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Monday, August 28, 2017

Magic Square Progress

I've made a little more progress on the large magic square. At this point, my shuttle ran out of teal thread. I will have to wind a new shuttle to continue from here.


I've almost finished one full repeat of this magic square (four repeats will complete the square). This repeat needs seven more onion rings, and after I get that finished I will draw some numbers on top of the photo to show the order in which it was tatted. The entire project should take one ball of Lizbeth Ocean Teal Medium #40 and two balls of white DMC Cordonnet Special #40.

A few weeks ago, Diane let me know that she was having trouble posting a comment on my blog. I've gone ahead and changed a few settings, which I'm hoping will fix things!

Thursday, August 17, 2017

Back to snowflakes

I switched back to tatting snowflakes, so I haven't made any more progress on the large magic square. Maybe I will have more of the magic square to post next week, depending on how the snowflake project is coming along.

Here are a few of the designs that I've been diagramming, proofreading, and tatting:


The two on the left are inspired by Joëlle Paulson's Crystal Star. The one on the right is from my experiments with onion rings.

Thursday, August 10, 2017

Magic Square Path

Yesterday, I was asked if I could create a diagram to go along with the large magic square I am tatting. I don't think I could, without lagging Inkscape so badly that it would be virtually unusable. What I can do, however, is provide a photograph with some numbers and arrows that show the path I am taking as I tat the square:


I've labeled the onion rings only, and have drawn arrows between them to show how I got from one onion ring to the next. Here is the unedited photo for comparison:


It will be another few weeks before I am at the point where I have one repeat finished (four repeats will make a square). I'll make a post with a new picture when I get that far.

Wednesday, August 9, 2017

Magic Square, in Color

I've been working on diagramming, proofreading, and tatting snowflakes and wanted to start on a more relaxing side project. I decided to tat another onion ring magic square, this time in two colors. Here's my progress so far:


For this project, I'm using Lizbeth size 40 Ocean Teal Medium, and DMC size 40 white. I filled up two large clover tatting shuttles and was able to get to the point pictured above, before running out of white thread on the first shuttle. I'll need to rewind several times to finish this square (I'm only about an eighth of the way done).

To make a square this large, I have gone beyond the diagrams and am tatting in triangular sections. To keep my place I have to regularly refer to the section I have just completed, and tat a mirror image of it. This will get trickier as the square gets larger, but it shouldn't be any trouble.

I talked about this method of expanding magic squares a few weeks ago, and you can refer to that post if you'd like to join in on this challenge :)