Took a break

I took a break from tatting to do other things. Specifically, I went for a week's holiday in Perth, Australia.
Here are some photos of my time spent in Perth and places around it.

View of the city taken fom the air as the plane approaches to land.

I am not a shopping person, so while the rest of the group went to look at the shops, my sister and I took a stroll in the Stirling Gardens.

I wish I could have spen more time along the narrow roads of Freemantle and in the quaint little shops, but here is the customary post outside the Freemantle Markets.  Another sister photo-bombed me here but she is looking so cute doing it, I let her be.

The Pinnacles is one place that I would highly recommend to anyone visiting Perth.  It is worth the 2hr 45min drive up, and there are many other interesting places that you can stop at along the way. 

The obligatory photo at Kings Park for an expansive view of Perth city and of the ocean.

On our last day, before leaving for the airport, we stopped to see the tulips at Araluen Botanic Park.  It was still very early spring/late winter and we are not sure if the tulips have bloomed. We were rewarded with some gorgeous flowers in various colour.  This photo is my favorite from the ones that I took.

One last photo at Araluen, showing the stream in the background.

Oh, also tasted the apple strudel touted as the best apple strudel in Australia. That went too fast, no one remembers to take a photo of it, he he he.

Back home, I continued with Round VI of the JS mammoth doily.  I had finished half-way of the round before the break.

Here is Round VI, done

I came back from the holidays in time for the closing ceremony of the Rio Olympics. Wasn't it wonderful that they had included a tribute to lacemakers in the ceremony?

Most of my crochets had been with thread, hence all my hooks are small-sized ones that I also use for making joins in tatting.  But I have some stash of yarns from long ago that I wanted to use up.  Bought a pack of larger sizes of hooks and started on this. It may be a scarf, or something else. I have not decided.

Round V

I was so happy to come to the end of Round V.  So happy, in fact that I made a small mistake. I forgot to tat over tail of the thread at the beginning of the last motif.

It may seem strange that I have ends to hide at the beginning since I am using only white throughout hence I could easily start with CTM.

Okay, let me explain. Maybe someone may find this logical or useful.

I am using two shuttles and I am not measuring the thread for each motif of Round V.  I use whatever balance in the shuttle to continue for the next motif.
For each motif of Round V, I did start with a CTM every time but only at the first ring of the clover. I just pulled enough thread from one shuttle and finger-tatted the first ring. Then I added thread from the other shuttle for the next ring of the clover, tatting over the tail of the thread of the first ring. I should have tatted over the thread end of the second ring in the third ring, but I forgot to do that, and that end is only an inch long.

So, it is not technically a mistake but more of an inconvenience.  I almost always sew in my ends.  In this case, there was a lot of threading and re-threading of that one inch long thread to finish off this round.
Oh, I have to say that I have been good and sewing in the ends of the 12 motifs, doing it straightaway after each motif is done.

And here is the full photo as at Round V.

It is now about 27cm wide or 10.5 inches.

Off to Round VI!