Happy Halloween!

Spider and ghost

Have a Spook-tacular day!

Seeing the light

Or at least that is the plan.

Every year my sister and I try to do one craft show together; she with sewing and hand embroidery and I (of course) with tatting.  We get two booths together at the local Christmas craft show and spend a day seeing the cool things other people make, visiting and - hopefully - selling a few items.  There are only a few booths that have electricity available and they cost a few dollars more, which we'd rather not pay, so I've been thinking of ways to bring light to our booths without the cords.  We've done the battery powered Christmas lights the last several years, which is great, but there should be other, inexpensive ways to bring more light to the booths if we can just think of them.

A light bulb ☼ came on for me about a month ago - the battery powered lights that are advertised for closets and under counters might just work. 

I bought a package of these push-on lights, and sure enough, they give off quite a bit of light even in a lighted room, especially if they are aimed at something not too far away. 

Then I thought that it would be a little more aesthetic to have shades over the lights instead of them being bare, so I picked up enough little shades for the lights I'd purchased.  The shades were very plain and had to be dressed up a bit - besides, people would be able to see these easily from a distance and be drawn over to our booth, right?  Which was the point in the first place.

I made an edging long enough to go around the bottom of a shade in DMC ecru size 30 as I had two shuttles already wound with it. I put it on a shade (without glue) to see how it looked, then placed it over one of the puck lights.

Oops.  The harp of the light shade hung down so low it hit the puck light, so the light shade sat crooked.

I had to come up with a way to hold the shade up high enough the harp was clear of the light.  I thought and I thought, and I played and I fiddled until I finally came up with something that works.   I'm sure there are better ways but craft sticks, buttons and beads are what I ended up with.  These are for the display only, not for sale anyway, right?  They just had to hold up the shade.

But the whole thing did sit kind of low on the table.  Maybe I needed something to make them taller?

That's when I thought of the tin can. It had to be decorated, too, of course.

I sure am putting a lot of work into the display this year, especially as I'm not sure just how much light will be seen from these in a lighted room - but it's such a kick to decorate those lamp shades!

"In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present."

Fancis Bacon

brainyquote.com

Three pigs and a flower

I finally got all the pigs done as well as a flower.  The lady who asked for them was very vague about what she wanted exactly,  I  had nothing to go on except "flower" so I made one with threads I had on shuttles already.  If nothing else she can tell me what she likes about it and what she doesn't.

I'm very pleased with all the pieces except the purple pig, which I think looks a little off.  Maybe I should redo it. 

Yes, I think I should. 

Apologies to Gelett Burgess

'I never saw a purple pig, 

I never hope to see one; 

But if you've ever had a swig, 

You might just swear you've seen one.'

"Purple Cow" by Gelett Burgess

Side tracked

I have a whole list of things I need to be doing:

finish the pigs

make another pig for a friend of mine

tat several edgings for table runners

tat snowflakes

tat earrings

tat more snowflakes

For the last two days, instead of getting any tatting done at all, I was side tracked into putting together a themed basket for an auction.

In our community we have a retirement village that is in part sponsored by most of the area churches.  All of these sponsoring churches were asked to donate a themed basket to be auctioned off at a yearly fundraiser that is later this week.  This basket was brought up at our congregational meeting this last Sunday - and the basket has to be turned in today (Tuesday.)  As no-one else was inclined to do it, I volunteered.  So, for the last two days I've been hustling to find items for the basket and get it put together.

The theme: "Tea"

Yesterday I went shopping for the items I wanted in the basket.  The church gave me a set amount of money to spend and I had to come up with enough tea related items to fill a large basket, enough to make it worth bidding on, within that budget.  I am the only one that made the decisions on what would go in it *hehehehe*

I started out at Prairie Harvest, a local store that is a kind of a health food store but also carries loose teas.  I also bought some of their homemade peppernuts and some colorful candies to put in.  (I bought some wheat free peppernuts for me while I was there - yummy!)  I went next door to Kitchen Corner for a tea infuser and tea bag rest.  Then down the street to an antique and flea market to look for tea cups.  I found a set of two cups and saucers with pink roses on them that I liked, as well as a hanky that I thought would look good in the basket.  Then to a secondhand store where I found a basket I thought would work.  Then to the Dollar Tree where I picked up the filler paper, flowers and cellophane to wrap the basket.  Then to Wal-mart for a few more choices of cookies.

[I was not compensated in any way by any of these stores.  I just went to the ones that I thought would have the items I needed]

Whew! That was a lot of shopping in just a couple of hours.

Then home to start trying to put it together.

This morning I made the tag with the church's name, theme and contents and finished putting everything in the basket. And, of course, it had  be decorated a bit, too.  And then it had to be delivered.

I did include a little bit of tatting.  I found a bookmark I had made a while ago in Lizbeth Pink Cocoa that fit right in with the pink in the cups and hanky.  I also put a tatted butterfly on the front of the tag and a couple of simple tatted flowers on the back.

 This is the back before I added the flowers or included the bookmark to the list.  I added a little tea bag to bring in the basket's theme to the tag.

The tea cups that I found.

The filled basket before I added the cellophane.

The completed, wrapped basket.  I couldn't find a cellophane bag to put it in that didn't have all kinds of decorations on it so I had to buy a roll of cellophane instead.  It was fun putting it around the basket - okay, not really.

I thought it came out well.  I don't know that I will ever find out who will eventually get the winning bid on it, but that's okay.  I had fun putting it together and it's for a good cause. 

Now I need to get back on track with my tatting.  Where did I lay those shuttles down??

"Even if you're on the right track you'll get run over if you just sit there."

Will Rogers

Earring patterns added

I've added the patterns for Small DragonFly Earrings and Leaf with DragonFly Earrings to my Patterns tab.

Thank you Stephanie for test tatting the for me.

Edited: 10/18/14 6:40 PM CST Made a slight correction in the pattern. I think it's right now!  :-)