1. Visit a museum or a gallery.
17. Support the local arts scene by going to a local festival, music event, art show, play, museum exhibit, etc.
The Sunnyvale Lace Museum's Semi-Annual sale ended today, so I stopped by. I love this museum. It's such a fantastic bit of local color located unassumingly in a strip mall. It's kind of hilarious.
I discovered it maybe a year ago? and drop in every once in awhile. It's been on my mind lately because I really want to learn tatting, and I know this is place to go. The inside was pretty quiet - I think the rain was keeping people away. I snapped a picture of the sale surreptitiously.
I looked through the bins, didn't see anything that immediately caught my eye, and then migrated back to the gift shop part of the museum, discovering tons of lace books. Glorious! Looking through all the tatting books, I selected the most thorough shuttle tatting book they had, and brought it up to one of the museum volunteers, asking for advice. She directed me to the resident tatting expert, who advised me to steer clear of shuttle tatting and start with needle tatting. Interesting. I was not aware that needle tatting existed. I thought you did it all with a shuttle.
Apparently, you can make the same designs in needle tatting as with shuttle tatting, but needle tatting is much less complicated and easier. "Easier" is a four letter work in my book - bring on anything complicated and challenging! Perhaps she could sense my skepticism because she immediately went into the back room and brought out her tatting kit and gave me a demonstration right then and there. It was amazing. She tatted away at lightning speed and instantly it became obvious why needle tatting would be preferable and quicker. I was sold. She hooked me up with a good beginner's book and needle, talked to me about different thread options, gave me some great websites for resources and patterns, told me about a needlepoint shop in Burlingame that's apparently going out of business (hinting that I should go buy up their discount threads) and invited me to the Thursday afternoon "Stitch and Bitch" at the lace museum. It was a little overwhelming! Very nice though. And now I'm all set and ready to tat!
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