Row 3

Its been another couple of busy days. We actually had the pleasure of hosting another dinner for a friend that my hubby used to work with.  He is another monster guitar player so it was awesome to have him over for a few hours.  It has been such a treat to have people over that we are going to try to make it happen more often.
I was able to complete another row on my doily.  I ended up finding out on my last element that if I joined "as is" the doily was going to bunch badly. I should have made my picot joins much smaller and some of my chains much tighter. I ended up dropping some stitches on the last couple of chains. It seems to be ok, it doesnt lay completely flat so I am hoping that blocking will help.

I have been having lots of thoughts on what to do with the finished project. I started out thinking I was just going to do this in one color but I am trying to decide if I want to add a color for the next row or just stop at this row and start another project. I kind of picked this pattern because it looks kind of cute with just these rows.  Aggghhh more decisions.  I know a lot of my decisions aren't life changing or critical to anyone's health or welfare but I have massive trouble making even the tiniest of them. Life is all about choices but I have had to make some HUGE world (my own personal world of course) changing ones in the recent past so that has caused making almost all decisions next to impossible.  Really the only thing I don't have to make a decision to do is breath....therefore "just breath" has tons of meaning for me!  Some days that's the only mantra that gets me through the day.  Unfortunately some days that's all I can do but I have been told its a pretty important part.....so  JUST BREATH!

1st 2 rows of doily

Its been pretty cold and rainy the last couple of days so that means the perfect weather to just snuggle inside and tat!  I finally just decided to take a deep breath, pull up my big girl pants and make a decision on which doily to do as my first.  I decided on Renulek Spring 2014 napkin in a solid color.  It made sense to pick from one of my favorite colors...green!  I chose a green that was a bit muted and earthy so that it will be able to be used in almost any room in my house including the kitchen.  In case it turns out yucky I can use it as a dish rag!  hehehe

I was able to complete the first 2 rows without too much trouble.  Its kind of a good thing I didn't think of having to close the row before I started or I may have been more hesitant to start.  I was able to close the second round ok, it was just a bit of a challenge.   I am not sure if I did it the perfect way but it looks ok, just not flawless.  I believe tatting just requires quite a bit of common sense so I just had to use that to figure out how to do it!  I am hoping that round 3 will go as well.

Mind made up and Iron Dragon

Well the weekend is drawing to a close and as always I cant believe how fast they tend to go.  We actually got to go see a show and not have to work it.  We went and saw Iron Dragon which, in my humble opinion, is the best 80's hair metal tribute band we have had the privileged to see.  We see them as often as we can. They are all amazing musicians and the singer has an amazing voice and its always fun to relive the 80's (OK I admit I still live in the 80's)
 Our weather took a turn for the cold and rainy.  We went from 90's and beautiful to 50's and rain in less than 2 days so the push was on trying to find a something new to tat. I have spent hours pouring over the internet and even searching Amazon to find doily patterns and books that have patterns.  I think I have pretty much made up my mind...  I am going to jump on the Renulek napkin train.  They keep popping up in a lot of different blogs so I believe I am just going to jump in and give it a try.  Now I just need to decide which one to do and what color.  Jeez the decisions can be so difficult! I am absolutely terrible at making decisions and I HATE to have to make them but its kind of hard to start a project without making them.   If I can just make a few more I will be on my way to making my first doily. 

Ahead of schedule

Wow I have completely been slacking about posting anything. It has been a pretty busy last couple of weeks.  We have worked a couple of really fun shows, namely Keith Sweat and ZZ Top.  We did backline for Keith Sweat and we actually worked on the "local crew" for ZZ Top which means it was helping with the full production of the show.  We had some of hubbies family come and stay with us for a few days which was awesome. I have been more than a little home sick for quite some time now so it was great to be around family for at least a little while.  We had a couple of friends over for dinner this last weekend which is kind of a rare treat so that was pretty awesome as well.  In between all of this I have been tatting every spare minute I could find.  I have actually been trying to get a head start on the next holiday which is still several months away.  It is kind of a bummer that there is no holiday for a while because I am a big holiday decorator so when there isn't a holiday that means I have several bare shelves.  The bare shelves look silly and kind of makes me sad so thankfully I don't have to see them too often.
So working on my next holiday do-dads has been fantastic practice with the shuttle, I made a huge turn in mastering the little beastie.  The repetitiveness of making the same motif over and over again let me focus on the stitches rather than trying to keep track of the pattern. I am getting close to being done with the little motifs (well ahead of schedule for once) so I have been in search of a new project. I thought since the motifs are going so well I would try something a bit more ambitious. I have spend wayyyy to much time trying to find a doily pattern that I like and that I can understand the pattern.  Not such an easy task so I am still searching!

