting is ridiculously inexpensive. When I made a mistake, I just cut that bit off and started again. It was liberating to know that it was that easy to begin again. I found that the magic combination was to read through a couple of tatting instruction books, watch a few YouTube videos and then apply a certain amount of common sense.
I’ve been enjoying the challenge. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt completely incompetent at a craft. I’d forgotten how good it felt to finally get the hang of something.
I have decided to share a bit of my “adventure” with you in a series of instructional videos. Well, they will be more like “share the pain” videos but I don’t see any reason why we can’t learn together.
You can find the tutorial series for Shuttle Tatting here (be sure to check back next week for the third segment!):
Kelley’s Shuttle Tatting Class
I don’t remember the early days of my learning to knit but I vividly remember learning to spin. From buying my first dark brown fleece to having things “finally” click thanks to a lovely Mozart recording. I had Mozart playing in the background while I was struggling with my spinning. Then I got into the rhythm of the music and I was spinning! On Sunday morning I was listening to a very entertaining audio book – Nice Girls Don’t Have Fangs – and, suddenly, I was tatting!! I felt like I was understanding what I was doing! Guess what I did for the rest of day!
