Bassco prayers and bad day tatting

Well its another not so awesome weekend in the books.  This one sucked for lots of reasons.  One of my cats (we have 2... Tabassco, Bassco for short and Tapatio, Tio for short(yes we love hot sauce in our house)) had gotten in a cat fight on Monday and we just kind of was keeping an eye on him since I haven't worked in so long and money is super tight.  He had a couple of bite marks and they didn't look too terrible until Friday when they turned into abscesses. So I took him in and they shaved him and gave him antibiotics.  So this weekend was spent giving my poor baby hot compresses and praying that the infection goes away and that the wounds drain so we don't need to have a drain put in.  I am feeling like the worlds worse pet-parent for not taking him in earlier cause I know he hasn't felt well.  He seems like he has ok hours and bad hours so I have been so stressed hoping that there isn't more going on and that he will get better soon. 

The weather has pretty much matched my mood, or maybe visa-versa. We have barely been in the 60s and raining, blowing and super overcast and foggy. Saturday was a terrible day tatting, I couldn't seem to do anything right.  I ended up cutting out 2 huge elements and untatting lots of stitches due to mistakes and I couldn't seem to get my stitches to flip.  My mind was so scrambled and I wasn't thinking clearly but I couldn't seem to just put it down and walk away. The more mistakes I made the madder it was making me but it made me want to try to do better and not quit.

Since the kitties haven't been able to go outside the moles have gone crazy in the yard.  We have at least 18 new dirt mounds.  Bassco seems to keep them at bay but now I am nervous to even think about letting him out since he got attacked by something.  We only let the kitties go outside if I can keep an eye on them and I have never known them to leave our yard but our yard is 2 acres so anything could have happened. 

With all the rain and no sun it has pretty much killed off all our iris flowers.  The were so beautiful and plentiful because of all the sun but they look awful and sad now. I am not sure if they will come back but I am hoping they will because they sure make me smile.

Here's to hoping that the week goes much better!!

I am very thankful that I took a while to decide on what to do with my nasty mistake!  I looked at the next row closely and I am definitely going to need the missing picot to attach the next row to.  So I made the decision to cut out the row and fix the mistake.  I cut out part of it and un-knotted part of it so I could have thread enough to tat a bit so I didn't have to hide all my ends at once.  The next row is probably going to take a long time to accomplish judging by how long the last rows took and those rows were easy.  I am hoping that this row will be heavy enough to help lay down the previous rows. 

Rows 6 and 7...new shuttle

It has been a very sad last couple of days.  I am so home sick and having such anxiety that it makes for some very trying days.  Thankfully the weather has been a bit better. If the sun comes out it seems to help at least a little bit. I am definitely a warm weather person, I love the sun and warm.
I haven't felt up to doing much of anything so I have just done a little tatting on the next couple rows of the doily.

 Even though they are very easy rows I am finding they are causing a bit of grief.  I found that I am not pulling the tension evenly on the chains and my thrown rings are uneven.  To top that off I found I dropped some stitches on a chain and its way too far back to fix. Then I found that I dropped a thrown ring and a chain about 6 elements back. That means that is 11 rings I would have to try to undue and I am terrible at doing that.  I could just cut it out but the silly thing is that I just tied in thread 2 elements prior to the mistake.  This time I decided to wind my thread onto a bigger shuttle.  So far I have only been using Clover small shuttles.  I decided to try my Lacis.  I am struggling with it because it is longer.  I am hoping it wont take long to get used to because it seems to hold quite a bit more thread and since I have a bit of trouble hiding all my ends that will be a good thing not having to do it so often.   I am seriously considering just leaving the mistake alone and see what happens with the next row.  As of right now the edges are cupping upward, I believe it is due to my uneven tension on my chains, the same story probably goes for the crooked rings as well.  If I dont make the decision soon I am afraid I will just set the project aside and not finish it...so wish me luck in another decision!  

Brutal Weekend

Well another weekend is done and gone.  This one was more than brutal than most.  We worked setting up and tearing down for a swanky fund raiser for a local hospital/cancer center. We started at 3:00 pm on Friday afternoon and worked till 3:30 am the next morning setting up lighting and a stage for a band. We had to go back to work at 11:00 pm that same night and worked tearing it all back down. We worked till 9:30 the next morning (Sunday). I know most people probably don't think or know what it takes to put on shows and events but there are hundreds of people and hundreds to thousands of hours for even the smallest shows and parties. I enjoy being part of something so awesome but I  sometimes feel like I am getting too old and I am certainly too fat for such work. I guess the best thing I can do it to keep trying to get more healthy and in better shape.

I have to admit it was an awful Mothers Day! The hubby and I were both pretty sore and tired so we didn't do anything but chill the rest of the day so for mothers day I got a $5 pizza.   I cant even begin to tell you how brutal it is to not be able to spend holidays with family.  Each and every day is brutal but Holidays are somehow worse.  I know it was my own decisions and mistakes that created the pain so that makes it all the worse. I keep hoping somehow, someway I will be able to learn to live with the pain but that doesn't seem to be happening. "Just breath" is the theme song and harder to follow than you can even imagine.
Please don't get me wrong, I am very thankful I got to at least talk to my mom and kids on the phone but I cant seem to get past the thought that I have utterly and totally let them all down.  The pain is debilitating but I feel like I deserve it.  "Just Breath"!!

Row 5

Well our weather took a turn for the cold and rainy so I just kind of snuggled in and tatted for most of the day.  The good news is I finished row 5 . This one was actually pretty fun to do and wasn't as scary as I was worried about.  The bad news is the edges seem to be curling a bit.  I am just going to jump into the next row and hope it starts straightening out. The next row has lots of thrown rings and I have never tried to do them before but I guess now is as good as time as any to try them out

4th row with clover issues

Well we actually had an ok weekend, it was another busy one as well.  We worked a show at a local casino on Friday from 2:00pm till 2:00am doing sound for an 80s pop cover band.  They were really pretty good, monster players and they did the songs well. Its always a funner work night if the band doesn't suck.  Saturday we drove a few hours away to be able to see our nephew play basketball in a big tournament. Didn't get a ton of time to spend with the family but it was great to see them twice in less than a month.  I did learn on this trip that it is quite difficult to count tatting stitches if the road is bumpy and rough.  Most of the ride was very bumpy so I didn't get any tatting done. I had made up my mind to go ahead and do the next row in green and had hoped to try to get some tatting in.  I had already started on the row and it was beating me up.
Turns out this row pretty much beat me up the whole way around.  I could not seem to figure out how to do the clovers.  With each clover I tried to get it done in a different way hoping I would stumble across a way to make it look ok.  With each clover I kept thinking I may just have to cut that row off.  At one point I jointed a ring in the wrong spot and ended up breaking a thread trying to loosen it.  I have major problems with undoing rings. I almost always break a thread.  I am not sure what the problem is and what I am doing wrong but it is super frustrating.  This one was doubly frustrating because I was super close to being out of thread on my shuttle and I was within 3 rings of being completely done with the row.  Of course the thread that I broke was not the one that was out of thread. At this point I just decided to go ahead and finish off the row because judging from previous experience I know that if you cut motifs off picots the picots are stretched and look a bit funny. 

After this row I am not super happy with this doily. I never did find a good way to do the clovers.   I have taken a peek at the next row and I am quite concerned that this row is going to be a bit challenging as well.  It looks like I am going to have to concentrate on making the right joins and the right chains in the right place.  I am just going to have to jump in and try it because this row requires something to attach the clover to to make it lay correctly.  Wish me luck!!