Thursday, June 28, 2018

What are you doing?

"What are you doing?" I get asked that a lot when I am out tatting in public.

Lace making is quite rare in Romania these days and tatting is even more rare.

Very few people still work thread and yarn by hand, compared to a couple of generations back. My grandmother from my father's side used to knit (her wool booties were the warmest) and weave (she made kitchen towels and I think some wall carpets too). My other grandmother died before I was born but my mom told me she used to crochet. She or my great-grandmother (I forgot who exactly) made a gorgeous bed spread that was used on my bed. I will definitely take a picture when I find it again. In fact, I will take the whole thing with me, why leave it in some old wardrobe? The house is also strewn with doilies of all sizes, which to my amateur eye look like Romanian point lace. I will need to rescue those too, even if just for storing and not displaying.

At some point during the last few decades, doilies were extremely popular in homes in my country. They eventually became a kitsch symbol, along with the porcelain statuettes that were usually placed on them. None of the modern households display doilies anymore, even if mothers and grandmothers worked on them with care and talent.

Apart from this phenomenon, the most popular arts were knitting, crochet and cross stitch (framed cross stitch works are also considered kitsch here now). A lot of people didn't really know much about other forms of lace making. They knew about embroidery, because of our beautiful traditional blouse (called "ie" in Romanian) that was embroidered by hand with geometric motifs. Of course, if you take your time to look up the various techniques for making lace and clothing (and more!) using thread and yarn, you will realise there are a lot more than these three.

There are of course artisans in Romania who work using these less known techniques and some of them (yes, still only a few) also tat. I'm sure a lot of these people get asked "what are you doing?" a lot. Sometimes, they also hear the generic "ah, you are crocheting again", even if they are not in fact crocheting, but doing something else entirely. I have a friend who crochets who was asked by someone "what are you knitting there?"

It is normal for the majority of the people to not know off hand what you are doing and to just assume you are crocheting or knitting and you can of course try to educate them. I do that as well, every time I get asked what I am doing. There is unfortunately a big problem for me, because I haven't been able to find a Romanian term for tatting, no matter how hard I looked. So I just use the English or French term and I explain that I am "making lace" or "knotting" or simply "making a flying piggie". Some leave it at that and shrug, others insist that I am crocheting.

A friend (who insists he studied linguistics in school) tried to tell me that it is normal for people not in the know to just use the general term in the language. We eventually agreed that this would be "making lace" (he was also convinced I crochet)  but he is right in one thing. Unfortunately, this is the natural mentality of the person who simply doesn't really care to understand what you do... but asks nonetheless.

Monday, June 11, 2018

Introducing the flying pig!

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it is the tatted flying pig!

I have had Jane Eborall's flying pig on my wish list ever since I found out it existed. Which was shortly after learning how to needle tat, a few years ago. It was such a whimsical thing to make!

I kept putting it off though, wanting to learn and get more experience first. Some of the techniques were almost daunting. Split ring? Lock join? Reverse work? Oh wait, that one I knew. There is also a version with onion rings. I didn't even open that one, the title alone stopped me.

After getting a bit more comfortable with shuttle tatting and some of the intermediate techniques, I decided to give it a go. I didn't like onion rings much, so I chose the alternative pattern.

Let me make a little aside here. I am truly amazed by Jane's patterns and I'm sure I will make more in the future. So far I have made the turtle (as a pair of earrings).

I also tweaked the piggie a little to my own taste. I only used Catherine wheel joins (because I seem to have a lock join phobia), made the ear as a thrown ring (with a turned side, like the turtle flippers), used self-closing mock rings for the legs instead of split rings and added or removed a double stitch here and there. And I tried to make a dead-end chain for the tail without proper instructions (my phone was running out of battery, no time for research). I also completely remade the wings...

The leg as self-closing mock ring with a thrown ring off it. The loop is formed by the core shuttle.
Looks a bit naked... Let's give it some wings

I'm quite happy with the way it turned out. I even had the perfect shade of baby pink. I asked my friends what they thought it was and they guessed it was a pig, so pig accomplished!

I then designed the wings. They are very simple. I will put the instructions at the end of the post if anyone cares to try them.

After it was all done, of course we had to take photos. And since it was supposed to be a flying piggie, we tried to make it look like it was flying. We ended up filming it... while it was flying downwards. Here it is in slow motion, with extra sound effects (sadly, the pig is not in focus):


We really had a blast taking photos of the piggie and tossing it around. It was a flying pig, after all!

The piggie in the grass photographed by my husband.
In the end, I gave the piggie away to one of my friends. They said they would make another video starring the little flying oinker. I will make another one for myself. I definitely need one somewhere on my desk at work.

PS. Here are the notes for one wing. This is for the right wing. For making the left wing, work everything backwards.

Two shuttles wound continuously.
Start SCMR
SCMR 3
R1 3-2-1
SCMR 2
R2 1+(join to p2 of R1)3-3-3
SCMR 2
R3 1+(join to p3 of R2)5-6
SCMR 6
End SCMR

I connected the wings together by passing the two threads through picots in the pig's body instead of cutting and hiding the ends. I had enough thread left to make the second wing.