Tatting

In fact, there is an artifact of Clara Haremska Matynka in the possession of the Society.  Here is CHM at the time of the marriage of her daughter, CAMZ.  The man between them is, I believe, Father Tomiak, who officiated at the marriage.

My mother, CAMZ, showed me this tin one day.  She brought it out from the hall closet and bade me open it while I was sitting on the stone hearth in Marilla.  I recall what she said of it as it comes out of a carton onto my desk, years later.

This is tatting.  My grandmother tatted.

It's micro-crochet; nano-crochet.  These bells are the biggest ones, at over an inch in height.

This little doily is an inch and a half across.  I conclude that the tin was for storing both tools and samples, used as patterns.

She would look at a sample, and her brain would somehow grok an instruction set for reproduction of that sample.

It is a mental ability that I could never develop in a million years.  It's forward-planning, four-dimensional, and mathematically abstract.  Had CHM been born in another time, she might have become a software programmer.

Those smallest loops - I'll call them "epiloops" - naming things is my paltry talent - are 2mm across.  Would doing this work drive me nuts first, or blind first?

So then this tatting would be used as trim, on dresses, blouses, curtains, doilies, dinner napkins, and other napery. With skill, a woman takes bare thread and from it builds complex systems used in aesthetic projects.  Whether or not one considers the product beautiful, one has to credit the productive and creative work.

There is no jeweler's loup or other magnifier in the box or in my mother's memory of her own mother doing this. Here are the tools, from the tin:

It looks like some strange version of an orthopedic surgical kit.  Those two tapered deals are bobbin holders; perhaps the tatter holds one of them in one hand, and one of the other things in the other hand.  The little clamp things hold the work down on a workcloth, perhaps.

Even I recognize the tiny crochet hook, below.  The thing above it is another matter.

The stout little object below the crochet hook is perhaps the tatting equivalent of a mandrel.

Mom said that her mother's fingers flew faster than she could follow.  Further, CHM was not a natural teacher, apparently; Mom's experience was typically along the lines of "You do that while I do this."

So Mom (CAMZ) never did tat.  It didn't hurt her.

Julie