Classic Earrings

These earrings are based on the lovely Volta design from koronczarnia.pl. Apparently beads drilled to dangle aren't fashionable where I shop at the moment, so I use a triplet of seed beads at the bottom ring.

I prefer everything to look even and perfect so I generally work frontside. It's nice and easy with this pattern, just the chains are backside. Larks head joins make this super neat and make it sit nice and flat without blocking or hardening. That does mean the chain joins are upside-down, but it makes it a bit more fun.

Edit: These earrings were gifted to my Mum, who felt awful when she suddenly wasn't wearing one of them. I've since stopped joining the hook fittings to a single picot, as the lost earring flipped up and slipped out. I'd recommend making a small thrown ring instead of the small picot at the top, or omitting it altogether and looping the fitting around Ring 2.

1 shuttle + ball

9 seed beads, 1 centre bead

lbp - long bead picot

jp - tiny joining picot

sdp - small, decorative picot

JC# - join to picot on chain #

JR# - join to picot on ring #

JR#B - join to long picot on ring # with bead

(#beads) - move # beads to working loop

(#b) - make picot with # beads

CL - close loop 

RW - reverse work

3 seed beads on shuttle

R1: 5 lbp 8 jp 3 CL

R2: 3 JR1 7 sdp 7 jp 3 CL

R3: 3 JR2 8 lbp 5 CL

RW C1: 2 jp 8

RW R4: 4 JR3B 9 jp 1 CL

R5: 1 JR4 9 lbp 4 CL

RW C2: 8 jp 2

The next set is basically a repeat, just with the beads instead of the hanging picot and some different joins.

R6: 5 JR5B 8 jp 3 CL

R7 (3beads): 3 JR1 7 (3b) 7 jp 3 CL

R8: 3 JR2 8 lbp 5 CL

RW C3: 2 JC2 8

RW R9: 4 JR8B 9 jp 1 CL

R10: 1 JR9 9 JR1B 4 CL

RW C4: 8 JC1 2

Cut ends long, tie off. Thread one end through chain join, thread seed, centre, seed beads on and thread through other chain join. Thread back through beads and tie off.

The earrings pictured are worked in Milford #20 Royal Blue with size 12 seed beads and 6mm centre beads.

90% Backwards

I learnt to tat from YouTube, a great beginner series by Esther.

90% of general folk are right handed, as are 100% of the good tatters on YouTube. So I did it right handed too, terribly awkwardly, until I understood the basic stitches well enough to mirror it and work the right way around, with the shuttle in my left hand and loom on the right. 

Then the fun really started. 

No pattern worked. The rings wouldn’t face the right way and never lined up to connect to the next picot properly. Chains stuck out the wrong way and upside down. Every join I had to turn the whole piece around. 

When everything is worked in circles, it really does matter which direction you go. Working left-handed means each ring is formed anti-clockwise, and the next element starts to the left of the last. Most patterns out there are worked clockwise from left to right. 

Here is a rare left-handed pattern from a Russian site I haven’t figured out how to translate.

All of the patterns I have worked and put up here are written out like this, to be worked anti-clockwise, from right to left. Hopefully I can help save someone from the brain-knarl of getting halfway through a pattern and not knowing which way is up anymore! 

Learning Left Handed

When I was a girl, my Mama tried to teach me how to knit. My hands wouldn't work and I couldn't get my head around it. So she went home and taught herself how to knit left-handed, came back and tried again. Somehow, she managed to get me to figure it out.

I've picked up a few other yarn crafts over the years, but the single biggest hurdle I've had is learning how to learn from right-handed people. So I'm going to try to put left-handed things here, starting with patterns.

While knitting isn't so bad, tatting patterns have to be completely flipped, as when working left-handed each ring, and the whole piece, is created anti-clockwise. There is a lot of scrap lace floating around my house! Most of my patterns have been adapted from other blogs, which I will link to.

Please, enjoy and send any questions!