Friday, May 7, 2010

Another pendant


I made another pendant, this one for me. My Mother's day gift to me. It's actually the same
pattern as the others but I made a mistake. It turned out okay, just gave it a little different look. I like this look, too, but I need to change the bead count on the inside ring. Oh, well, it's mine so if I think there's a mistake no-one else has to know, right? (You won't tell, will you?)

My latest tatting is just a doodle; I'm not sure it's going anywhere. I was waiting on my husband with my tatting bag in hand, nothing started and none of the patterns I was planning on next with me, but I started anyway. If it looks interesting at all, I'll share it with you later.

Wishing all of you a very happy Mother's Day this Sunday. I know we're one of the few countries that have a designated day to celebrate mothers, but where ever you are, celebrate anyway, even if you are the only one who knows what you're celebrating! Take time for yourself and treat yourself to a little chocolate and maybe some tatting. : )

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Motif #6 in my second 25 Motif Challenge

Here is motif #6 of my 2nd 25 Motif Challenge. It's the pendant I made for my exchange partner in the Intatters pendant exchange. I sent both of them to her. I was late - very - but I finally got them sent! She received them a couple of days ago so they can be shared without giving anything away before her first view.
I posted a picture of the pendant I received from Deb (dbrn) last time. If anyone is interested in making one for themselves, she very kindly sent me the pattern. It's in the comments of my last post. Check it out if you'd like to give it a try.

This was supposed to be a Tatting Tea Tuesday post, but as you can see, I'm a little late. I had the picture downloaded and everything but had not typed anything. This way I could finish the post during break at work. Good idea, right? Yeah, good idea until I back space and delete the picture! And didn't think fast enough to save it. So the post became late, again.

I didn't get a chance to tat yesterday, anyway. And no tea, either. We had several errands to run before work so left the house early. It turned out to be a nice day, though windy. After our errands we had a bit of time with nothing to do before we needed to be a work. So we went for ice cream! It was a very pleasant shop we stopped at, backed up to an inner city lake. There were Canada geese, with babies! We counted nine baby geese wandering along with their parents. Very fun to watch. I wished I had my camera with me, but I had taken it out of my purse a few days ago.

Today is a lovely day, too. We don't have many days that are so pretty, with the temperature in the 70's, very little wind and lots of sun. Wonderful! So I'll enjoy the wonderful weather as long as it lasts and try getting a little tatting done, too. Maybe I'll post on Tuesday next week. Wouldn't that be a surprise?

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Beautiful Sunday

We are having a beautiful day today! Hardly any wind - for the last week, until yesterday, we've had sustained winds around 25-30 and gusts between 45 and 60. Yesterday was very calm but quite cloudy. Today there is a slight breeze - very slight - and it's mostly sunny with the temperature right at 75 degrees Fahrenheit. I'm sitting outside enjoying the sights, sounds and smells of spring. There are birds of all sorts making their individual songs to the day, insects of many kinds buzzing by, and the locus tree is in bloom giving off it's lovely scent. It's very nice just to sit and relax here on the patio.

Before I got too lazy I finally downloaded my camera of it's visual treasures. I found the cable I had misplaced under some material and a tatting book so am now able to put all the pictures on my laptop. And there are a lot of pictures! When my daughter was staying with us a few weeks ago she and a friend took their children to the Sedgwick County Zoo in Wichita and took my camera. There are a lot of very cute pictures that she took that day. Now I have them and she doesn't so I'll have to send them to her :-) And then we visited with some cousins and Aunts and Uncles, so more pictures. And then we visited my daughter in Wichita and of course took pictures. Then there are the pictures I've taken of my recent tatting.


This is the pendant I received from my Intatters exchange partner Deb (dbrn) in the pendant exchange that was held recently. I like it, and it looks great when I wear it. The crystal in the center picked up the color of the vase it's on so looks a little strange in the picture. It's actually clear topaz (?) in person. The beads are gold. She didn't tell me if this is her design or what thread she made it out of, but it looks like Lizbeth size 20 to me ; ). I wore it to church today and it looked good on my neck. It's just the right size! Unfortunately I was very late in getting mine to her done and in the mail, but I finally got it in the mail this week. If she doesn't have it now she should in just a few days. I hope she likes it! I'll post pictures of my work when I know that she's received it.

