No New Tatting, but went to a conference!!

I haven't had the time to start up a new tatting project as I'd been planning on. As you know, we homeschool our 4 children. (Well, in all honesty, we homeschool 3 of them and I run a day care for the 4th one) ;-) .  Yesterday was the OCHEC Conference in Hamilton. I went with some other homeschooling friends and spent over 12 HOURS there! I have come back renewed and inspired! I spent more than I should have, but I have as much fun shopping for new school books as I do shopping for new tatting supplies! I'm wiped out, but in a good way. Hopefully I'll have something new to show for myself soon. Thank you for your patience.
 

It's done, I learned a LOT

Okay, here it is. Please don't look TOO closely at it, you'll find a myriad of errors. This was a learning piece. First thing I learned, NEVER (I meant this) NEVER EVER watch Chopped while trying to tat. It's a mistake. I was doing so good and then I noticed that of all my points on the snowflake, only TWO turned out the way they were supposed to! Then, I was about to finish when I noticed something else...... drumroll please....... I put one too many petals on my flower! Now my points don't meet. I'm going to make another one. I'm going to use TWO colors for this one. The center will be variegated and (hopefully) the points will be solid. I'm also (on the advise of a dear lady) going to try putting beads on it! I was going to try on this one, but forgot till it was too late. I'm going to need to switch out my ball thread with a solid color when I'm done going around the rose to a solid, I'm hoping that's easier than it sounds.
  Here's my snowflake, such as it is. It's not been blocked. It's #6 in the Snowflake Roses book. Made from size 20 Lizbeth Raspberry Frappe.

Also, here is my tiny Eva. She's 3. She insisted on getting her picture taken.

I DID IT!!!!!

I did it!!! It took till my 3rd or 4th time, but I did it!!! I started a wild rose center to make a snowflake rose and it actually looks like a rose! YA!!! Here it is.

My teacup shuttle by LaCossette! The thread is Raspberry Frappe by Lizbeth, size 20. I'll be making it (hopefully) into a snowflake. I'm so excited!!! Can't wait to get it done to show off. Looking forward to making more. It really isn't that hard to make, kinda surprising, once you get the hang of it it's pretty easy. Glad I didn't give up.
 Thanks to all of you who read my blog. It's nice to know I'm not just talking to myself. :-)

What a day!

This morning started with school with the kids and then around 10 we went outside to plant the beginnings of our garden. We're planting WAY more veggies this year than last year, hopefully it will produce a great harvest through the end of summer and fall. After lunch we headed out to the Royal Botanical Gardens. There's a trail down by the lake (Lake Ontario) called Captain Coote's Trail. It's in an area called Coote's Paradise. We ended up walking around 2 miles round trip and ended the walk with Mike and the kids chasing each other through a maze of evergreens. They were cackling with laughter, it was so funny! After that we went to the main building, headed through a tunnel under the road and into Hendrie Park. When everything starts blooming it will be so beautiful there. Right now, not so much, but the kids enjoyed running around. We went back into the main building and into a tropical area where the girls enjoyed watching the Koi. We got home 3 1/2 hours after leaving. My feet HURT, but it was good exercise. I'm so worn out, I should have known better than to try and tat, but I wanted to make progress. Silly me. I screwed it up so bad! I don't know what to do. I'll think about it tomorrow after a good night's sleep.  Here are some pictures of our day. The man you'll see is my Mike. Love of my life for 12 years. Our oldest son Sebastian (Sam) 10, oldest daughter Aurora (Rora) 7, middle daughter Caleigh, 5 and youngest Evangeline (Eva) 3.

Aurora, Eva, Sam and Caleigh about halfway through our walk in the woods.

Sam running through the maze.

Caleigh running through the maze.

Aurora running through the maze.

Mike chasing children through the maze.

Eva, slightly distracted by the camera while running through the maze.

Caleigh in an urn in Hendrie Park, Eva is trying to get in with her.

Eva in the same urn after "convincing" Caleigh to give her a turn.

Mike and the girls watching the Koi intently. I'm pretty sure the Koi thought they were going to get fed. If you look carefully, you can see Sam sitting on a bench behind them on the right.

The most handsome man in the world, my Mike. I'm not biased at all, really. :-)  I'm kinda partial to facial hair, so for Christmas he grows out his beard and doesn't shave it till the day after our anniversary in the beginning of June.

My little girls and Sam.

Caleigh (who needs her bangs cut.)

And that was our day. This is my beautiful family and with that I bid you a good night and pleasant dreams.

Started Another Snowflake!

I really need to find something other than snowflakes to tat, but I'm having a hard time finding patterns for things that I know how to do. I think that's my que to learn something new and expand my knowledge base and my abilities, but to be honest, I'm kinda scared to. I know it's silly and I'll never get better if I don't, but I'm not sure where to go from here. I can do rings and chains pretty well, but where do you progress to? There are SO many other stitches to learn, there are so many other patterns that require an amazing abundance of stitches to make them, but I'm not sure what to try next, so any advise on the matter would be VERY much appreciated.
  On the the show now! Here is my latest attempt at a snowflake. It's another from Jon's Elegant Tatted Gems book. This went together much easier than the last one I tried. I'm using size 20 Raspberry Frappe. (It's so pretty, and I"m not a pink person either, I'm more drawn to blue, but I love the colors in this!)

