I took up tatting by studying online tutorials I think 4 years ago or whenever it was when Yahoogroups and Lycos were still popular. There were plenty of patterns and tutorials back then and all you needed was patience. I tatted cross bookmarks mostly because I found them beautiful and gothic. Finding supplies in my country (Philippines) was a challenge though so I stopped after a year and because I was starting to develop carpal tunnel syndrome.
Now I took up tatting again. Some of the tutorials and patters are still online and some you have to use The Way Back Machine to access them. Technology and access to threads are better now thanks to the internet and forwarders. I ordered a bunch of books on tutorials like Learn to Tat (with DVD)
and patterns and lots of threads. I even bought needles for needle tatting but I still don't understand how that works.For my first official project, I decided to take on a heart pattern from the tutorial book. It was a project for intermediate tatters but I was ambitious and thought it was easy. Well, the photo above was the final result which, although it still looks pretty, is far from being heart-shaped. My next project was slightly more successful but more on that later.
