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!

Sherry’s Hope

Welcome to Tatting Teas Tuesday! Sit back and have a nice cup of tea….

What? It’s not Tuesday? Are you sure? You mean I missed it? Oh, man!

I had a lot of things going on yesterday. I actually did start this post yesterday but was never able to get back to it. So I missed TTT! I hope every one took a few minutes for themselves with a little tea and tatting even if I wasn’t able to.

I did finally get a little tatting done this week. Sherry Pence shared her “Hope” butterfly pattern with the world and I actually made one. It’s such a wonderful butterfly! I was going to make this is shades of blue, but this brown and gold were already on shuttles. Both are Lizbeth size 20. I think it came out nicely, though I know I’d like it better in blue. I’m counting this as number six in my second 25 Motif Challenge.

I would like to thank Sherry very much for this wonderful pattern. It didn’t take very long and it came out looking wonderful. I know that I’ll be making more of these cute little flutterbys. I can just see this on a card with a few flowers.

I’m hoping to not miss Tatting Tea Tuesday next week. And maybe I’ll get a little more tatting done, too!

Tatting Tea Tuesday and the Olympics 2/23/10

Welcome to a wintry Tatting Tea Tuesday. For those that commented last week that there didn’t seem to be snow here – in the vein of ‘misery, loves company’? – we now have snow – and ice. Saturday and Saturday night we had freezing rain in our area. Other places in Kansas had more snow but we only had a little on top of the ice. It’s sunny today and a little warmer so we’ve been listening to the ice falling off the roof and the trees. The sad news is that at least five people in the state died in traffic accidents due to the weather. We didn’t get out of the house at all Sunday and watched the traffic on the road go by very slowly.

What we did do this weekend is watch the Olympics. We have watched a lot of it this year. Skiing, ice dancing and curling the most.

Curling. I’ve heard of it before but I’d never watched any. It’s kind of interesting though I still don’t understand it, really. The Americans have not done well in it this year with both the men and the women being eliminated already. But it was interesting watching.

If we watch the winter Olympics we’ve usually watched the figure skating. This year we’ve actually watched the ice dancing. It’s very beautiful. They had some fantastic dances, with some very high scoring (so they tell us). One of the American teams won silver, while a Canadian team won gold. Wow! For not having jumps and throws it was fun to watch.

It’s amazing to me what people can do on skis. Those jumps! Those moves! It seems a lot of them were skiing with injuries or just getting over injuries. I’m way to much of a wimp to understand how and why they would go to such extremes, but it makes for some fascinating viewing. I’m in awe of all the these athletes.

Here on the home front my husband has the dreaded cold. I’m trying very hard to not catch it from him, washing hands a lot, drinking orange juice and taking my vitamins. I’d like very much not to share this with him.

Hopefully I’ll have some tatting to share next week. Not taking any bets, though.

Tatting Tea Tuesday, Pancake Day


Welcome to Tatting Tea Tuesday. Remember to take a little time for yourself, make yourself a cup of tea and pick up a shuttle even for a few minutes. A little chocolate might be good, too.

February is the month we celebrate Valentine’s Day, usually with hearts and pretty cards. This year it also has Shrove Tuesday, the last day before the beginning of Lent.

In Liberal, Kansas they also call this day Pancake Day, and have a four day celebration that includes a pancake race with the women of Olney, England. Woman in both towns compete wearing a head scarf and apron and carry a skillet with a pancake in it. They race over a curving 415 yard (about 380 meter) course and must flip a pancake once before they start and once after they cross the finish line to show they still have the pancake. The woman of Olney have been running this race since 1455. The woman of Liberal having been doing this since 1950 when the local Jaycee president saw something about the Olney race in a publication. He contacted the town of Olney and asked if they would like to race again the woman of Liberal and they have been doing it ever since.

The story goes that it started when a woman was busy making pancakes to use up cooking fats, which are forbidden during Lent, when she heard the church bells calling everyone to service. Grabbing her headscarf, which was required in church, and still with with apron on and pan and cake in hand, ran for the church. In the following years other woman took to doing this as well, making it a race to see who could get to the church the fastest.

