Roses Abound

I love roses! Roses and daisies are my two favorite flowers. Especially pink roses. I can't grow roses. Okay let's be honest I can't grow a thing because I have what they would call a black thumb. I actually killed a cactus like plant one time! A plant called hen and chicks and I really tried to keep it alive, I mean I really
tried. How does one kill a plant so closely related to a cactus? Well if there's a way I'd find one without intentionally doing so. I mean all I did was notice that the leaves were darker at the base and I touched it and it literally fell apart. I'm not kidding! All the little branches/leaves fell apart. The plant literally disintegrated right in front of my eyeballs. So it's a safe bet that houseplants are not a good gift for me. Ha!

Anyway there is a way I can have beautiful roses around me and that is to tat them. So all is not lost. I really love doing Jeanne Lugert's rose. I did a little designing last year and designed a green background to cover a Christmas Ornament and then attached Jeanne's roses to that. Came out very pretty I thought. I don't know if I can count it as part of my 25 motifs since it was tatted last year.


I also did a wedding garter this year using Jeanne Lugert's rose as well as Gina Butler garter pattern. It came out lovely! My friend who was getting married and could not find a garter to fit her liking or price range so I offered to make one for her. And here it is:



























And here is the lovely bride.

Ever had that craving?

In my last post, I forgot to mention that my cards are numbers 8 & 9 on my 25 motif challenge. Lack of sleep makes you forgetful. LOL



Did you ever feel this way when tatting something?
I sure have!

I got Martha Ess' book Tat's Amore and I absolutely love it! The only thing is deciding what to tat first. This is one of those books where you want to tat everything in it! Then there's the excitement of figuring out which thread to use. You know you go in your thread stash and they're all saying "pick me, pick me!" So I chose a lovely orange variegated which brings us to Motif 10 of the 25 Motif Challenge. I tatted Martha Ess' Scallop Heart from Tat's Amore.


Isn't it lovely? When I was looking at my finished heart, I got this strong craving for orange sherbet so it was off to the store and you know that was possibly the best orange sherbet I've ever tasted! Have you ever done that?

Cards

Ack! Isn't it amazing how things slip up on you and you end up tatting gifts for birthdays and get wells in a hurry. Just call me flash! My motto, sleep is for sissies! Sleep what sleep I'm running on fumes here. Can't stand coffee so I'll make me a nice cup of tea. Not to mention my son decides he had enough sleep and got up at 4:00 a.m. 0400 hours folks! What does the 0 stand for "Oh my gosh, it's early! Here's a couple of cards I made one a get well and the other birthday. As for the things on my blocking board, they're still there. I'll take them off soon. Say, Ask me tommorrow but not today! (Wow I've been reading too many Dr. Seuss bedtime stories!) Not to mention a Wiggles tune running around in my head "Blue Wiggle in the Ring, Tra la la la la!" or "Hot Potato, Hot Potato!"





Anyway I digress. The first one is the get well card and the second is the birthday card.




















Have a great day! Hopefully I'll have a restful night.

Shuttles and other stuff

Hi everyone! Well we had a busy weekend we had! We first took my son for therapeutic riding session on Saturday morning. He had a great time! Although he wasn't too thrilled with having to wear a helmet. Here is a slide show of his horseback riding session.

Next for tatting, I have finally found. . . drumroll please. . . a group of ladies that meet monthly and tat! Wooo Hooo! Now for those of you that are saying big deal, let me assure you it's awesome after having to rely on no face to face contact with other tatters it is a big deal to me anyway. LOL :-) We had a great time talking about tatting and other things. Just wonderful! We met Saturday afternoon and we all had a blast.

I've got a few things on my blocking board so when they're dry I'll show you those but for now I've always wanted to post about my shuttles that I've collected over the years. My favorites by far are my GR8s. Love them!

Starting from the shiny shuttle on the left and going clockwise. The shiny is an abalone shell, next rosewood with abalone shell inlay, next laminated woods in multi-color, next green laminated wood, next plastic with a swirl of green and blue, next deer antler with scrimshaw letters, and finally is birdseye maple. These are all GR8 shuttles. I didn't buy one of these for a long time as all the posts I had read said they were fiddly to work with. Well once I bought one I found out how to use it which when you use a shuttle for the first time you kind of get a feel for how it works. Also Randy who makes the GR8s included some instructions on how to operate the shuttle. Once I followed the directions it was easy and I was hooked. Now I'm never without my GR8. Love them, love them. They are by far my favorites to use!


Now here starting at the top and going clockwise first is
red cedar, next a rainbow silent tatter shuttle, next ash with ebony spot silent tatter double shuttle, next is plastic tan/multi GR8, next Osage orange GR8 with relief carving, and finally Zebrawood GR8. Lovely!






I have other shuttles too. Not to mention clovers, aeros, and a couple of metal Boye shuttles. Clovers I use mainly as my second shuttles. Here's a shuttle that falls under the heading "What was I thinking?!" It's awful! I've only used it once I absolutely hate it that much. The thread gets caught on the side and the pick is too big to be usable. It is a cheapy shuttle I got thinking it was going to be like a clover only slightly bigger. It's awful! Yuck! Well live and learn. At least I learned which shape of shuttle not to invest in. ;-)

Leftover Thread

Well I had yellow thread left on my shuttle so what do you do? Well I made another bookmark! I went through some of my tatting patterns that I had printed off from the internet and found this cute edging which was pretty simple to do so I made it into a bookmark. I can't post the link because it seems the original site has disappeared. Nothing I dislike more than reading someone's blog go to click on a link and it's not there. The pattern was from tat and tat I believe that was what the site was called. It came out pretty well! This time I tried an even lighter green. Wow I seem to be stuck on green. I'll have to do something with no green in it soon.

