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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Late Halloween and new obsession

 I guess it's not going to be a surprise that I am posting this late but it may be a surprise to learn that I actually sent my halloween dodads out for them to at least arrive on time! Considering all the crap that has been happening lately I will say both of these cancel each other out so I won't count either as a win or a loss.

As I have mentioned , several times in the past, I am having massive trouble finding tatting ideas for my holiday doodads. Therefore  I am very happy to announce that this tatting motif is my own creation!  I have done cats, bats, ghosts and spiders so the only thing left I could think of would be a witch. I did find one picture of a tatted witch on the internet but it didn't have a pattern with it so I used the picture as a general idea for mine. 

Here is my first try but I didn't like the hat so I decided to change it a bit. I don't absolutely love the way she turned out but I am not very good at changing counts to make it better so I just rolled with what I had.

I knew I wanted a dark purple to do my witch with but the only dark thread I had was Artiste thread called plum . This particular color thread is not great to work with as it tends to get fuzzy and you can't really get the stitches tight. I am not sure why this particular ball is so bad because normally I like Artiste so I wonder if this roll was mismarked because it also looks different than my other balls. Thankfully I was able to close the rings fairly easily and it wasn't as terrible to work with as I remembered but it just doesnt look as clean as some of my other projects. I did end up having to starch these because the skirt was a bit floppy. I had run out of glitter glue and I wanted to add a bit of pizzaz to my witch because the color was so dark so I tried adding regular glitter to gel glue.  It really didn't work out so well;  partly because the flakes are too big with regular glitter and I used dollar store glue but I just kept using my mixture because I just can't waste things and I have a hard enough time trying to finish up projects so I just kept carrying on so I could get them done and in the mail. I ended up making 13 of these but I only ended up sending out 9 of them. 

So this is also an introduction to my new obsession...die cutting! I kept seeing the original red sizzix machines in goodwill so I finally broke down and brought one home not realizing that was the beginning of my next hoarding issue! I actually just bought it because I needed to create felt numbers for a project I am working on for christmas and it was going to be cheaper to buy the machine and the dies I needed than it would have been to buy already cut ones or spending tons of time cutting them out by hand. Soon after I found the red machine I found a big shot that ended up following me home. It took me quite a while to even try out either machine, I had purchased tons of dies at goodwill before I even tried to use it. Let me tell you it was a bit of a challenge trying to get the dies to cut correctly so I ended up spending quite a bit on accessories ( I bought new)  for the machines just to get them to work ok. It makes me quite sick to my stomach thinking about how much I have spent on dies but I keep seeing them at goodwill and my hoarding nature takes over so I buy them. Not only are they expensive but the old dies take up lots of space. For the amount of money I have spent I am wishing I would have just bought a new cruicut. I am also finding that I may not ever use the dies I bought because the last couple of cards I made I ended up buying new dies to make the cards anyway. 

Below is my first die cut project I made. I did have to buy the die so I could get these done in a timely manner. I made these as thank yous for Mom Pat's funeral guests. You can't really see on either of the pictures of the cards but I used the decorative scissors on the outer edge of each card and colorful gel pens we got from Mom Pat to sign each one. The little tatted heart is the same pattern I used for my Valentines dodads in 2016 and you can find the pattern by onevirtuouswoman here. Pats favorite color was blue and she loved to read so I thought a blue bookmark in a heart shape (to let everyone know that she will always be in our hearts) would be appropriate. 

My second die cut project was the halloween cards. I just now ordered the die I will use for my Thanksgiving cards. I was hoping to find some dies that I really liked but I wasnt able to find any that I liked more than the one I found on Amazon so I just had to spend money on something that I really didnt love. Now wish me luck that my order will get here in a timely fashion and I will be able to get my doodads out in time!

 

4th of July that changed our world

 

Well, well, I guess its probably no surprise that I am late once again in posting my holiday doodad but this time I have a fairly legitimate reason! Once again I have good news about why and really, really bad news. The good news is that we got to hand deliver quite a few of them and some of them actually even made it in the mail on time. My husbands yearly company shut down happened right around the 4^th of July again so we were able to plan a trip back home.  We were keeping our fingers crossed that Covid would allow us to finally get back home and thankfully everything aligned and we got to keep our plans. This year my sister and her husband were actually able to be there at the same time so I got to see my whole immediate family this trip! We actually got to spend a whole week. We could have spent a few days more but we had to get back because the casino that we used to mix bands for on almost every weekend before covid hit finally opened up their new building and were finally able to get bands back in. So the day after we got back we got to work a band in the new casino that, not only was the first time that we had worked since covid but it was the first time a band had been on the new stage!

