Here's the second sample of the fir/fan edging. It looks much better in a finer thread. It might depend on what you're putting it on too. Anyway, this went well for the most part. I understood what I was doing wrong with the first one. This author used a different wording for CTCT. She said WS, tw 1, meaning whole stitch twist 1. It confused me the first time and I settled on twisting only the very last maniupulation of a series. It wasn't until this time that it dawned on me that it was cross twist cross twist. Now I know why I lost one of my workers in the first sample.

I still had to unweave and reweave a few times. As I was very near the end, a thread broke so I moved back far enough to reattach it with a weaver's knot. I wouldn't do that on lace I was going to use on something although it looks okay. I think the knot might come apart if the lace were under the stress of use. Or it would show up. My other problem and it's on the very last fan on the side you can't see, was a long loop. I've figured out it's when the bobbin thread gets caught on a pin and I don't catch it. After the thread broke, I just wanted to finish and even considered stopping where I was but I wanted to see the whole strip finished. It seems to me also that the headside "picots" are consistently uneven. It must be where the pinholes are and if I'm off a shade when pricking, that exaggerates it even more.

I'm really done with this pattern now. I'm still not sure what I'm making next but I think it will be a flower petal.

Speaking of flower petals, here's a crocheted gerbera in progress. I still need to crochet around the petals and add a separate crocheted center. The pattern has beads too but I haven't looked that far. The pdf from CRAFT
Magazine online can be found HERE!

I learned something new in this too. The instructions say to begin with a cast on ring. I googled that term along with "crochet" but got mostly knitting hits. I'm not sure what word I changed but I did find a few links. It's also called the "magic ring". You loop the thread around your fingers and crochet over the loop. Then you pull the tail to close the ring. It did not tell me I needed 6 single crochet but I figured it out. I crocheted for decades before tatting but I've never been very good with crochet diagrams and since I tat more than crochet these days, there are new techniques I need to get up to speed with.

Lots of news about weddings since the Royal Wedding last weekend. I had my wedding dress out after cleaning out some storage recently to take to the cleaners. The bag was supposedly treated to keep it nice, but I guess after 40+ years it's going to show some age. Anyway, now that I've got my car back, I plan to take it along with a winter coat to the cleaners. I was barely 18 when I got married. I wanted to wait but Viet Nam loomed on the horizon and my hunny was due to be drafted so we, with our parents' blessings, got married. I made my dress, including the train which is pictured here and the veil. I didn't know anything about lace then. I knew how to knit and sew but nothing else. I chose this embroidered fabric for the dress jacket and train. The dress itself was a white crepe in the empire waist princess style. The jacket had buttons all the way down the back with fabric loops. I made my mother very nervous by waiting until we were on the way to the church to sew the final buttons on. I loved that lace edging I picked too. Now...knowing the difference between handmade and machine made lace...I wish I'd known how to make lace and made my own wedding lace. But that was then.

I didn't start tatting until after my daughter was married so she didn't benefit either. I was barely tatting when my oldest son got married so they didn't get any tatting but I did embroider a tablecloth and crocheted a lace edging around that. My most recent daughter-in-law got a hanky with a lovely tatted edging so she got that at least.

My oldest granddaughter won't be able to wear my wedding dress. She's taller and bigger than I was back then. I'm not sure anyone will want to since dresses costing hundreds of dollars are sought out now. You never know though.