A few weeks ago I treated myself to a new tatting book. I was in the vicinity of a store in Wichita that actually carries a lot of tatting supplies, including a lot of books and thread, mostly DMC in many colors in sizes 10, 20 and 30. Before Lizbeth I used to buy a lot of my thread from her.


I haven't tried any of these patterns yet but I have several I really want to do. I may have to toss a coin to decide which one will be first. I chose this book because I have grandsons instead of granddaughters. There are a lot of things you can tat for girls but some just don't seem right for boys. I guess I think of them like the poem about "snails and puppy dog tails". I think these tatted animal bookmarks could be put on wall hangings in their rooms, and maybe on the edge of a pillow case, that type of thing, possibly leaving of the bookmark tail. If we could keep a hat on their heads right now I think a few of these would look good on them, but the hats come off pretty quick yet. Maybe later.

I've been catching up on a few blogs - finally- and see that some of you out there are already thinking of what to do for the fair this year. The fairs around here aren't for several months yet but I guess if I want to enter anything I should get started. I haven't put anything in the fair for years, but maybe I'll try this year. There are a lot of things I'd like to make that might work for that, but we'll see how energetic I am.

Right now energetic I'm not. In fact, an afternoon nap is sounding pretty good. There are a lot of things I should be doing but it would be very easy to just put my head back and close my eyes. Let the birds sing me a lullaby. Zzzzz...

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

A quick note on Tatting Tea Tuesday

Hello, hello and welcome to another Tatting Tea Tuesday! Have you had your tatting and tea today?

I started out with a cup of hot tea while getting my tatting together. I took a few pictures to include here today - I actually tatted this week! - and then things started going not quite as planned. I couldn't find the cable to my camera so I couldn't download anything!

I looked for it until it was time to leave for work and still no luck. So no pictures today. Though if I can find that cable in the next day or so I might get some posted before next week. Wouldn't that be a surprise?

One of the pictures I was going to post was of the pendant I received in an exchange that we had through Intatters. My exchanged partner, dbrn (Deb), sent me a wonderful pendant. The colors will work with several outfits that I have. It's very nice and nicely done. A picture of what I sent her will have to wait until she receives it. I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise. Even though it was a little late - okay, a lot late - it turned out well. When I finally made one that I liked anyway. Hopefully she'll like it, too.

I've made it out there to a few of the blogs I follow. Not many, but a few. I've still got a long way to go to catch up on everything going on. But I'll have a lot of fun doing it!

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Long time no see

Hello again! I see that it's been almost a month since I last posted. It's been almost a month since I did much browsing, too. And in all that time I've no tatting to show, either.

Last month I'd gotten in kind of a slump with my tatting but I had a plan on what I was going to do. I had a cute picture planned for International Tatting Day and Easter. And then we got the phone call that my brother-in-law was killed in a motorcycle accident. All thoughts of those plans were dropped and not really thought about for awhile.

Why is it that it takes a funeral to get families together? Brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins come together to mourn the loss of a family member, then reconnect with stories of times past and memories shared, now shared again. We see how all the children have changed, startled to see how grown up they are since that last time we got together. We make new memories with them to be shared the next time we gather, hopefully for a more happy occasion, like a wedding or maybe even just a family reunion.

Our daughter from Washington, D.C. was able to come home with her baby for the funeral but her husband wasn't able to make it. She stayed just over a week, going home yesterday. It was wonderful to see them and get reacquainted with the grandson again, though I wish it hadn't been because of a funeral.

Now life can get back to normal for a little while, though that normal will be a little different than it was before. With the little one gone home and there aren't any little fingers getting into just everything I'll try to get back to tatting some. I do have several things I want to get done, so maybe next week I'll have pictures to post. I'm hoping to have time to check out what everyone else has been doing, too. I haven't been on the Internet much for weeks now so I've got a lot of catching up to do.

That probably isn't going to happen today, though. I've got to do a few things I've put off, like dishes and laundry, those mundane things that come in second when there is a choice between them and spending time with the family.