The shows went fairly well considering it was the first time the new room had ever been used and also the sound system and the lighting rig was a new system that we had never used before so not only did we have to learn a new room we had to learn new equipment. We did learn that we are both completely out of shape and it was quite difficult to work 2 full days/nights but I am sure we will get back into the habit fairly quickly.

 Now for the really, really bad news…The day after all that, we got the horrific news that my mother-in-law had passed away that morning on the 4^th of July. It was a complete shock because she was doing so well. We were very very thankful that we had just got to spend a couple of days with her a few weeks prior to that. It was the first time we had seen her since covid so it would have been even more difficult had we not been blessed with that time. Of all the people I send these holiday cards to I knew without a double that mom Pat appreciated them the most. She decorates for each holiday just like I do and she always made it a point to at least text me to thank me for them.

 I am absolutely crushed to be saying this out loud but unfortunately Pats card is one that I hadn’t gotten in the mail yet. While we were in Idaho we let the grandkids paint canvas bags and we had all the kids make one for Pat by each putting a painted hand on it and then printing their name next to it. None of the grand kids had actually been able to meet her in person but she had been sending holiday and birthday cards to each one of them.  I had planned to send the bag with the tatted card that next Monday so that means that Pat didn’t get to see the bag or the card.

 

I ended up making 14 of these cards but only 7 ended up getting sent out. I had the best of intentions to send them all out even though they would have been late but the horrific news really” took the wind out of my sails.” I found the idea for the flag from a picture I saw on Wandas knotty thoughts. I just kind of made up the counts for the flag and I just kept tweaking until I got it looking okay.  I don’t normally do holiday projects that take more than one round, but I am running out of ideas for these cards. It didn’t really take too long to make these and they were actually fairly easy to do. The blue is artiste thread called blueberry and the red and white are just a couple of balls I had gotten from Goodwill.

Obviously we are completely devastated and we are still trying to get back to at least a little bit of normal, or I guess I should say “the new normal for today” because I am quite certain that things are still changing due to Covid. Time seems to be just slipping by and it is crusing by faster and faster. I am quite certain that we will never be able to look at 4^th of July the same again but we are trying to take each day as the true gift that it is and we need to try to live it as such!

 

 

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!

Belated Valentines Day

 

Another post with some good news and some bad news. The good news is that some of my valentines doodads made it in the mail but unfortunately the bad news outweighs the good. I thought I had mailed them out in time but the weather didn’t cooperate and I forgot that the postal service was closed on  Presidents day  so some of them were late anyway. And as you can already guess..I am really late at getting this posted to my blog! 

Sorry about the poor lighting and the bad shaded areas in the phote. For some reason I cant seem to figure out the best place and way to photograph these so I finally just gave up and went with the best one I could take at the time.

I found the pattern for the little rose on pintrest. It has been posted by lots of people so I am not really sure whose original pattern it is. I had tried to work this pattern when I found a picture of it but didn’t have the directions so It didn’t go so well. Somewhere along the line I found someone else had posted a better detailed picture with numbers as to which section to work next and it is super easy to do.For what its worth this is the pattern I used.  I used a thread called French rose by South Maid. This thead was not fun to work with as the plies tend to split but I had already had my shuttles wound and it is a pretty pink so I just kept using it.

 

The little beaded doodad actually took longer to make than the tatting did yet I still ended up making  18 of these. Unfortunately I was also still in the process of trying to get gifts (Christmas or otherwise ) sent out at the same time so when it came time to get them in the mail only 9 of them ended up getting sent out. And yes, yet again they were late! I am not sure why I was so brain damaged and couldn’t remember who else to send these to. I guess a big part is that they were late getting to the mail, so I just didn’t bother to send more out. Also, it is very rare that I hear from people who receive my holiday doodads so I am quite unsure if anyone actually enjoys them! But since at least some people said they enjoy them, and I would go crazy if I couldn’t bead or tat I will continue to keep making them even though it is getting harder and harder to come up with ideas.

