Author: wandasknottythoughts@gmail.com

Tatting Tea Tuesday June 1, 2010

Is it Tuesday already? And it’s been two weeks? Oh, my!

Yes, I’ve been lazy. Not really that busy, just lazy. I’ve done a little tatting but not much. I made this on a cabone ring, just messing around. I have no plans for this, I was just seeing what I could come up with.

I did do a little work on the doily. I’ve counted stitches several times so I know the count is correct but it has to be blocked to lay out flat. I’ve gone ahead with it the way the original is made but I’m making adjustments to the written pattern, making a few changes to it so it will lay better right off the shuttle.

It looks okay but I designed this quite a few years ago and have no memory of issues that I had with it when it was done. Also, I didn’t know then a lot of what I know now. There are several things I would do differently with it. It would probably come out looking similar, but I think it would be a lot less work after the tatting is done.

I had a nice, quiet Memorial Day weekend, not going anywhere or doing anything. My husband volunteered to work all three days so I was by myself in the evenings. He also worked slightly different hours which really messed up the days. We had planned to go to western Kansas to visit the cemeteries out there but that didn’t happen. We didn’t visit any cemeteries at all. I’m hoping another weekend yet this summer we’ll make it. Monday afternoon I went over to our daughters’ house for supper and spent the evening. It was a very pleasant time, though I wish my husband could have been there, too. Oh, well, our vacation is coming up soon, when we will have a little more time to enjoy our time together without going to work. At least for a little while.

I think I’ll have another cup of tea and see if I can get a little more done on the doily. May you enjoy your tea and tatting for another week.

Progress and Flowers

I didn’t find where I might have written down the pattern for the doily *sigh*. So I counted stitches and wrote it down. In pencil. And I’ve started making it in Lizbeth size 20 ‘Western Sunset’. It’s shades of red and purples. The second round I’m using red as the chain thread to see how that looks. I’m not sure yet if I’ll like it, but thought I’d try it. The ‘Western Sunset’ was already on a couple of shuttles so I could start right away after I had the pattern done. As there’s nothing fancy in this doily, just one shuttle and ball, it should go rather quickly. No promises about how fast it will get done but it would be nice to have finished by Tuesday :-).

The flowers in the picture are kind of a funny story. I had the idea of taking flowers to church on Sunday (Mother’s Day) and handing them out to all the ladies. We don’t have a large congregation so it wouldn’t be hard or expensive. There were a lot of choices at the store including these bright and cheery colored daisies. When I was getting in the car I realized that daisies really don’t smell all that wonderful, maybe carnations would have been a better choice? But each lady would get several flowers on a stem with the daisies and they were bright and cheery so it was still okay. I left the flowers bundled up but in water overnight. Sunday morning I took the rubber band and the plastic from around them and spread them out a bit so they would be easy to pull out of the vase. And noticed that my fingers were a bright and cheery blue! I was pretty sure none of the ladies at church would want blue dye stains on their clothes or hands. I ended up not taking the flowers to church. Carnations would have been better.

The daisies do look good on my table, though, in their bright and cheery blue water.

Tatting Tea Tuesday after a stormy Monday

It was a wild night last night. There were storms all over Kansas and Oklahoma and a lot of tornadoes came out of them. There are reports of 21 tornadoes between the two states last night. We were fortunate here in Wichita as we didn’t have any tornadoes, but there were a couple that weren’t that far away. There was a tornado warning in Wichita – imminent threat of a tornado – so the plant was sent to the storm shelters. I know my daughter and her family went to the basement. It calmed down here after that but the storms kept moving east and causing damage. I was very glad to see the night over.

Today is a much nicer day here. There will be a lot of people out today checking out the damage and making determination on how strong the tornadoes were yesterday. I hear that the storms are moving east with lots of dangerous potential. I feel for all those people that may have to go through that kind of storms.

Now, on to a much lighter subject. I’m not getting much tatting done yet today, though I might have a chance later. But I’ve been going through a few things – trying to organize (hahahaha!) -and came upon a doily I made years ago. You might have seen it in this post.

I’m trying to figure out if I wrote the pattern down for this. So far, I haven’t had any luck finding anything. So I thought I’d start over and count stitches and get this written out so I can make another one. I’ve got so many more beautiful threads today than I did then. I think this could look pretty cool in colors. Now if I can just get down on paper what I put together in thread!

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. : )

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?

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…

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!

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.