Early International Tatting Day

So last week was a pretty busy week. I have been trying to do a bit of spring cleaning but I have been finding out that I probably shouldn't have saved so much for the spring time LOL! It kind of feels like I celebrated international tatting day a bit early. Wednesday I had planned to ride the ferry across the to knock something off my bucket list. This little jaunt put me in the direct path of coming across several thrift stores, 2 Jo-Ann fabrics, and 2 Hobby Lobbys. It seems my vehicle just cant seem to drive by any of them without stopping...ok, ok I know I cant blame the vehicle but that is my story and I am going to stick to it. I ended up bring home a couple balls of vintage JP Coats thread, a couple balls of Lizbeth thread (the selection I found was very slim), some cool buttons to try to tat around and a starlit shuttle. The shuttle is giant compared to the small clover shuttles I have been using so I am not sure how quickly I am going to be trying it out but I will add it to my collection. I can tell it will hold much more thread which may come in handy at some point. I am looking forward to trying the Lizbeth thread out. I kind of ran out of time to explore each store for as long as I would have liked but I also didn't want to miss the ferry.
It was a beautiful spring day and a perfect day for a ferry ride. The ride was only half an hour but I spent every minute of it sitting outside at the front of the boat shuttle tatting. I had one person stop and comment on my tatting. She said that her grandmother used to tat! That sure made me smile.

The ferry ride ended at a casino to watch the show "Thunder from down under". Heheheh...male strip show..check off the bucket list! It was a super late night because the production company we sometimes work for did the lighting for the show so we got in free so we stayed and helped with tear down and load out. I didn't get home till almost 3am because I missed the last ferry so I had to drive around. Totally worth it cause it was a pretty awesome day. So I am going to call it Happy early International Tatting day! Whhooo hooo for once I was ahead of the calendar!!
I spent the week trying to find a motif to give to a lady at church that has given  us some eggs and a couple of homemade rolls for Easter dinner. I did these lil guys but they are super tiny and I wanted something a bit bigger. I feel really bad because I cant re-find where I got the pattern from for the tiny one. The bigger ones are from Marilee Rockley. These will be #12 and 13 of the 25 motif challenge. These were all done with a needle.

This will be #14 of the challenge.

 The pattern is from Sheila Edlunds and this too was done with a needle. There were several mistakes in the pattern that I didn't catch until it was too late so I really dislike how this one turned out. I absolutely HATE the colors I used so needless to say this one is going to be put away in the tat of shame box. So come Sunday I still have not come up with anything to take. Oh well I guess there is always next weekend

Happy belated Easter

Is anyone else seeing a pattern here?  Here lately I have been having trouble getting things completely finished on time. I seem to be one step behind the calendar. For some reason Easter just crept up and now its already gone. It was so close to St pats that I didn't even put the Easter decoration up.  I did get my motifs done in time I just didn't get them in the mail in time and I didn't get them posted on here on time but here they are...

This is #10 in the 25 Motif Challenge. I ended up making 7 of these. The pattern can be found(  here  ) I wish I could tell you whos pattern it is but I never could find a name on the site. The thread is vintage J&P Coats in pastel and I did these with a needle. I am so much quicker with a needle but I am still working with my shuttles to try to get faster with them.

First ever shuttle motif

I do believe I am going to count this one as #11 in the motif challenge!

Since I was very familiar with the egg pattern I decided to try one with the shuttle. Wow was it ever full of firsts. I used 2 shuttles so I could see if I could change colors where I wanted to and I do believe I did that. Right out of the gate I had to do a split ring and that wasn't too terrible. Then I had to do a folded join, now that ended up being much more difficult! I had to pick it out twice which is no easy task and it made the thread in that spot pretty wonky but I did it! Then I got to do a split chain, that went ok but I had to pick it out once so it made the thread in that spot funky as well. When I started on the outside I only hid one end of the thread. When  I got toward the end I had a bad feeling I was going to run out of thread and sure enough I did on the very last chain so I ended up finger tatting to get me to the end.  When I came to the end I used a loop of thread to try to hide the ends (including the one I didn't hide at the beginning of this row) but I wasn't able to pull through so much thread at once so I wasn't able to hide the other end and to top that off it was so short that I cant use a needle to hide that in so that one is just not going to get done. All in all I believe this went ok for my very first shuttle motif! I am a perfectionist so of course when I look at it all I see are the mistakes so I will probably just hide it away and bring it out after I do a bunch more so I can compare how far I have come!