 

Cruise dolphins

 

I don’t think I even want to bother counting the days I have been social distancing/self quarantining in fact I would be hard pressed to even guess what month we are in. I haven’t had much luck in finding a job. Most days I have my hands full just trying to convince myself things are going to be ok. I have been trying to keep my mind occupied with doing craft projects, but I have still been having massive problems trying to start new ones. I have been doing quite a bit of cross stitch, a bit of tatting but not a whole lot of beading and way way too much time on pintrest looking for patterns. I had done a cross stitch for one of my grand babies and had totally forgot about that until I ran across a picture of it. Since then we have had 2 new grand babies, so I figured I better get on the ball and get a couple more done for the rest of the grand kids. For a couple of them I just ordered a kit but some of them I found patterns on pintrest because hoarder me has a stash of fabric and thread. The problem with some patterns is that you have to pick your own colors and on some of them I had to change a couple things on the pattern, so I have spent hours and hours looking for patterns, colors and making changes.

I can’t post about the cross stitch stuff yet because they aren’t all done yet and I don’t want to spoil the surprise but I can post about my last tatting project that got handed out. Since it is such a long time until the next holiday I wanted to come up with another project to do to let people know that I am thinking about them.  Since nobody is able to take vacations it got me to thinking about the last vacation we had been on and that would the cruise that my parents treated our whole family on 3 years earlier in September.  I had run across a cute dolphin pattern that I figured would remind everyone of the days we spent together watching the dolphins that played around our ship.

 

The pattern is one by Jane Eborall and you can find it here.  She has some really fun patterns on her site, if you haven’t visited it yet you should check it out! This is a fun pattern to tat, it has lots of split rings which I have found to be fun to do. It also has a down facing picot that I had never even heard of. I sure wish I had know about these earlier because I know I have done several projects that would have looked better had I know about them. This pattern also has the option to do a split chain in a couple of spots but since I had not tackled those yet and on this particular pattern you have to also attach it to an anchor picot on a helper item I decided to leave those out.

 

I first tried these in gray but they were so small and the little ships looked huge  that I decided to try them with a little bit thicker thread. The grey one is artiste #10 called cloud and the blueish one is J&P Coats knit cro-sheen called aqua.

 

The best part of these little doodads is that I got to hand deliver several of them. I ended up making 9 complete ornaments  but actually only needed 6 of them. Me and the hubby got to take a trip back home and hand delivered them to the family members that still live there. This happened in September it has just taken me a bit to get these posted. With any amount of luck I will get the next holiday motifs out in time!

Happy 4th of July!!

Happy 4^th of July, it sure doesn’t feel like I should call it Independence day since we are working on day 113th of quarantine. However, our county is finally moving into phase 2 so I hope we are moving toward better days.

I am pleased to announce that I am actually all caught up on posts so these are actually the doodads for today’s holiday. I am even more excited to say that these went out in time for everyone to receive them by today.  These are another holiday that I had completed last year but not sent out.

When I went to put these together I found a good reason why they probably didn’t get sent out last year...these poor stars are super sad and look terrible. I believe I must have gotten the idea for the star off of a picture on pintrest because I could find the actual pattern. I found a couple of trial stars that looks like I tried to figure out the pattern but clearly, I didn’t do such a great job. Looking at these today I know there must be a much better way to do these.

I used Aunt Lydias Metallic size 10 thread and I remember this thread was an absolute nightmare to work with. I used 2 rolls of this crochet thread and I only ended up making 10 of these. I would have liked to make more of them but the thread is awful to work with and it is quite expensive so I decided not to put myself through more torture by making more. I know I should use tatting thread instead of the thread I usually use (artitste) but it is much more expensive and I have to think ahead and order it online so I just use the stuff that is readily available at our nearest craft store which is a hobby lobby about 35 miles away. I also find rolls of this at our thrift store that is just down the road from us so I usually grab it when I find it. Yes, this does add to my massive hoard that I have in my craft room. In fact it takes up a pretty big space since there is not a really good way to store it all.  

These stars tended to curl up and were very fiddly. They seemed to press out ok and I probably could have blocked them and got them to behave a bit better but I wasn’t sure what would happen to the metallic filament if I put glue on them.  The little beaded uncle Sam came from a pattern I bought off of ThreadABead that can be found here.

The card idea was my husbands and I tend to think that it is very relevant for this years holiday. Our governor of the state has made it mandatory that we all wear masks. I hope that whether you are in the group that thinks that this is a good idea or the group that refuses to conform that we can just be kind to each other… NO MATTER WHAT!!

Valentine's Day

I am happy to post that the next holiday I am catching up on is Valentines day and I actually get to say that I sent them out. Unfortunately, there is some bad news as well. I didn’t send them out in a very timely manner which is a huge shame because I actually had these doodads done for last years holiday and just didn’t send them out. Part of the reason why they didn’t get sent out last year is because I didn’t love the way they turned out and partly because I couldn’t come up with a card and partly because of the shame of not sending out the Christmas cards.

