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.