  This picture actually shows it upside down. The point goes at the top. The beautiful shuttles are LaCossette's. They are my favorite shuttles to use. The hook on the end is so useful and I love being able to switch out bobbins as I need to. Beautiful shuttles just make the work that much more pleasant.
 Plan on working on this more tonight. It's hard to work on it during the day, we homeschool our 4 children and that takes quite a lot of our time. My real down time is after they go to bed and by then I'm exhasted! Enjoy it while they're young though, that way when they're older, they'll have great memories of childhood like I do of mine.

It's time to walk away....

I have labored for quite a while on this beautiful snowflake. It's very nearly become an obsession. Sadly though, it's time to walk away. The further I get into it the more mistakes I make, rings missing picots, chains turned the wrong way and the like. Well, I was on the LAST point of the snowflake and realized that I had been doing the entire area wrong! Rather than pull my hair out more, I'm walking away for now. I'm sure I'll try this snowflake again, but not right now. I'm going to grab some different thread and work on something else. Here is a picture of as far as I had gotten.

See how it's so convoluted right around where the threads are coming off? I'm sure that with some effort I could somehow manage to take out everything I need to, but I really think I need to put this up for now and come back to it fresh after something else. 

Pictures!

Here are the pictures I promised earlier.
This is my latest tatting. It's not the greatest, it's actually rife with mistakes, but it's halfway done. It's one of Jon Yusoffs snowflakes from Elegant Tatted Gems. The bag is one of my new ones from Debbie at DS9 Designs. I LOVE IT!!!! The shuttles are two of my favorites (what am I saying, ALL my shuttles from LaCrossette are my favorite!). The two pictures below this one are my blue rose bag from the outside and a close up of one of the BEAUTIFUL roses! (I REALLY like blue roses in case you hadn't noticed).

These books are my three new (new to me) Mary Konior books. I found two of them on Amazon for $20 or less! (used)

These are my threads that I ordered. There are Lizbeth threads here, Olympus Threads (I think it's Olympus), a Flora thread in size 10 and some HDT by Marilee Rockley and some thread samples of Sulky threads from Lace Lovin Librarian!

This is my other tatting bag that I ordered from DS9 Designs. I love it as much as the blue rose one she made me. It was so very sweet of her to make these for me and I appreciate it so very much.

We're Back!!!

We're back from our visit to the States. It went well. We'll get to see my brother when we go down at the beginning of June. Right now he's away in Afghanistan. I got to see his wife and two sons though. They seem to be doing well in spite of his being away. I was able to pick up MANY new tatting things that I had ordered while we were down. I had ordered several new tatting books. (New to me anyway.) I now have 3  of Mary Konior's books! I also ordered a couple by Georgia Seitz and Martha Ess along with several other books. Along with my books I ordered some threads. Most are Lizbeth threads, but I ordered some HDT from Marilee Rockley (beautiful thread!) and hope to order more. I also have TWO new tatting bags from DS9 Designs. I asked her for one with blue roses on it, she gave me several options and I chose two. They turned out SO well! My shuttles still haven't come from LaCrossette. I forgot to change my address on the PayPal thing and it was sent to my former address. They live VERY close to us, I've sent my husband over to inquire about it, but so far, nothing. I'm hoping that they send it back to her so I can have them sent here again, that's if they don't just save it out for me. I ordered two AMAZING custom shuttles. One with the blue rose that's on my header here on it and one with two fantastic Aurora Borealises. Our oldest daughter is named Aurora and she and her father have a fascination with the Aurora Borealis. She loves my shuttles and to watch me tat, so I ordered one that I hope she ends up using someday. In the meantime though, I intend to use it for her (she's only 7). I hope to post pictures soon.
  I have been making some progress on the snowflake that has been aggravating me. I have made SO many mistakes in it, but I don't know anyone personally who would look at it looking for the mistakes and I consider them a learning experience, and have NO intention of starting over again. I received some VERY good advise from Sharon who runs the 25 Motif challenge about what to do when my threads break, and while that hasn't happened this time around, it happened SO many times the last time I tried this that I now have great advise on what to do when it happens again (because I know it WILL happen again). I will try and post pictures of my progress on it (I'm halfway done!) and of my new treasures soon.

Starting it over AGAIN!!

MY THREAD BROKE AGAIN!!! Not that I'm surprised, it kept tangling and twisting and had broken a couple times before that, but this time it broke RIGHT after a ring and there was no way to start it again! This snowflake does NOT want to be made! I could have been done with it twice by now with as many times as I've had to start it over. But I will not be beaten by a pattern! I will prevail. I will start it AGAIN with a different thread.