A Tat Here, A Tat There

You’ll never guess what special day falls on April 1. Sure, I know it’s April Fool’s Day and hope and energy are in the air as well as a lot of jokes about shoe laces being untied. But April 1 is also International Tatting Day! Honestly. I’ll bet you knew that already.

Tatting Tools

I love tatting. I like the feel of the smooth shuttle in my hands, the way the thread slips through my fingers and the gentle click, click, as a thing of beauty emerges.

After my mother passed away, I badly needed something new to do, something I had to concentrate on, something to do with my hands. So, I took tatting lessons. At first, the thread knotted and tangled and I spent more time taking out bungles than tatting. I was about to give up, thinking that tatting was like my life seemed to be without my mother in it–tangled and full of knots–but, at last it all smoothed out and started to make sense.

Tatted Christmas Tree

Tatting goes way, way back to–goodness, I don’t know where it originated. Ladies many  years ago tatted, making lace to spiffy up even the simplest garment or handkerchief. When I tat, I feel a kinship with these lades. I also feel a connection with my mom. She tatted too.

This length of lace has a story behind it. A long time ago in our home at Manos Meadows, my husband and I got into the habit of watching a daily television program together. The show was one hour long. Feeling kind of guilty about sitting still so long in the middle of the day, I grabbed my tatting basket. As the show progressed, I tatted. It took exactly one hour to make an inch of the lace. So when I look at this lace now, I remember how it came about. Only thing is, I’m not quite sure of what to do with it. Maybe I should make it longer until some day in the dim and distant future I have enough lace to edge a tablecloth. I don’t know. But it was fun to make.

Come to think of it, tatting is rather like writing a cozy mystery. First, an idea, then characters come to life and a plot, and before long, there’s a story, something that seems to be a puzzle at the beginning, but by the time it’s finished, it all makes sense and there you have it–a completed tatting–I mean, a completed cozy mystery!