Judy

The heart that Linda uses is the Immortal Heart by Tatmom. She was active on the eTatters site and here is a link to the pattern, free, on her website: Immortal Heart

Can you direct me to the black and white heart that Kersti posted?

There is a black and white picture of a heart by Christel Weidman in Knots. Is that it?

black and white heart

Now that i have really looked at the heart, I think you are seeing something that really is just a clover. All the rings on the outside are thrown off or floating rings and the three rings of the clover are, too. The reason you see a space is that there is a join to the large ring inside the heart. So the clover is opposite the join and then you just keep on making a chain and the other single thrown off rings.

Hi,
OMG. Sorry everybody, I was blaming the wrong heart! It was another one. This one,which Patty D posted the link to, has its own problems. It has a nice hearty shape in the photo, but mine came out limp and out of shape and when I tried to tighten the chain... which runs continuously from the top right around to the top again, it was a real bear to get right. Starch is going to be the only thing that will hold it in shape. When I figure out where you can look at the real one with the troubled point, I'll post again. Thanks PattyD. Got the pattern for the Immortal heart.

I've been dealing with flooding today. I live just below the area NE of Los Angeles that burned in August. My street has had at least a dozen problems every time it rains, mostly about a mile up this steep street right next to the forest(or what was forest). About 4 am a massive storm cell parked at the top of the hill above the burned hillsides and dumped buckets. The street, Ocean View, which is a major artery with 4 traffic lanes, a turn lane in the center, and parking on one side, became a flood channel. When it reached the condo complex where I live, some of the water, muck, sand, twigs, branches and..., decided to divert and flow into our underground parking garage.
Some of the owners spent the entire day working on it. We quit for the day about 10 pm.

What a valiant band. I live in a condo and I don't think my neighbors would pitch in like that. Best wishes for minimal damages.

Things have calmed down since that last post. We've gotten back about 1/3 of our costs from the insurance company -- the other 2/3 was "deductible".
Anyway, I've gotten back to working on hearts. I've just tried the ruffled heart by Vicki Clarke. It's in Knots. What a mess I made of it. I'm trying it again. The ruffle, which I totally misunderstood, is actually quite cute when you do it right. I misread it and thought it twisted around the needle. Wrong! You have to be careful and actually keep it from twisting or it doesn't look right --- just little wwwwww that gently waft at the belt. left leaning and right leaning. Has anyone seen this used elsewhere? Its not the deep V that you get from opposing sets of half stitches. Seems like it ought to work well on lots of other patterns.

I've found a thread that I absolutely hate. Its a red and pink #10 flora(?) (I lost the label). Its fuzzy on the outside, tangles a lot, but the worst of the tangling is that the thread between the tatting and the needle picks up enough twist that it wants to knot up. The knots don't start out big and loose, they immediately go to miniscule and almost impossible to note until in pulling the needle through you find one, or two, in what looks like perfectly fine thread. I have to go find a sharp point to pick them out.

Well, I decided not to pitch the red and pink thread. I'm trying it on a couple of other things -- I still forget to hand the needle and the ball from time to time.
I'm back working at hearts though.
How do you all keep track of all your online patterns? I have them sort of sorted by topic (tag), but I wonder if it wouldn't be better to keep track of them by designer or source. Anybody doing an access like database? three ring binders? or just very complex digital files, or put on cd's? It gets expensive printing all the colored pagegs... especially when you go through a binder and find a second copy of the same thing.

One thing about having a themed challenge is that I now examine every heart pattern I encounter. I've found some in places where I hadn't seen them previously. That's really been fun. Guess I'm in a better mood today than the last time I posted. I still haven't solved the ruffle problem. I'm setting it aside for the moment.

All right. I thought about this abandoned blog while on vacation in Wisconsin. My album now has a new heart posted that I did start to finish in one evening. Only one mistake in it .. left off a picot on one side, so there's a join I couldn't make, but it looks pretty good anyway. I left this one with my sister to show her that you can do things and get them finished in short blocks of time.