Rock In Red

Today's effort at dotting a mandala on a rock. I've done quite a few mandala rocks in the past couple of weeks. This one is not one of my best pieces, but I wanted to show my struggles.

There's numerous things about this one that didn't go as well as I would have liked, "swooshes" being one of them. I keep giving in to the allure of adding swooshes since they add so much to a mandala -- usually. But in my case they turn out so terribly that they end up disappointingly irregular.

Here's what swooshes should look like!

https://youtu.be/-XKxQ4nkdAY?t=33

Further Instruction Needed

I've been working on a tatted snowflake. All was going reasonably well, right up until the end. I then encountered a couple of tricky joins that had me backtracking and retrying, repeatedly, and perhaps shredding my thread to the point of no return.

Those two yellow pin heads are at the locations that need to be joined. I'm now in the process of asking on various tatting forums for help. Are you surprised that there are several? I've been pointed in the direction of several YouTube video tutorials that should be helpful. Not as helpful as having a real life instructor sitting down with me to take me step by step through the process, but a step in the right direction -- I hope.