It's Coming Along!

I'm so happy! It's coming along and coming together, MOSTLY like I would like. You see, I don't often get as far as this. I usually mess up WAY before this. :-) So, I need to work on my sewing in ends and I REALLY need to figure out how to climb out of rows. It obviously needs blocking and it's only 4 rows out of (hopefully) 14, but here's what I have so far!

Rounds 1 and 2 completed. If you scroll down (or back), you'll see I've gotten this far before. This was as far as I've ever gotten.

Just a little closer.

Row 3, completed! Had to start this one with a chain, never done that before. :-) Gotta work on sewing in my ends though.

Row 4, done! Ya!!! It will REALLY need blocking, badly, I have some wonky parts that didn't turn right, but this is a work in progress, something to stretch me. Can't wait to get more done!

Here We Go Again

We went to the States for Thanksgiving. My brother came back from Afghanistan for good at the end of September and requested that we all be together for Thanksgiving. We were happy to oblige. It's been 8+ years since we were in the States for Thanksgiving.
  While we were there I got a lot of tatting done. I don't have a lot to show for it though. :-( I tried 4 or 5 TIMES to do that Glass Mat by Mary Konior, the one Lace Lovin' Librarian does so well. I have yet to make that right. The pattern is my nemesis! I will come back to it someday, but for now, I have moved on.

This is the first round of Mary Konior's Hostess Set: Centerpiece. I tried it before, got the stitch count wrong on the second row and put it down. I am starting again. I will pay MUCH more attention this time and try getting past there and being able to start the third row on a chain will be a challenge, but I look forward to learning new things. We'll see how it goes. I will not be beaten though! :-) Hoping to update again much sooner than before. Don't you love my shuttle?! I do! I also love my winding stick. Frivole makes the most beautiful tools!!! Looking forward to the new one!

Getting Back To It

I've been absent for a while. We homeschool 3 of our 4 children and that's been keeping me busy. We have a 6th, 3rd and 1st grader this year along with a 3.5 year old! We do weekly nature walks and that leaves little time for crafting. I tried starting a snowflake a couple of nights ago, but I missed my join! I couldn't believe it. I'm going to be trying again soon and hoping to make an order of some thread soon! I can't wait!
  My husband's grandmother passed away yesterday, so we'll be heading to the States to see his parent's on Friday. The memorial service isn't until the last week of the month, hoping the logistics of that get worked out easily.
  Hoping to post photos of something that actually worked out soon!

Been Busy and I have a problem....

Alright, so here it is. I got as far as you've seen on the pink doily, but then I realized as I was attempting to start the third row and noticed two things. First, I can't figure out how to start a round with a chain! So, I need to figure that out. Second, I did the second row WRONG!! You'd think I'd have learned after the bowl fiasco, but no, I didn't learn anything apparently. I made only 2 picots per chain instead of 3!!!! So, I started again with an even BETTER color choice, it looked great! and then I ruined it and have started over again. Hopefully tonight I'll pick it up again and get it far enough along to take pictures.

2 down, 12 to go!

I've gotten the second round of my doily done. Only 12 more to go! I really like the way it's turning out so far.

1st Round Done!

FINALLY!! The first round of my doily is DONE!! It's the Hostess Set from Mary Konior's Tatting Patterns. I'm using two colors (obviously) for it. Mostly because I don't have two balls of ANY color. Hoping to start the second round today!

Biopsy On My Arm Today

I have a lump on my arm. They are pretty sure it's just a fatty tumor. It's quite large. The dermatologist said it's one of the biggest he's seen. He recommended a biopsy just to be on the safe side. So, today I had it biopsied. He said they were going to have to go quite deep because of the size of the tumor and they did. My arm was frozen (well, that part of my arm) and they took a decent size bit out of it and closed it with three stitches. I was doing fine till I looked after only one stitch was in it! Then I got sweaty and clammy and my blood pressure dropped.... I recommend NOT looking into open wounds like that on yourself. :-)  Starting tomorrow, I have to clean it twice a day with salt water and put Rx strength antibiotic ointment on it and change the bandage. I can't take baths or sit in hot tubs and it is recommended to cover it before getting into the shower. I do this for 2 weeks and then go on July 25th to get the stitches out and the results of the biopsy. My arm is quite sore at the moment, so I'm not sure how much tatting on my fantastic doily I'm going to get done tonight.
  On another note, Tuesday is my little Aurora's 8th birthday!! My parents are coming up from Pa tomorrow night and staying till Wed. morning! Can't wait!!! I'll try and take pictures of my tatting soon though, in progress. I have high hopes for this doily!!!

It's a BOWL!!

Well, here it is. The ends still need sewing in, but it's done! In all of it's miscounted splendor! :-) If you caught my last post, I missed 4ds- in each of my chains between my rings and screwed up the ENTIRE things, thus, it's a bowl. It WILL NOT lay flat! those stitches were obviously in the pattern for a reason. I can promise you though, I won't miss those next time! Here's a picture.

My next project (and I can promise you I'm going to pay VERY close attention to the stitch counts on this one!) is a 14" doily from Mary Konior's Tatting Patterns. I'll try and be better about posting picture during construction. I think it's going to be very pretty (if I make it right). :-)

I thought I was paying attention!

