Happy St Patricks Day

 

Wow I can't believe that I am actually posting this on the exact day that it should be posted on!

Yeah me!!

I hope everyone remembered to wear green today!

If you have read my previous post you already know that my St Patricks doodads actually made it in the mail, but the not so good news is I am not sure if all of them made it on time. I have really enjoyed making the cards with my die cuts but the bad side is that the inside of the cards are completely blank. When I see a blank piece of paper I feel the need to fill it up so it is a bit overwhelming thinking we have to come up with so many words to do it, so we both had a hard time trying to get motivated to fill them all out. I have to admit my hubby is quite creative when he puts his mind to it but after he works all day his brain is tired so he doesn't want to think at night. We have been working at the casino doing bands almost every weekend including Thursday Friday and Saturday nights and we dont get home till 2am then hubby has to be up super early on Sunday to get to church to play on the worship team so we haven't gotten much done on the weekends either. The cards and doodads were actually done a couple weeks ago but it took us a bit to fill them out. I guess the important thing is that they at least made it in the mail even though they may be a bit late!

As I have mentioned before it is getting harder and harder to come up with new ideas for my holiday cards. I have done St Pats tatting cards 5 times now and I have run out of patterns and there are only so many different ways to do clovers. I was on the hunt to try to come up with a rainbow and wasn't able to find one so I decided to try to come up with a pattern of my own. After several tries I came up with one that actually seemed to look ok. I also had to make the pattern for the beaded  horseshoe. I really dont love the way they look but I hope they at least look somewhat identifiable. 

These tended to curve inward all on their own so I didn't starch them. I am not really sure how they are going to re-form once they have been flattened in the envelope and then abused by the mail system.  I am hoping they will be ok. I used Aunt Lydia’s thread called mexicana . The thread is what actually gave me the idea for trying to come up with a rainbow. This thread was great to work with so I may have to come up with another idea to use it again!  I made 12  of these doodads and cards but so far I have only sent 8 of them out. We were hoping to have friends over this week and give them in person but that didnt happen and we have to work the next several days at the casino.

Did I mention my hubby is silly and creative? I decided to share a couple of his cards with you so you can share in the awesomeness! 

So the good news for the next holiday (which is Easter) is that I have the doodads already done. The silly bad news is that they have been done for over 2 years. Looking back I have only made 2 Easter cards and I am not really sure why I have so few. I know part of the reason why these didnt get sent out in 2020 is because we were all in the beginning of covid lock down. And last year Easter was super early and came right on the heels of St Pats. Anyway, I have already started to work on die cutting the cards out so please keep your fingers crossed for us that we actually get them in the mail in a timely manner…nay, maybe even early!

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St Pats and new thread

 

Well it looks like here we have another late holiday motif post. Part of the reason why this is late getting posted is because we have had several house guests the past couple of days. My husband has been trying for several months to get together with several of his old high school friends that he was in bands with and do some recording. One of the friends is from out of state and his plans to make it here have been cancelled several times due to covid.  They finally decided to just go through with the plans because the recording studio has been booked and changed so many times and flights have been moved that it was getting pretty expensive to not do it.  I didn’t love the idea and it was quite weird to be with people after a year of not even seeing anyone. We all just tried to be extra careful and wash hands a lot and several of the guys had already had covid and most everyone has been vaccinated, so for now I will just keep my fingers crossed that all will be ok!

  For the last 4 St. Patricks doodads I have made shamrocks but there are only so many different ways to make them. For this year I decided to make kind of a frame to put a beaded doodad in. It was surprisingly difficult to find a triangle pattern to use and almost just as hard to find a “not green” thread to use since St Pats is all about the green. I came up with trying to find either gold thread or rainbow color thread which wasn’t so easy either. I did some poking around amazon and came up with a brand of thread that I have never heard about and decided to give it a try.

The brand name is golo and it comes in several sizes and colors but the only way to get the gold color was in size 20 which I was pretty sure was going to be too small but I decided to give it a try anyway.  I was hoping it would be a bit thicker than Lizbeth size 20 but alas it is pretty much the same size.  This thread is actually a pretty gold color and pretty nice to work with, its not too terribly expensive but on my budget its more expensive than what I would normally spend.

When I went to work the pattern I had found and put the beaded doodad (that I had already made 4 of) inside the triangle I found that the tatted triangle was way too small.  I then tried to make the triangle with a thicker size thread just to see if the pattern would work and I found out that with a bit of tweaking the knot count I could make the pattern work. So the basic pattern idea came from a motif by Ruth on the site 'tatted patterns calendar" that you can find here. The pattern has both written and picture directions so I was very thankful to have found it. I just changed the counts to make it a bit bigger. I cant remember where I got the pattern for the little beaded leprechaun but I changed it up a bit and added eyebrows and a 3D beard.

 

 I couldn’t find any rainbow thread either so in the end I just used an awesome green thread I had found at goodwill.  I had kind of been saving this thread for a doily but I couldn’t come up with any other thread. It is a vintage J&P Coats knit- cro- sheen. This stuff is great to work with and the photo really doesn’t do it justice to show the great colors in it. It bums me out that this thread isn’t available anymore so I continue to look in goodwills hoping to run across more.

 

I ended up making 12 of these doodads but would anyone care to make a bet on if they made it in the mail on time?  Well the answer to that would be NO! I have never been so good about gifts at Christmas time so a few years back I started sending out fun little things for St Pats. I have been meaning to start another blog for my other crafting to post the things on it so I don’t clutter this one with non tatting stuff but so far I haven’t gotten around to it yet. I should try to make it my mission to start another blog but as you can see I am not even so good at posting with this one on time so maybe I shouldn’t! I guess I will just have to wait and see if I get all ambitious.

  I did end up sending out some tshirts and little rainbow treats along with the cards to some of my family. With shipping so stinking expensive it is kind of hard to send it out to everybody I would like to.  St Pats is kind of a weird holiday for some people and I am pretty sure there are a lot of people that don’t even acknowledge it so I usually only send out the cards to my close family. Unfortunately the shirts didn’t make it in time but I guess the treats are good even though they were late. The cards were also late getting to people so that sucks! But hopefully "it is the thought that counts" and the love behind the making of them!