Egads! I just realized I messed up my count on the 25 Motif Challenge so a correction is in order. Last post I said 3 and 4 but it should have been 4 and 5 so that would make this 6 and 7. Woo hoo! Almost half way there!

I also did Gina's July Mystery Motif at her threadgoddess blog. It turned out really well although my version doesn't look like the original. I love doing the mystery motifs it kind of gives you some experience in reading old patterns and knowing what they mean. However, I must say that I'd take new pattern notation any day. I do love the new pattern notation much better than the old as it's definitely less confusing.

Bookmarks! Motif 3 & 4 of my 25

Well have you ever tatted something and was not pleased with the color? I tatted this bookmark from Lenore English's site. The first one I did I used a lighter green and was not real pleased with the overall effect. I can't seem to get the exposure right on my digital camera. As I said tatting with this green kind of gave my bookmark a washed out look so I tatted again with a darker shade of green which I thought made the daisies pop. I like it better with the darker green. I tatted this bookmark years ago for an exchange with Altin Basik green #333 but they have discontinued it. I really loved that color of green. (sigh) I do think the darker green did beautifully though. As for my 25 motif challenge this is numbers 3 and 4. Woo hoo!
Here is the darker green.

25 Motif Challenge

I have jumped in and joined the 25 motif challenge. Wooo Hoo! So motif No 1 was my cherub doily in my first post and motif No 2 is my cross. Cool! I don't really have a theme just whatever comes up tatting for presents or tatting just for myself.

On another note it's happened! What's happened you ask? Well my eyes aren't what they used to be so I had to break down and admit I needed a little extra help when hiding my ends especially on Size 80 threads. Soooo I bought me a pair of the loudest colored ones I could find complete with a matching case and here they are.

DH laughs at me when I wear them. I laugh too! Aren't they cute!

I can't believe what I did!

I can't believe it! I just can't believe it of all the stupid things for me to do! Arrrrgh! Well I had a lovely batch of comments from a wonderful group of people and I was going through and published one then I found where you can publish all at the same time and guess what I did? Put my cursor on the wrong thing and rejected every last one of them . Arrrrgh! I think I can safely say computer savvy I'm not. To all those wonderful people that commented I am soooo sorry because getting comments are half the fun. But wait! All is not lost! I have the comments in my email so I will post them here on the blog!

Jon writes:
Welcome to the world of bloggers. It is a great way to communicate and keep in touch with the other tatters.

I like the colour and the design for the background.

Melissa writes:
Tara,
Your blog is so sweet! I love it!

Babara Gordon writes:
I know how it is to get started, but so far your doing a very nice job. It's so colorful! Maybe I better do something to mine, hmmm!

Angie writes:
Its very very beautiful and colourful too!!!

Jeff Hamilton writes:
Your cross looks awesome. Which Mark Konior book is the pattern from?

Clyde writes:
First, congratulations on starting a blog. I know it can be a little overwhelming at first but you will be blog savvy in no time. The cross you made your friend is beautiful and I am sure she will treasure it.

Thanks to all of you who posted and rest assured I will be more careful in the future when publishing comments. Ack! I still can't believe I did that!

My cross I did is Mary Konior's Large Cross from the book Tatting with Visual Patterns. I love this cross pattern and have done it several times in different sizes of thread. My favorite size of thread is Size 30. Love it! Mary Konior's patterns are sooo lovely and I wish I had more of her books but sadly I only have two. LOL Always room for more tatting books, I always say. Although DH would tend to disagree with that statement. :-)

I know what you're thinking

You're thinking did she get the cross tatted and finished on time and the answer is Yes! I delivered it last night to my friend who is going through surgery this morning.

I tatted Mary Konior's Large Cross. I did it with Venus thread which is Size 80. Venus is now called Majestic. I don't know the color number as I lost the top label. It is sort of lavender/mauve color. It was 3 1/2 inches finished. I'm real pleased with the way it turned out. It fit perfectly in the card I gave her. I wanted to get her mind off her up coming surgery.




















This is the card I made her as well. I love tatting for other people.

What an interesting weekend?

Well what an interesting weekend. LOL Saturday morning our central air broke down. It was hot! It was 89 inside and when I say hot I mean hot. 89 degrees is not sooo bad but here in North Carolina we have what I like to call jungle kind of hot where the humidity is super high which unfortunately makes it that much hotter. My poor son wanted to turn on the lights but I kept telling him to turn them off and he didn't understand why we couldn't have them on. LOL My son has autism and he is a real sweetie.
There he is getting his honor roll medals at school. Anyway we did call someone to come fix it which they did and all is well and blessedly cool now!

As for tatting I am working fast on a cross bookmark for a friend of mine who is going to have surgery on Wednesday. I hope I can get it done by then. I'm doing the large cross from Mary Konior's Visual Patterns book. I'll post a picture of the cross when I'm done along with the card I'm making her. Since I didn't have a blog before I'll show you my "Saloon Girl" which I did for the Tat it and See it was so much fun! I was watching old Westerns with my husband like Gunsmoke, Marshall Dillon, Rawhide so I made a Saloon Girl. Howdy Parter!

July 5, 2008

Wow my first ever blog post! I've been following different tatting blogs for a while and decided to start my own tatting/craft blog. Not much to say today I'm going to poke around and try out different things. This is called Cherub Doily. I got the pattern off Gale's Tat's All site. Gale's site seems to be down at the moment.

I was inspired to start this blog by reading different blogs. As soon as I get more time I'll post those links for you. So stay tuned there is more to come.