I really did. I honestly thought that I was doing it all right, but alas, I was not. I have been tatting the Spinning Wheel pattern and it's been acting more like a bowl and not laying flat, I could NOT figure out what I was doing wrong! Well, I figured it out this morning! I was looking at the Tat-ilicious blog and saw hers and realized as I was looking at it that I've been missing 4ds- on my chains between the three rings! It's supposed to be ring, 4ds-4ds-4ds and I was doing ring 4ds-4ds! HOW COULD I MISS THAT?! I'm nearly done, so I'll still finish it and perhaps turn it into a little bowl? I feel so stupid! Well, it was good practice though. :-)

Quite a day

Well, Mike and I haven't been feeling well lately. Mike found out yesterday that he has Strep. I decided to go to walk-ins today and found out I have a sinus infection, Strep and fluid behind my ear drum. We're both on antibiotics now.
   On a tatting note. I'm over halfway done with Mary Konior's Spinning Wheel glass mat! YA!!! It's coming together really well. I'll take pictures as soon as it's done and blocked. My next project is going to be a doily she has in Tatting Patterns. It's from Hostess Set. It's the centerpiece. I can't wait to get it started! I don't have two skeins of the same color in ANYTHING, so I'm going to need to find some coordinating colors and use them together and hope it looks okay.
  Well, I'm off. Have a couple more things left to do today before I can TRY and get my tatting finished!! Hopefully I can start blocking it tonight, we'll see though, if not I'll be blocking tomorrow! YA!!!!

Still trying

I started a Mary Konior pattern, the Spinning Wheel Glass Mat. I thought I was doing well until I realized I'd done something wrong and now I have to start over. It wasn't really a fixable mistake, so, I'm going to start it again and I have several more things I'd like to get started. I LOVE looking at Mary's books. I have 3 of them and keep finding things in them I'd like to make.

Tatting Class!

I HAVE BEEN ASKED TO START A TATTING CLASS!!!
  I can't even believe it! Another homeschool mom asked me to teach her girls to tat. She said she'd even pay me to do it. She's seeing if anyone else wants to get in on the class or not. Hoping I'm up to the task. I find that I need to work on my delivery or something. I don't always seem to be able to communicate things so that they make sense to other people, even when they make sense to me.

12 YEARS TODAY!!!

Today I have been married to the love of my life, the father of my children, a WONDERFUL father and husband for 12 years! I can't believe it's been that long! I love you Mike!

Just took this picture last week on a trail where we went hiking and saw an old farmhouse from the early 1800s with 5 other families in our homeschool group. There were 10 adults and more than 20 children!

He's Home!!!

My little brother is home on leave from Afghanistan! He's been gone for 8 LONG months, but he's home now for 2 weeks! We're leaving Saturday morning to head to the States to visit him and his family and some other family for a couple of weeks.
  We've been pretty busy here tying up the end of the school year. We have some BRAND NEW homeschoolers in the area, they're here from the States. They are brought up here by the opening of the Target stores.
  I haven't had a lot of time to work on my tatting, but it's coming with me to the States. I'm thinking of making a special notebook to put my tatting in as I make it and embellishing scrapbook pages with tatting.
  We're going to have a REALLY busy school year coming up this fall. We have 4 children. By September they'll be 3 1/2, 6 (in 1st grade), 8 (in 3rd grade) and 11 (in 6th grade). We use a literature based learning system and this means a LOT of work with school. They are learning SO well! We've been trying to get out doing nature walks more often, we've gotten a membership to the Royal Botanical Gardens. We're also going to be spending some time with some other homeschool families going to different events happening in the Niagara region dealing with the bicentennial of the War of 1812. It will be interesting to see this from a Canadian perspective. 
 Well, I'm off. It's nearly nap time for the younger children and there's things to do to prepare for Saturday.

New Shuttle and New Tatting!!

Way back I had ordered two shuttles from LaCossette. I had accidentally given her the address that we used to live in (ironically just across a parking lot from us). I had ordered two custom shuttles, one for me and one for my daughter. The shuttles were sent but never arrived either here or at the other place (my husband has gotten to know those neighbors very well now after all the trips he's made over there asking if they ever came). I felt awful that they never came, I had been looking SO forward to them! I was nearly in tears. LaCossette offered to remake them and send them again, but I felt it was unfair to her to make her not just spend the time remaking them when I'm sure she had other things to do, but to be out the funds for the shuttles when it was really my fault that they didn't arrive. LaCossette, being the amazingly wonderful woman that she is, remade my shuttle and sent it to me! It arrived today. Here is a picture of it along with my latest snowflake (I'm putting beads on it!).

The teal looking rosette is another one that didn't work out. 

Isn't my new shuttle amazing!?! It's the same rose that's in the header of my blog and everywhere else I can put it. 

Thank you SO MUCH LaCossette for doing this.

Sill Learning

I'm getting better at the rose itself, but I screwed up putting the points on it this time for the snowflake! I also had it ready to have beads on the picots on the points of the snowflake, but I make the mistake of not putting the beads I wanted around the ring itself, they were UNDER my picots instead of on the picot itself. However, I spent part of my morning researching what I did wrong and now I can try it AGAIN tonight! Here's a picture of my rose, I gave it to Caleigh, she really likes it. I'll make another rose (I LOVE making roses!) to put the new snowflake together with. Also, I need to cut my ball thread so that my points will be a solid color all around, I only want the rose to be variegated. I have to practice that too.

If anyone has any advise I will listen gratefully.

Got it started!

Well, last night I got my newest snowflake started. I got my beads all ready and hopefully it will work out the way I'm planning. I'll post pictures when I'm a little further along. (Hopefully later tonight or in the morning!)

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. :-)