This year’s race was won by a woman in Liberal with a time of 63 seconds, beating the winner of the Olney race by 4 seconds.

Liberal, Kansas is a little more than 300 miles (485 kilometers) west and south of Wichita, Kansas and about the same distance south and east of Colorado Springs, Colorado (it’s pretty much in the middle of no-where). Olney is almost 60 miles (93 kilometers) north of London.

If you’d like to see a little more about this race you can see an older website from last year here and a current one here.

I didn’t have time for pancakes today, but it does sound good!

Happy Valentine’s Day

Happy Valentine’s Day!
Can you believe it’s February 14th already? It seems like it was New Year’s Day just last week.

To celebrate this day of hearts I’m sharing the heart pin I wear when I do demonstrations or have a booth at craft shows. It has an edging in red and green DMC size 10 that I started and didn’t like how it turned out. It got thrown in a box until I thought to use it for this. The shuttle is actually half a Susan Bates shuttle that came apart. Then I glued a heart charm to the center to add a little accent. It makes a very nice accessory when I’m out sharing tatting with the world – or at least the local community.

I don’t think I picked up a shuttle at all this week. Between a lot of overtime at work and not feeling so good, I wasn’t motivated at all to do much of anything, not even tat. We did get a chance to watch our grandson this Tuesday, which it one reason I didn’t post for Tatting Tea Tuesday. Some things are more important than others : )

I’ve decided that I may have to come up with one or two small projects to do to get me back in the groove. Something that gives a little instant gratification. It’s not that I don’t like the projects I have in line, but all of them are not that easy to take with me, and I do a lot of tatting away from home. If I can get started on something maybe in a few days I’ll have something new to share. We can hope, right?

I’ve also not had much time to get online, so I am way behind on seeing what everyone is doing. I’ve also had some trouble responding to some of the comments from last week. Every time I had a few comments typed, I’d get kicked out with nothing saved. I do appreciate all the comments, and I will respond, soon, I promise!

I hope all of you have a wonderful Valentine’s day with the one who is closest to you. Maybe share a little chocolate…

Tatting Tea Tuesday with Hearts

Welcome to Tatting Tea Tuesday. And a bunch of hearts.
 As it’s February, the month of hearts so to speak, I thought I’d share one of the hearts I made quite a few years ago. This is “Gypsy Heart” by Teri Dusenbury from her Tatting Hearts book. I put it on a T-shirt with two accent pieces on the sides that are the same as part of the heart, the lines with what I see as butterflies straightened out. I didn’t sew this on, I glued it on with material glue. I can’t remember what brand, but it’s still on the shirt. Not that I wear it that much, but still.


The other hearts are on this cute mug I found at a second hand store and a strawberry chocolate covered heart from Russell Stover, mmm!

If you haven’t tried any of Teri’s patterns, they can be challenging. They aren’t the type you can watch TV and do. You need to pay attention. But they are definitely worth doing. She has been putting up a lot of patterns on her blog Tatbits Tatting. She does lots with beads and crystals. Wonderful stuff, you should check it out.

I made this heart in January of 1993. It’s hard to believe I have been tatting this well, if I do say it myself, that long. Okay, I think it came out very well. This is me showing off the shirt way back when.

I haven’t gotten much of anything else done this week. I’m hoping that this next week will settle down a little bit. I’ll let you know next week!

What day is it?

This last week and a half has been very busy. There have been long days at work, long enough we’d go home, go to bed, get up, eat a little bit and go back to work. Several times I have gotten the days wrong because they have all run together. I even missed Tatting Tea Tuesday! I’ve gotten very little of anything at home done, and very little tatting. I was doing Jane’s TIAS but the last several times I picked it up I either made a mistake because I wasn’t paying close enough attention, or I had to put it right back down. I have all the days patterns printed off and am going to try to finish it this weekend. Key word is try!

What little tatting I did get done was on the table cloth. Woo hoo! I actually started again! It wasn’t much, but starting at all is a big step in the right direction. The reason I was able to do that much is because it’s the same thing over and over. But a start none the less.

