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.

Tea, TIAS and a Surprise

Welcome to Tatting Tea Tuesday!

Okay, I’m a little late in the day posting, but I made it! We had a lot of running around to do today and I didn’t get much chance at the computer ’til late. While we were out I had to wait on my husband for a short time so I was able to get a little tatting done. It wasn’t on any of my current projects – they are a little hard to take with me at the moment. I’ll probably find time to finish it soon, so will post about it next time.

So, how many of you are doing Jane Eborall’s TIAS? Isn’t’ it fun? If there are any of you out there that are not participating because you’re not sure what it’s about, check out her blog and give it a try! It’s a lot of fun. And you’ll be tatting it together with a lot of other people, so you can see how everyone is doing. These two pictures are of my Day 2 and Day 3. Day 3 looks HUGE compared to Day 2, but they are in the same size thread. I scanned these on two different scanners, one I’m familiar with, the other is new to me. I didn’t realize just how it would come out! The one on the left is made with Lizbeth size 20 in Caribbean – and it’s actually both Day 1 and Day 2 together – and the one on the right is in Victorian Red, Lizbeth. I have no idea how these will eventually go together or what the end result is going to be!

And what is the surprise I mentioned in the title? Well…

A couple of days ago I found an envelope in the mail with a lot of foreign stamps on it. ???? It was quite intriguing. Upon opening it I found a Christmas card and this beautiful snowflake! Isn’t it great? It’s from Trayna, who won my blogoversary give-away.

Thank you, Trayna, this is lovely!

I took it to work to show everyone there and got into a little discussion with my boss about if this is a snowflake or a star. I insisted it is a snowflake, he thinks it’s a star. We left it that it’s very pretty, which-ever it is!

I have made some progress on our Pastor’s table runner. It’s slow going, basically because I only have a general picture in my head on how it’s going look when it’s done. And then I change my mind every once in awhile, which doesn’t help. But I finally like where it’s headed. Now, if I can just find time to work on it! I have to work on it at home, so that slows me down a bit. Small projects like snowflakes and bookmarks are so much easier to finish because they can be taken almost anywhere with me. A ring and chain here, a few more there, and it’s done before you know it. *Sigh* But this will get done, eventually!

First Tatting Tea Tuesday of 2010

“It was a cold and stormy night…”

Okay, it was a cold and cloudy day, this first Tatting Tea Tuesday of the year. And it’s supposed to get much colder. Those of you north of here already have it worse. I hear the high in Omaha, Nebraska was -5 yesterday. Brrrr! I need a cup of hot tea just thinking about it!

For today’s tatting I sat down with a nice cup of hot tea and started Jane’s TIAS (Tat It And See). I’ve never participated in one of these before, but it looks like fun. Plus the added factor of doing it “with” other tatters is appealing. Jane has already posted the first samples on her TIAS blog. Here is my attempt at Day 1. I have no idea where this is headed.

In the introduction to her TIAS, Jane recommends at least three shuttles, and five if you don’t want to wind and unwind, and three colors of thread that ‘get along’ with each other. I have located four empty shuttles and started emptying the fifth. Just to make it easier on myself you understand. As we have no idea how much thread is going to be needed it’s hard to know how full to wind the shuttles. Oh, well, I chose colors I like so I’ll be able to use the left-overs pretty easily. I’ve chosen Lizbeth threads in size 20; Caribbean, Victorian Red and Black. I’ll find out whether that was a good choice or not pretty soon, I suppose.

Other than that, I have three projects I need to work on. The most pressing is a Christmas gift that I didn’t have time to do. I had to give them an IOU – to our Pastor and his wife! Every year I make them a table runner – material for the center, with tatted edgings. They really look forward to them *warm fuzzy feeling* but I just ran out of time this year. So that will be my main project, hopefully finished in a couple of weeks. (Hey, I dream up new edgings for this every year. This time I have a very ambitious one that I hope works out!) I’ll post about it when it’s done.

