We are so excited to host Mike Lyon, a rocket scientist turned tatting designer, at this Saturday's guild meeting. Join us on Zoom (the 2021 numbers, sent to guild members in the email announcing this meeting). If you are a tatter or not, this will be a fascinating presentation!
Meeting: New Zoom room numbers (check your email)
Date: Saturday, May 8, 2021
Time: 10:00 CDT
The Crochet and Tatting study group is currently doing a tat-along with one of Mike's designs, you can see that discussion on the guild's Ravelry thread for that group.
From Mike Lyon:
I hold both a Bachelor's Degree and a Master's Degree in Aerospace Engineering from Auburn University and a Ph.D. in Industrial and Systems Engineering and Engineering Management from the UAH … Yep, a retired PhD rocket scientist (really!) now spending my time tatting original designs and teaching Scottish bagpipes and Irish pennywhistle in Huntsville.
My tatting journey to this point is somewhat out of the ordinary, a combination of coincidence and heredity.
When I was about 6 years old, my mother – a “sometimes” tatter – gave me one or two lessons on how to hold a shuttle and make a double stitch. Like any 6-year old boy, tatting was not a primary interest, and so even the thought of tatting lay dormant for some 60 years. In December of 2015, I received a phone call from my niece who said that she had come across one of my mother’s old tatting shuttles and wanted to know if I wanted it. When the shuttle arrived, my curiosity was piqued – could I still remember how to make a ring? The answer was “not very well”, but with the help of the internet, I was able to recapture the lesson from decades before.
After tatting a dozen or so “conventional” doilies and ditties, I began to design my own pieces. In these past 5 years, I have published numerous Celtic designs, large format doilies, and “Character Pieces” for fun. My current project is a large doily featuring flower motifs that will be available the summer of 2021.
I am the creator of “Mike’s Laws of Tatting” – a compendium of lessons learned during my journey, and am a tatting instructor at both the Palmetto Tatters Tat Days in NC and the Tatting Corner Tat Days in IN.