My new shuttle


This is the shuttle my husband made for me for Christmas. So why haven’t I posted about it yet? Well, it wasn’t quite done. He hadn’t gotten the engraving or the finish on until last week. And then my picture wouldn’t post right. But here it is at last!The shuttle is made from oak, and the point is very sharp. It has a rather tall post in it, and overall it is a little thicker than most of the shuttles I’m used to tatting with. It has the year on one side (2009) and my initials on the other. When I added some thread to give it a try we found out the points were a little too tight and had to be sanded down just a touch. I’ll have to get used to the added height but it will hold a lot of thread.

Isn’t my hubby such a sweetie? I do believe I’ll keep him another 30 years.

If you remember from last week, I had trouble posting a picture. I finally just used another picture because I couldn’t get the other one to sit straight, it was rotated 90 degrees. The engraving isn’t quite as readable in this picture, but you can see it.

I’m wondering if part of the problem wasn’t my camera. The computer couldn’t even recognize the camera was connected last week and had a tendency to shut off. I thought it was just me not doing something right, but it was the camera. We took it in to see what was wrong and they sent it out for repair. It’s not supposed to be back until next week. I’m hoping for an early return but I’m not holding my breath.

I’m working on an exchange piece for Intatters. We’re doing pendants. I’ve not really done jewelry, so we’ll see how it comes out. I haven’t decided on a pattern yet. I’ll probably try to use beads, which I don’t use much of, but I think it will really help on a pendant. I’ll share what I come up with after it’s received by whomever I’m set up with. Let’s hope my camera is back by then!!

I didn’t get much tatting done this Tatting Tea Tuesday because I did something I very rarely do – I slept late! Very late. I had a bad night last night, nothing bad, just not able to sleep. When I finally got to sleep it was after 4:30 AM or so. This doesn’t happen often, which is good, but it makes for a very short day when it happens. I hoping tonight is better!

I hope all of you have a wonderful week.

TTT, March 9, 2010 and the weather

I had a wonderful picture for today. I had chosen the best picture of the several I’d taken, with everything showing up well and the lighting right. I had my cup of tea ready and had already taken a few minutes to tat. I was all set to have a nice TTT post.

And every time I upload the picture to Blogger it’s rotated 90 degrees!

In every program I look at the picture it is showing correctly which side is up and which side is down. But every time I upload it to Blogger – Boom! – it’s sitting side ways!

I’ve been playing with it, trying to get the picture right, but it’s just not happening. I might just end up taking another picture and starting from scratch.

Unfortunately, I can’t do that until I get home again after work. So no picture today : (

The good news is that it’s looking like I will have a little more time for tatting. At least in theory. They’ve cut back on all the over time, at least for a little while. So I should have a little more time to do stuff I want to do, including tatting. I’m hoping to have a little more energy for a lot of things. And we have a lot of things we’ve let slide at home because of the over time. Of course, it’s also beginning to feel like spring here, so we’ll probably end up with a lot more things on our “to do” list.

On the weather front we’ve had a bit of spring-like weather, you know, spring rains. It’s also Severe Weather Awareness Week here in Kansas. This is to remind people to be prepared in case of severe weather – including tornadoes. They (the state of Kansas) were planning a state wide tornado drill today but because of the cloudy skies and rain it has been postponed until Thursday. They don’t want to alarm people by having the sirens go off when there is no threat but the weather is such as it could be. This drill includes having the local warning sirens go off and the All-Weather Radio and the Emergency Alert System activated to signal the start of the drill. Everyone is supposed to treat the drill as if an actual tornado was imminent. Also to be in readiness for other severe weather such as flash floods, large hail and damaging winds.

Where I work we do the drill and everyone goes to the closest weather shelter in whichever building you are working in. They’ll do it when the sirens go off on Thursday, about 1:30 PM, and then again with second shift later in the evening, though there won’t be the city sirens for that one. We have a lot of turn-over of people, so there will be some who wouldn’t know where to go if we didn’t do this. There are signs showing where to go, but it’s not the same as actually going to it. We’ve had to go to the shelters for real several times in the last few years, but fortunately for us we were never hit during those times.

If anyone is interested in some Kansas weather statistics this has some interesting information in it. Even if you don’t live in Kansas, it has information of what should go into emergency kits for your home. Every location has some sort of hazard to be prepare for.

I’m looking forward to spring, for warmer weather and sunshine. I’m betting most of you in the northern hemisphere are, too. Of course, winter isn’t officially over yet, so the weather could get cold again, but I’m hoping not. But I’ll have to take what the Lord sends us.

I hope to have my picture problem figured out by next week. One way or the other!

May you all have a great week!