On the home front, we had snow a couple of nights ago and yesterday. It made going home from work the other night take a bit longer than usual. We didn’t have it nearly as bad as Oklahoma, no ice and not as much snow. Just enough to make life interesting. I was hoping to get a snow day out of it, but no such luck. My husband and I actually are getting the same weekend off this week, though. Amazing! We haven’t had that kind of luck in months! Don’t know how much I’ll get accomplished, but at least I won’t be at work!

I don’t have any tatting to share this time so I thought I would share a picture of my Christmas cactus. I didn’t think it was going to bloom this year, but one day I looked at it and it and there were buds all over! I brought it into the kitchen so I could actually see it. Isn’t it pretty?

Teapot, Heart and Edging

Today for Tatting Tea Tuesday I put out my little teapot that my grandmother gave me when I was a child (many years ago, we won’t say how many). It is similar to hers, though mine is much smaller. I have many happy memories of playing “tea” with this. It’s almost amazing that it is still in such good shape today. And, no, I didn’t put tea in it this morning. I had my cup of Refresh mint tea in a big mug, as usual (which holds way too much for this little pot).

What do you think of this heart? Does some of it look familiar? If you look closely at the center you can see “Heart’s Desire” from Susan Fuller. I’m not sure what I was thinking when I did this. I had taken thread to make “Heart’s Desire” with me when I knew I’d be sitting waiting for awhile. I still had it with me that evening when I had to wait on my husband after work. As I had time on my hands and the heart in front of me and nothing better to do, I started making it a little bigger. I was thinking if it was just a little bigger it would be a small doily and a nice gift. Let’s just say it was challenging to make another round in the spirit of the original heart. This is not exactly how I wanted it to come out, but at a certain point I just wanted to finish it.


I’m not sure what I think about this heart. Did I ruin it? I really like the shape of the original, and this doesn’t keep quite to that. I’m thinking that the sides towards the bottom need a little work. I’m not going to take it apart to change it, but maybe I’ll try again sometime and make a few adjustments. One way or another, it was a challenge, so I’m making this number five of my 2nd 25 Motif Challenge.

Talking of challenges, I’ve been making Jane Eboral’s TIAS. No pictures to show and I’m a little behind. I definitely have to be awake a little longer than I have been before I work on it. It’s not that hard, but I’m making it hard! I still have absolutely no clue what it will be. Check out how everyone is doing here. Maybe one of you can figure out where she’s heading with this : )

I’ve gotten several comments on the picture in my last post, the one with the edging. A few people have indicated they would like the pattern. Okay, you asked, I give in. It was made in DMC white size 10 several years ago. This is a very simple pattern that, I think, is mine. If anyone has seen it before somewhere else I’ll be glad to give credit where it belongs. I make up a lot of edgings and rarely use a pattern from someone else (usually because I’m starting it without a pattern book around and/or because I can’t find one that fits what I have in mind) so I probably designed this one, too. Note that the picots are generous, which was intentional. You are welcome to make them any size you want.

For My Sweetheart Edging

2 Shuttles

Sht1 R 3-5-5-3. RW

Ch 5-3-3-5. RW

R 3-5-5-3. RW

Ch 5+3-3-3-3-3 to 1st p of prev ch. DNRW SS (Switch shuttles)

Sht2 R 3-5-5-3. DNRW SS

Sht1 Ch 3-3-3-3-3-5. RW

R 3-5+5-3 to 2nd p of prev Sht1 R. RW

Ch 5+3-3-5 to 1st p of prev Ch

Repeat from start for desired length.

Good luck! As always, beware of mistakes lurking! I would love to hear from anyone that makes this. And do let me know if you find any of those lurking mistakes. Nasty critters, those. I’ll take a broom to ’em and chase ’em off!

P.S. Thanks TattingChic for correcting me on the designer of “Heart’s Desire”. My pattern has Georgia Seitz web address at the bottom – my oops and my apologies to Susan Fuller.