How I discovered Tatting

I've been busy trying to rework the motif from my last post so that it lays flat. In the meantime, I promised in a previous post to write about how I discovered tatting.

My discovery of tatting was entirely accidental. After completing about 10 crochet afghans, I decided to move onto something smaller. I purchased a few balls of size 10 Aunt Lydia's crochet cotton and set out to make some miniature doilies.

(The doily pattern can be purchased here, but I cannot recommend it as I had to completely redo the center just to get it to lay flat.)

Once I got the pattern sorted out, I made a bunch of doilies, giving most of them away as coasters. For a while I was content to make the same pattern over and over again, but boredom eventually set in and I went back to Google images to look for more inspiration.

In the middle of my search, I came across a photo that looked like nothing I had ever seen before. As I read on, and found the blog that the image came from, I learned that this fascinating art form was called tatting.

"Tatting?" I thought. "Is this the same "tatting" that's referenced in the Gumbie Cat song from the musical Cats?" It was so strange to me...I had heard this song dozens of times (I own the CD!) and never got around to looking up just what tatting was.

Now that I had discovered the existence of tatting, there was no turning back. I became convinced that if others knew about tatting, then EVERYONE would tat. I completely abandoned crochet to embark on this new obsession.

I found the Tatted Treasures blog and Absolute Beginner Tatting Series on YouTube and made my first four ring butterfly.

(I didn't even completely close the last ring!)

My journey began in April 2012. It's been two years since I learned about tatting, and I haven't touched crochet ever since.