This is the first time I have tried adding beads into the tatting project itself, it’s also the first time I had attempted split rings. I got the pattern here on Etsy.  I tried tatting the key a couple of different ways but because my picots are out of control since the last couple of projects I did I wanted big floppy picots and the thread I use doesn’t really allow for small picots to look good ( I used size 10 Artiste thread called cloud. ) I decided to omit the picots. I still didn’t love the way these turned out and adding the beads, especially the one that you have to add to the second half of a split ring, really was not fun so I only ended up making 12 of these.  Since I didn’t make enough of these and I wanted to give a few more people valentines I sent out a couple of the doodads that I had left over from previous years.

When I went to put these together I found that when I made the beaded hearts I didn’t account for a way to attach them to the tatting.  Usually I add extra beads or a bigger bead on top to attach them but for some reason I didn’t this time. The beads were so small that I couldn’t find a split ring with small enough wire to go through them, so I ended up making my own rings. They don’t look very good but at least I got them attached.

Here's to hoping that I will post again real soon!

Thanksgiving

We ended up getting a huge snowstorm that has caused lots of grief on lots of levels.  We ended up getting  at least 24 inches in less than 2 days. It is super heavy snow so trying to get unburied has been an ordeal.  On top of that we have gotten rain and then freezing at night so everything is like an ice skating rink in places where the snow has been cleaned off.  Thankfully the only real damage we have suffered so far has been extremely sore back and legs and the snow pulled off several gutters and flashing off the house but so far we have survived.

The next holiday I need to get caught up on is Thanksgiving.  I had an idea of beading a turkey body and using a piece of tatting for the “feather part”.  Due to the short amount of time between  the next couple of holidays I needed to hurry to get on the project.  My brain power is pretty much just being taken up with dealing with the problems at work and the everyday task of just trying to survive so I didn’t have time to try to invent a pattern or pour over the internet looking for one .  I was going through past projects and found, by happy mistake, that I could repurpose one of Mark Meyers , aka Tatman, patterns to work with the concept I was going for. I used this same pattern for my Thanksgiving 2016 cards, it's called back to school apple. I had my bobbin wound with left over thread from last years thanksgiving project  so I just used that thread which is Lizbeth called falling leaves in  size 10.

 I ended up making 16 of these but only ended up sending 9 of them out.  I have been so late in getting these out lately that I am embarrassed so I end up not even sending them out at all so I end up with extra motifs and have no idea what to do with them.

The card idea was my husbands this time,  I always come up with the picture and I have recruited him to help with the sayings.

Halloween

I was going to try to take advantage of our snow day off and get another post out of the way. I started several posts but I didn't get them finished on the snow day but at least I made the attempt.   It snowed on Sunday night through till Monday morning and as I work for a service company that runs service trucks and live in an area that is not equipped for snow removal my boss made the decision to not even open the doors. We actually got about 6 inches on Monday and we stayed down in the teens all week so the snow didn’t get much of a chance to melt so when we had an anticipated storm set to hit the area again on Friday my boss decided to not open on Friday either. We did end up getting about 4 more inches which is huge when we don’t have snow plows or sand trucks so it was probably a good idea that we didn’t have the guys come in and take the chance of getting stuck and being snowed out of home.

Anyway, up next we have Halloween. Since there are several months between 4^th of July and Halloween you would think that I would have plenty of time to come up with a fun motif and have plenty of time to get them done but apparently, in my world that is just not the case. I remembered seeing a spider web motif somewhere in my cyber surfing but it was a bit difficult to find it again. I remembered that it was probably “tatman” site that I saw it on but since he has taken the site down it was quite difficult to try to find. For some reason I had it in my mind that that was the next pattern I wanted so I searched for a long time trying to find the pattern. I did end up finding a picture of it and it took me several tries to figure out the pattern.

  I am terrible at figuring out what I need to change about the counts in order for my project to lay flat. It took me several motifs before I remembered that you can climb out of a row with a split ring so that the web ended correctly.  My end product doesn’t look anywhere near as good as Mark Meyers (tatman) but I think the little beaded spider kind of redeems the project. 

I made 12 complete cards (not including the mess ups in the picture above). These are probably one of my least favorite projects I have ever done but at least I got most of them sent out.  The card idea was mine, my husband didn’t get the concept but I sent them out anyway.

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.