I was in Japan

Warning: photo-laden post coming up

A small group of old school friends, seven of us, decided to visit Japan early April.  We particularly wanted to catch the beautiful sight of the sakuras, and boy we sure did.  I am going to let the photos tell the story - not in the sequence that it had taken place

Entrance to the Osaka Castle

Found a piece of the homeland here

Chanced upon a monthly fleamarket at the railway station on the way to Nara

Was amazed at how tall and straight the bamboos shoot up to the sky

Bamboo groves - looking up as Arashiyama, Kyoto

Bridge over the Oi River, Arashiyama

Supposedly the oldest sakura tree in Kiyomizudera Park, Kyoto

A geisha at Gion Street, Kyoto.  Can't imagine how she can walk wearing that kind of shoes.

Himeji Castle, Himeji

The fishes, in clear water of the pond  in Koko-en Garden, Himjei

We feasted on the sakuras - Koko-en Garden

In the park leading to Himeji Castle

Leading to the Tokyo Tower

Went up the mountain to walk in the Ogimachi Village - a UNESCO heritage site

Took a ride on the Shinkansen bullet train for the first time and a couple more times after that

On one occasion, we had the whole coach of the Sinkansen to ourselves.

Another first - tasted onigiri, the japanese fast food on the go.

And to round it up, this was waiting for me when I returned from the trip.

Long Picots

I don't normally use picot gauges when tatting especially when the patterns asks for regular picots, whether joining picots or decorative picots.  I don't even do graduated picots if the overall design of the pattern does not really need them.

But I do use gauges and measure my picots if they are really long ones.  Otherwise, why wold the pattern specify long picots. You can't do woven pcots without even-sized long picots like in this link here, http://www.georgiaseitz.com/2004/rietwovenbkmk.jpg. Or, work a tatted hairpin lace like this in Martha Ess' blog, http://marthas-tatting-blog.blogspot.my/2015/11/hairpin-lace-real-and-mock-kinda-long.html

I am currently working on a pattern where I have put in long picots. Very long picots, about 3in closed long picots. Now, I could easily cut a piece of card paper 3in wide and use that as my picot gauge, but I can imagne how cumbersome it would be holding holding a large piece of picot gauge.

And then, I had this idea where you can make different lengths of picot with a small picot gauge. Here's how.

This is the size of picots that I need in my patern, slightly over 3in.

Using a regular picot gauge, loop the thread over the picot gauge several times until you reach the length of the picot that you need.  In my case here, for the size of picot that I want, I looped six times over the width of the picot gauge.

While the loops are still on the picot gauge, make the next double stitch to lock the picot in.

You can remove the picot gauge after a few double stitches are made, or you can continue tatting to finish the ring, as I did here.

You can see how long the picots are when I removed the picot gauge.

I have used picot gauge #13 because that is the widest that I have so I don't have to loop the thread too many times.  You can use a smaller picot gauge to suit the size that you need.

And, that's it.

+---- + ----- + ----- + ----- + ---- +

A short update.

I have just completed Round 8 of the Jan Stawasz Masterpiece Doily, which I started in June 2016.

I honestly believe it will be another year beefore I finish this,

Daisy Picot Star - the Diagram

Here it is, the diagram/chart for the daisy picot star.

Here are some notes to the chart.

• Pattern uses the technique of Daisy picot rings. The daisy picot rings are shown in red in the diagram.
• Please refer to my blog post on how to make a daisy picot ring, https://tatsaway.blogspot.my/2007/10/daisy-picot-snowflake.html
• The double stitch count in all rings of the daisy picot cluster is 5-5.
• The space before, between and after each daisy picot ring is two double stitches, i.e. the 'ring' shown in green in the middle of the daisy picot rings cluster.
• The double stitch count in all chains are 8-8.
• If using two colours, you will need to do a shoe lace trick (SLT) to keep the two floating rings (green) the same colour.