New year, new thread

I have an antique thread cabinet that I purchased a few years ago at the DC Big Flea market. I bought it with the intention of holding antique tatting shuttles, and I did use it for that purpose until recently. After joining Instagram and seeing lovely photos of DMC tatting thread, I wondered if this thread would fit into the cabinet. I knew I'd be in trouble if it did...because then I'd have to go on a shopping spree. Well guess what? It fit perfectly:

This thread cabinet was originally meant for sewing thread, but I don't sew. Instead, I tried to match the colors of the DMC thread to the labels in the cabinet as best I could. I even bought extra thread so that I could tat things without messing up the display:

This thread (DMC special dentelles, size 80) has been discontinued in the US, so it was a little difficult to find vendors that had it in stock. I placed a lot of online orders over several months, and eventually moved onto shops based in the UK. I found Minerva Crafts to be a good option, because they carry a wide variety of colors and restock whenever they run out.

The thread cabinet has a glass top that opens and closes on a hinge. The photo below shows it in a closed position:

My antique tatting shuttles have since been moved into different displays, one is a Milward's Needles display and the other is a Clark's Mile End set of drawers. Maybe I will post pictures of those sometime in the future.

Frauberger edging

I decided to try my hand at converting a Tina Frauberger edging into a bookmark. This is Figure 28 from the 1919 publication of Schiffchenspitze, which can be accessed for free on Georgia Seitz's website for the Archive of Tatting Books in the Public Domain.

Here is my progress so far:

I'm tatting this in Lizbeth size 80 Scottish Thistle. It's coming out to be about the same size as the Priscilla bookmark in size 80. Size 40 would work too, but size 20 is a little too big for a bookmark.

I had the same experience as Frivole when tatting a Frauberger pattern. This one had to be significantly reduced in size from the original (I reworked the numbers from the ground up to make it easier to tat). The only counts that remain true to the original are the trefoils along the periphery of the bookmark. I will share my version of the pattern in a week or two (still thinking about making a minor edit to what I'm using above).