The second project is for my sister. She gave me some material that she has collected, to use for runners. A couple of pieces she really likes and wouldn’t mind a runner of her own. As she does so much for me (and she has a birthday coming up) I thought I should make her one. I’ll start it right after I finish the one for the Pastor and his wife.

The third project is *head hangs in shame* something I started for my sister and her husband a long time ago and never finished. A table cloth – in size 30 thread! Why, oh why did I do that?? Actually, I tried to find a pattern I liked and do it in size 10, but I never liked any of those that I saw. So, what else could I do but come up with my own pattern, which looked wonderful in size 30? It’s been a running joke that I give it to them, enlarged each year (mostly), at Christmas and then they give it back so I can work on it. I really think it’s time I just get it done, once and for all. Well, okay, it might take several months, but I’ve got it out, my shuttles are wound and I have some motivation for it. Wish me luck!

Last Tatting Tea Tuesday of 2009

Amazing, isn’t it? This is the last Tatting Tea Tuesday of 2009. On this cold and gray day I’m having a cup of green tea, trying to stay warm and cozy. After a couple of nice days the weather turned cold again, with snow flurries. Here we go again?

Did everyone have a happy Christmas? It’s hard to believe that it has come and gone already! We had a wonderful Christmas with both our daughters and their families. Christmas eve didn’t go quite as planned, though. The weather got a bit worse here than was predicted and we had white-out, near blizzard conditions though not all that much snow. It did mean that our oldest couldn’t make it out until Christmas day. But that was great!

I haven’t gotten much tatting done this week with all the family things going on. The snowflake in the picture is one of the few, made in Lizbeth size 20. It’s a modification of another one, but I like the hearts around the edge. I guess as Christmas is past I should start working on a few other things. The question is which one? I’ve been so busy getting ready for the holidays that I’m having a hard time getting past it. I think I need to make a list of my other projects I need to do so I can get back on track in the New Year.

Have you made any New Year’s resolutions? I haven’t – yet. I think I need to make a few, or at least one. Like write out the patterns for a few pieces I’ve designed this year.

‘Twas the Tuesday before Christmas…

And all through the house,
Everyone was stirring,
Even the mouse!


It’s just a few days before Christmas and there still seems to be so much to do! That last little gift needs to be wrapped, the final snowflake needs to be finished, the last bit of shopping to do. Is there anyone I forgot?
These are a few of the last snowflakes I’ve been making to give to close friends and family. They take that little bit of extra time to put them in the ring, so mostly they’ll be given Christmas Eve or Christmas day. Most of them are not “Christmas-y” in color, so could be hung out all year. Yeah, yeah, they’re not too late. Really.

And this one is an oopsie. I started the center while we were driving (not me, I was the passenger!) and got a little distracted. I finished the center and had started the outside when I noticed things were not going together like they were supposed to. Then I realized I hadn’t made the correct number of picots in the center. *Uh oh!* But, as I was already started on the outside, I just went with it. Okay, it’s not fancy or anything, but I don’t think it’s a waste of thread. It has a nice, frilly look. I think it’s a keeper.

We’re going to have a full house for the next week. My daughter from D.C. and her family are flying in tomorrow evening. There was a chance the weather here would be bad, but now they’re saying the worst is going to miss us. For once I’m glad they are saying that, here at least, we’re probably not going to have a white Christmas, or at least the Wednesday before Christmas won’t be! I don’t want them delayed or stranded. The airport in D.C. has dug it’s way out of all the snow they had, I would hate to have them fly into another snowbound airport!

Our other daughter is local so doesn’t have to worry about travel so much. They’ll be coming out on Christmas Eve and then again Christmas night. Both grandsons to play with and spoil (only a little!) oh, boy!! :- )

Over the next few days we will be having several family get-togethers, the church program and an anniversary party. Lots of family and friends to be with, plenty of food to eat, and oodles of love to share. It’s going to be a wonderful Christmas!

I hope that all of you have a joyous Christmas, spend time with those you love, and be safe in all of your travels. I saw a wonderful quote the other day that I’ll leave you with:

“May Peace be your gift at Christmas and a blessing throughout the year.” author Unknown