I took a class offered through my town's adult ed program. But it's very true that tatting instruction classes are hard to find. I was taught 3 or 4 basic stitches within 3 weeks of classes. It might be possible to find a book and learn on your own but I really needed visual instructions and so did my classmates. One suggestion would be to see if you can find folks who are into Civil War reenactment activities and there might be women who are creating clothing from that time period when tatting abounded.