#6 and #7 motifs

Happy Friday! I am not really sure how it got to be Friday again, here lately it seems that I keep losing days out of my week.  Fridays always seem to sneak up and I am left wondering how I keep losing days of the week.  It is becoming quite scary so I hope I can figure it out soon.
I have been pretty busy the last couple of weeks working on my next family holiday motifs.  I have already gotten most of my Saint Patricks day motifs done so I am hoping I will actually get them in the mail way before March 17th.  Don't congratulate me just yet as I seem to always wait way too long to get them in the mail but I am going to try! As always I will post a picture of the project after I get them in the mail.

I have also been working on the Easter motifs and they are actually coming along quite nicely.  In my endeavor to come up with a pattern I first was thinking I would do little baskets.  I couldn't seem to find any patterns until I had an epiphany that I could just take a round pattern and shape it around a bowl and then starch it.  I then remembered that I hadn't finish my last doily and I remembered it had a fun round motif in the middle of that pattern so I actually found the doily and finally finished that project off. It is not completely finished as I still need to clip threads so I will photograph it later and post it soon. After all, that project has taken so stinkin long to complete that waiting for a few more days to post it only seems fitting!

I did try making a basket out of the center motif of the doily which is the Wiosna 2015 Renulek doily. I found that by using the same length picots instead of joining picots in the very center of the motif it actually formed a bowl all on its own but this pattern is just not suitable to adding a handle too. I then decided that going the basket route would not be the best idea because they would be a real pain to try to ship in the mail. Not sure what I will do with this little bowl but its kind of cute.

 After finishing the motif off I still had quite a bit of thread left on my shuttles. I used a thread that I found in goodwill so I am not sure what brand the thread is but it is not so fun to work with.  I hate to waste anything so I wanted to come up with a little motif that would use the remaining thread on the shuttles. As always I turned to the 25 motif challenge to draw inspiration. Well I decided to jump on the Ice Drop train! 

This pattern is pretty easy to follow so I am not sure how I ended up getting off on the counts but apparently it is pretty easy to do because I did it! When it came time to close up the motif and insert the drop I found that the small drop was too small and the big drop was way too big. It took me a bit to figure out what I did wrong because I was using a bigger thread than what is called for so I knew I would be off but I ended up only making 5 rings instead of the called for 6 rings.  I spent a little time looking around the yard to try to find a stone that would fit but I didn't have any luck.  I am fairly certain I should be able to come up with a stone to fit so a trip to the beach may be in order, a place where I know flat round stones to be plentiful.  This is a time where my hoarding tendencies will come in handy...I have enough shuttles hoarded that I can just leave those attached until I can find a stone to fit.  I will be trying the Ice Drop again and I highly recommended that if you haven't tried one yet, well jump on board! Thank you Diane for sharing your talents, her tutorial can be found here.

We have a pretty busy weekend coming up.  We will be working shows at the casino both tonight and tomorrow night and we will probably spend some of Sunday recovering from both shows. It is supposed to rain all weekend so I guess its a good time to work.  I always try to remember to take my tatting with me to the shows because if the bands hurry and get set up early I get time to do a bit of tatting. Here's to hoping that the weekend goes well for everybody!