Reaching out

Back in June, my good friend Marilee Rockley aka YarnPlayer emailed me to see if I'd be interested in writing a blog post for Craftsy. I was intrigued, so I gave her permission to share my information with the people at Craftsy. They contacted me in July, and I agreed to write some articles for them, starting with one on shuttles.

After a great deal of procrastination, I finally wrote a piece about tatting shuttles. If you're interested, you can find the blog post here. I know Marilee has had a great number of people sign up for her shuttle tatting class, and it seems from the replies to my post that there are people interested in learning more about tatting and the materials we use. Maybe I should write a piece about finding other tatters online! ;-)

I'm not sure what my problem is lately... age, weather, distractions... but I sure am having trouble focusing on projects! My sewing room is still a disaster, and I can't find what I want when I want it. I haven't been blogging much, because I haven't had anything to blog about!

I did finish another Spinning Wheel before heading off to school this morning. This one is in Perfect Quilter Sun-n-Surf #086. It's only about 3 1/2". I'm so glad Fox introduced this thread to Blogland. I love it! This little beauty already has a home in my curio cabinet.

Now, what to do next?

Guardian Angel

Where does the time go? I can't believe it's been over a week since I attended my first online tatting class with Georgia Seitz. I wasn't able to stay on for very long, but it was nice to see familiar names in the forum.

The pattern for the class was Guardian Angel by Kathy Hodge. What a fun tat this was!

There were two options for the angel's skirt, and I chose option #1. She was supposed to have beads in her hair, but my beads are put away someplace very, very safe... I'm not quite sure where! ;-)

I used size 20 Lizbeth #171, Green Coral Sea. Wouldn't it be fun to see a Christmas tree filled with angels in lots of beautiful colors? 

Delima

I love Blue Ice! I think it's a fabulous color for snowflakes. The touch of blue looks wonderful to me... a touch of chill!

The pattern is Delima from Elegant Tatting Gems by Jon Yusoff. 

Keeping up with the kids...

Have you heard of the Rainbow Loom?

It's very popular with the kids at our school, both boys and girls. I can't remember how I heard of it, but I investigated right away and then headed off to Michaels to buy two... one for my granddaughter Lily's birthday present, and one to keep at my house for when the grandchildren visit.

2nd grader Grace encouraged me to start with the fishtail pattern, so I did with very pleasing results. She wants me to start the starburst pattern next. We'll see. I'd sure hate to use up all my rubber bands before my grandchildren get a chance to try it out! Oh, wait... I can buy more. ;-)

I worked on my scarf some more during the Viking/Bears game today. I can't believe I've been working on this for two months. I used to be able to finish a scarf in a week, but that was before tatting took over my life!

I did start another snowflake in size 20 Lizbeth Blue Ice. Sigh... so many things to try out, so little time.

Kencana

I finally finished Kencana from Elegant Tatting Gems by Jon Yusoff. The pattern wasn't difficult at all. My problem was technology!

My printer stopped working at the beginning of the week. Not completely, it just wouldn't print black, and of course, Dave needed some information printed out for work. So, instead of tatting every night, I worked with my printer. I tried everything I could think of, and then I tried everything I could find on the Internet. Nothing worked.

Luckily, I still had my old printer. There was nothing wrong with it. We just wanted a new one so that Dave could print directly from his iPad, and the old printer didn't have that capability. So, I decided to dust off the old printer this morning. Simple, right? Wrong! Because of updates to my computer operating system, a simple installation didn't work. It took almost three hours to get the old printer working, but it is working!

So, to reward myself for a job well done, I took the time to finish tatting Kencana. Now it's time to fix dinner!

Nope...

absolutely no tatting today. :-(

I've spent the past 2 1/2 hours catching up on reading blog posts! It's been great fun, but there's no time left for tatting tonight.

Please don't be offended if I didn't leave a comment on your blog. There were several blogs that would not bring up a comment box for me to type in, and there were a few where I couldn't get the comment to go through.

Bad Internet connection? Operator error? Blogger error? Who knows. I do know that I had a wonderful time catching up on what everyone else is doing!

Perfect Quilter Sun-n-Surf

Yes, I have another Spinning Wheel in progress! I am enjoying using Perfect Quilter. It's so smooth, and when I make a mistake, I haven't had any trouble picking it out.

Let's see, I have 17 colors of Perfect Quilter, so I can anticipate at least 17 Spinning Wheels in my future. Superior Threads also makes King Tut, which I absolutely love, so I suppose I should have a Spinning Wheel out of each of those colors. But wait... I don't have all the colors of King Tut. Could it be that it's time to go shopping again? ;-)