This Week ...

... I've re-learnt how to tat. Tatting is a way of making lace with a series of knots, using a shuttle and your fingers. I taught myself how to tat years ago, using this little booklet by Rosemarie Peel. I see you can still buy it for £1; with that, a ball of thread and a shuttle you're all ready to go. I was inspired to have another go at tatting by this book.

New Tatting by Tomoko Morimoto is full of lovely colour pictures and the instructions for each technique are well illustrated and explained. So far, all I've made are some little flowers like those on the cover - mine are the two at the top of the picture - but I'm going to try the Christmas Rose design next.

This week ...

... I've been working on my Tunisian Crochet blanket.

This is worked round and round, one colour at a time and, as you only have six or seven stitches on your hook, you can use an ordinary crochet hook. Shades of my Ten Stitch Blankets here. I found the instructions for this technique online (it's called Tunisian Entrelac in the round by the way). It was ages ago and I can't remember the site I used but there's a good Free Craftsy Tutorial by Kathryn Vercillo.

While I'm on the subject of Tunisian Crochet, I've just ordered a Double Ended Crochet Hook from Purplelinda Crafts. I've got a digital copy of 101 Double-Ended Hook Stitches by Deborah Levyhamburg and I've been wanting to play with this technique for ages. I was given some money for Easter and this is what I've bought with it (thank-you Janet). According to my daughter, choosing a crochet hook over all the chocolate available at the moment is very sad.

This week ...

... I've been knitting lots more little squares for my rug.

Only 40 to go - whatever possessed me to start knitting a rug?

This week ...

... I've been working on two big pattern collections, one for Christmas and the other for 2018. This is the Christmas one ...

... well, you didn't really expect me to show you any more than that, did you? I've also been planning a new knitted blanket using Stylecraft Special DK.

I have knitted so many samples, trying out different colour combinations and I'm still not sure which ones to use. I spent hours this morning, laying them all out and squinting at them. There are times when being very short sighted is useful and judging colours is one of those times. For those of you with better sight than mine I can recommend looking backwards through binoculars - jarring colours will jump out at you.

And finally this week ...

... I've been enjoying wrestling with my first Bach piece on the violin.

It looks simple but there's so much to it I keep losing track of the time when I'm practising. I love Bach. This naturally led me to search out some more Bach to play on the piano.

This one's not so simple but oh, so beautiful. Here is someone playing it much better than I can ...

This is Tzvi Erez playing the Adagio from Bach's Piano Concerto in F Minor. I hope you enjoy it.