What happens when you put Mary Konior in the dryer?

This!

Just kidding! It's just a scaled down version of the ever famous Spinning wheel pattern. Shown above next to one done in sz 20 Lizbeth (which happens to smell specially nice rignt now, hubby spilled a bottle of home fragrance oil on it.) The little one is about two inches, I dropped the stitch count as well as the repeats to get it to pendant size. It's on it's way for a quick blocking and then it will join the other pretty things on etsy.

Done in a varigated oren bayan.

some tatting for me!

I finally got around to making something for myself. I've done some for friends and for the shop, but these are mine!

Ten points to the first one to recognize the pattern :-) I don't know much about the thread, it came from a friend on Intatters and is Tencel hand dyed. It works up much like a perle cotton, two or three ply I think. The color looks more tropical in person I think.

And I am this much closer to having my four generations of tatting! The piece on the left was done by my grandmother, who has just learned to shuttle tat (and is free to come get a lesson in hiding ends any time she wants :-). The heart on the right is done by my Great grandmother who tatted long ago and picked it up recently to teach one of Gram's friends. My mom just got her tatting needles from HH, she did shuttle when I was little but wants to try needle this time, so soon I'll have a piece from her. very cool huh!

And the other super news is that Gram and her friend Barbara both want to go to the Shuttlebirds workshop next year! I was going to go by myself but this will be way more fun!

To dye or not to dye?

Silence, oh golden silence!

Both are asleep. Hubby is at work. My brain can breathe lol!


This week has been interesting for sure. Mom is visiting her mom right now, so I am alone with the kids. She left monday and we did fine that evening. Then came tuesday with a major migraine and a newborn intent on staying awake and nursing from noon to midnight. Hubby ended up staying home to help me because Ivi was coming down with a cold and she was a wreck, the house was a wreck, and I was quickly turning into a wreck! He helped me get back on top of things though, so right now I can savor the sound of nothing.

No new tatting pics, I have something new going up on etsy every few days though, so stop by the shop and poke around if you feel like it. Smaller projects like earrings seem to be the only ones happening right now, I don't want to work on anything larger at this point. And I figure why kill the fun by tatting anything other than I want to tat in my free time :-) (btw, free-time is a total misnomer. you pay dearly for it sometimes). Anyway, I'm trying to calculate how much of that time I would need to try my hand at dyeing some thread. Hence the title of this post. I've been itching for awhile to give it a try, there are some colorways I'd like to do specificaly for jewelry and I think most of the supplies are available locally. I also think that the only chance this summer that I may get to try this is while my mamma dearest is here to field some baby fuss. Hubby has a ton on his plate right now and I don't want to take away too much from his one day off. He has taken on a lot of responsibility at church, and works full time, and is doing overtime on Sundays twice a month, and putting up with me :-).

So, those of you who dye, if you have any advice on the do's or don'ts of dyeing, feel free to swing them my way. Is it just too big a project right now? am I nuts for even contemplating it? Part of me knows it is probably best to just wait until Meirah is older and things settle down a bit.

It can be done!

Tatting with a newborn!

It's possible!
Highly unlikely, but possible. It requires careful planning, strategic naptime for the two year old, and a camera-ready mother visiting for the month.

Who said miracles don't happen every day :-)

It's my hobby, darn it!

I am so funny sometimes. Funny weird, not funny ha-ha.

Do you ever find yourself obligated to your hobbies? Do you ever feel that neglecting a certain UFO for any significant amount of time will cause the universe to unhinge around you? Will your shuttles go on strike and start hiding themselves in the couch cushions in protest? Will the crafting reality that you have acclimated yourself to suddenly rend itself from the fabric of space and time if you don't meet it's expectations????????


No? Just me? Ok, just checking.


No really, I do let my tatting take on a personality and it's own emotional being. Like T.A.T has been nagging me for weeks now. It keeps reminding me that I had wanted to finish before Meirah was born, and that I'm being such a pantywaist for not wanting to tackle the split ring project. And then the cabone rings start chirping that they can't make money sitting there in the bead box next to the swarovski crystal drops that are waiting their turn to make an appearance on Etsy. And then I find out that the Sew mate shuttles are planning a revolution somewhat akin to the boston tea party. It would seem that they feel the clovers are seeing an unfair amount of usage and I should be on the lookout for balls of turkish thread thrown into the harbor. As long as they stay away from the hand-dyed threads I'll be ok. And the hand-dyeds? Well, they just refuse to associate with the Cebelia in the thread box. Cebelia already has an inferiority complex after seeing all the Lizbeth move in.


Sigh. What is a tatter to do? I do have to talk myself back into tatting what I want to tat, not just what I should tat. I should enjoy my hobby for what it is, right? I've been tatting again since January, which is a record for me I think. Usually I pick up a hobby and go all out for maybe 6 weeks...then I lose interest and move on. Hubby and I are very impressed that I've stayed on one creative topic for so long. My attention span seems to have increased. Perhaps I'm a grown up now lol....

A little eye candy :-)

All the tatting pictures have gone straight to etsy lately, so I thought I'd treat you to a little lovely sleeping baby instead! It's been warm here lately, so we have been spending our days lounging in onesies.



I have had some lovely tatting surprises come my way this week though, my Gram's friend sent a little baby shirt with a tatted motif....

How cute is that! Thank you so much Barbara! Also crossing my doorstep was a copy of Ruth Perry's tatted butterfly book. Bev was kind enough to send it my way. It's so nice to have made friends through tatting :-) We'll make the world a nicer place one double stitch at a time :-)