New craft to learn--tatting

This is one of my grandmother's tatting shuttles. Mom gave it to me for Christmas, because I had been talking about taking a tatting class. So I have one shuttle, and I have this burning desire to start tatting immediately. I don't want to wait for the class to start, plus it's $100. I could buy a lot of shuttles and patterns and thread for $100, I rationalize. I placed an order to Handy Hands, and then I sat back and waited. The time passed so slowly. Amazingly slowly. Here's some of the first stuff I tatted.

The lavender thread is vintage size 80 thread, about as thick as sewing thread. I could barely see it while I was working it. Here we have hens and chicks that I got from Learn To Tat by Janette Baker. The ecru thread is also vintage and was still wrapped around Grandma Christine's shuttle. The little lavender thing that is shaped like Mickey's head is the first real project I tried to do. It looked easy, right? Just a bunch of rings. It is Jon's Heart from Jon Yusoff's tatting blog, Tat-a-Renda. The bottom two rings on the pattern, though, are a single shuttle split ring with a floating ring dropped off it to create the point of the heart. Try as I might, charts, pictures and videos, I couldn't achieve that. So I just did a regular ring at the bottom and then left off the floater. Ta-da! Mickey's head. F A I L. But never fear! I didn't give up.