Once Upon A Stork

 

Once upon a time, about 15 years ago, my daughter was pregnant with her second child. For a gift I made Jane Eborall's tatted stork to put on a photo album. I can't remember if I made this one first for practice, or made it second, meaning to give it away. Whatever I planned, I found it in a drawer the other day.

Stork

I remember how much I enjoyed making this. I have always enjoyed making split rings, ever since I learned how many years ago. The way Jane designed the legs on this really caught my attention. I modeled the legs of a spider I designed that same year (2011) after them. 

I found a few other things in the drawer that I have forgotten about. Some I remember when I did them and others were just passing thoughts. I'll probably share them another day.

"A heart without dreams is like a bird without feathers."

                                                                Suzy Kassem

A little repair work

A little over two years ago I made Jane E's stork for my daughter's baby shower gift, putting it on a photo album. My daughter was kind of mad at her husband soon after because he took the album to work to show off the pictures of his new daughter and got the cover dirty. 

Sometime after that her son got hold of it and did some modifications. I don't think he was being malicious but scissors and string were too much for a two year-old to resist, especially when Momma was with the new sister.

She finally gave it back to me and I finally got around to doing some repairs.

As damage goes, this wasn't that bad.  The sling and baby are done separately from the stork itself so the repair wasn't too intensive. 

Pretty much as good as new!  Still has a few fingerprints on it, but that shows it was passed around a bit, right?

Didn't get much tatting done this week as we did some house cleaning and then had family over for the weekend.  That, of course(!), was much more fun.

My two superheroes! 

No, I didn't ask them to pose like that, that was all their idea. They had each got new PJ's that came with capes and had to show us their hero stance.

Yes, that's the little girl the baby shower was for two years ago and that's the big brother. Oh, how time flies!

"I mean, first of all, let me say whichever superhero first came up with the idea of wearing a cape, he wasn't really onto anything good.  The number of times I'm treading on that damn thing or I throw a punch and it ends up covering my whole head. It's really not practical."

Christian Bale

(Batman)

www.branyquote.com

Storks and not much else

Jane Eborall's stork pattern

As predicted this was a very busy week. We had family here over the weekend, a baby shower and a family picnic. It was a lot of fun but my time was spent with the family with little time for tatting.

The only tatting that got done was this cute stork. This is a pattern by Jane Eborall found for free on her tatting patterns page. I had a lot of fun tatting this and it works very well on the photo album book, which was a gift to my daughter at her baby shower. The stork is made with Lizbeth white size 20 and DMC Cébélia ecru in size 30. Due to the size difference I had to adjust the stitch count a bit with the ecru. The Cébélia is also softer than the Lizbeth which was also something to get used to again. The baby's sling is made with Lizbeth # 621, Dusty Rose Lt, size 20 . The baby is in DMC Cébélia #437, which is a gold color, size 30 . When I chose it every body that saw it on the ball had doubts about it for the baby, but once it was done and on the pink background it looked more like the color we expect the baby to be. It would work for the big brother so I thought it would work for the baby. It certainly shows up better on the pink background than a very light pink would have! I would have had to choose a different book to put it on. Again, it being a size 30 I had to adjust the stitch count and I added an extra split ring to each leg to make the proportions look right. And, yes, I put a green bead for the eye instead of a blue one.

Thank you, Jane, for the wonderful pattern! If you know how to do split rings this is an easy pattern. In fact, a friend of mine just recently became a grandpa again, and a neighbor is expecting a grandbaby soon. Hmmm, maybe a few more are in order.

The weather was great this weekend, though windy - it's Kansas, I really don't expect it otherwise. Saturday the temperatures were in the upper 70s and Sunday in the mid to upper 80s (degrees Fahrenheit). We were able to do a lot outside, including an Easter egg hunt for the little ones. One of my daughters won't be able to be with the rest of the family over Easter so we took advantage of the chance to do one. All the little ones are just two years old - they were sooooo cute! It was a great day.

Wind around here is expected but sometimes the humidity is so low that we have fire weather warnings. That's when you have high winds and high gusts with low humidity, which means any fires that start will be hard to contain and will spread rapidly. I think we've had fire weather warnings every day for more than a week. I haven't heard of any major fires close to us lately but Sunday in Haskell County a town of 1,200 people had to be evacuated due to a grass fire that ended up covering 10,000 acres. Thankfully the only injuries there were a couple of people with minor smoke inhalation. Three families lost their homes to fire but the rest of the people of the town were able to finally return to their homes. We are thankful there was nothing worse, but I must say I'm glad it wasn't close to my home.

I was so busy this week that I basically missed International Tatting Day on April 1st. I had thought to take time to tat and eat chocolate this year but I was too busy. I did read about some fun stuff about it on Isdihara's April 1 posting over on Ambitatterous. If you haven't been over to read it yet it's not too late. April 1st comes once a year, so there's time to plan for next year.

This last picture is of the tatted stork and a stuffed stork that were used as decoration, and gifts, at the baby shower.

" It sometimes happens, even in the best of families, that a baby is born. This is not necessarily cause for alarm. The important thing is to keep your wits about you and borrow some money. " ~Elinor Goulding Smith