Tatting Ribbon

I spent part of my Thanksgiving weekend reuniting with my yarn collection.

When I have a four day weekend, I feel like I should be getting things done. Much to my family's chagrin, I sort of feel like they should be using the time to advantage too. These two notions merged to become a garage organizing project.

Now I probably shouldn't admit this, but a big part of my yarn stash was living in the garage in plastic bags. I know it's shameful, but my studio is only so big and a lot of this yarn is leftover from projects. I don't really use it very often, but I can't bring myself to let it go. You know how it is.

So I found myself sitting on the living room floor surrounded by yarn. In my sorting, I came across old favorites. I had some gorgeous, hand painted ribbon (pictured above) left over from a shawl I made a few years ago. I thought it would be fun to see how it looked tatted into bracelets. Then I got hooked on the idea and started looking for other ribbon yarns.

I found a whole skein of ribbon in pretty sunset colors. This ribbon is only about 1/4" wide, but it has fun little eyelashes on either side. I really like how this one turned out.

I just did a chain of split rings starting from a small, six stitch ring, then ascending to a large middle ring. Then I decreased the rings back down again to a small ring on the other end of the chain.

I need to keep hitting the books with my tatting so I can get comfortable with more elaborate patterns. I guess I've been taking a short break to explore yarns and find out which ones tat the best. I'm discovering that you need yarn or thread that has some strength. A tight twist seems to be a good thing too. Now I'm definitely adding ribbon to the list. In fact, tatting with ribbon might just be my favorite!