No thanksgiving and Christmas with elves

 It has been another crazy couple of months. I am sure the holiday season is pretty crazy for a lot of people but I am one of the people who really dislikes Christmas. It is such a commercialized holiday and there is such high stress about shopping and finding gifts for one day of the year, people running around all stressed and mean and ignorant that I would just as soon forget the whole thing! 

For thanksgiving this year we invited a friend over for a simple turkey dinner.  We don't have any family left that lives in our area and our friends' family also all lives out of town so it was great to spend the day with adopted family! 

As far as my holiday cards go I am super ashamed to admit that we didn't even get them sent out. I really had to stop and think as to the reason because I have the cards and the tatted dodads done. The simple explanation for not getting them in the mail is because I was working on getting a family activity/gift together and i had hoped to send them together so I could save on shipping. The postage for my tatted cards have gone up to $0.88 each so I was going to just ship the cards with the holiday project I was working on. I underestimated how long it would take to get the project together so by the time I got the project all ready to ship it was weeks past thanksgiving so we decided to just keep the thanksgiving doodads for next year.

The family project we were working on were elf on the shelf kits. We did elves for all our family members including several accessories for the elves and introduction letters to go with them. We have been missing family like crazy so we came up with the idea to send elves out and we set up a facebook page so that family members could post what their elf was up to. it was our small way to try to share in the holiday season even though we couldn't be together. I am hoping to set up another blog to share my othe craft ideas so keep an eye out for that blog to see the complete elf kit! Not only didn't the thanksgiving cards get sent out the elves were really late in getting in the mail because it took forever to round up the accessories i was looking for. The shelves are bare around here as far as food and craft items go so I had to hit several stores in a 30 mile radius to gather everything I needed. I know this is a very poor excuse but I wanted all the kits to be the same. 

For as crazy as the last couple of months have been, I am pleased to announce that most of my Christmas cards actually made it in the mail on time! Most of the cards for the family got put in the mail with the elves. I was still working on the tatted dodads for some of the cards so I am ashamed to admit that some of them didn't make it in the mail yet! I had been working on an Christmas gift for my kids that I have been working on for months that has been beating me up. Between trying to find the fabric and trim and being scared to finish them I am still trying to get them done. My plan was to send the cards with that project but they are still not done yet!

Part of the reason why they are not done yet is because of the craziness of the last couple of weeks! We had a bad snow storm come through our area that dumped 10-12 inches of snow in a matter of days and soon after that we had a terrible cold snap that froze our water pipes. We also ran out of propane in the middle of all that. We had called for a delivery well before we were completely empty but it took the propane company over 3 weeks to get us more propane which means we were completely out of propane for over a week and during the coldest week of the year so far! Propane is our only form of heat in our living area which is a fairly large area with vaulted ceilings so that part of the house never got over 55 degrees. 

We had also been working a ton at the casino mixing bands. We worked every single weekend (some of them even 3 days in a row) since the weeks before thanksgiving right up till a couple of days after New years day! The day after new years both my husband and I got super sick. We are not sure if it was Covid or not because we were unable to find a place to get tested and couldn't find an inexpensive test in the mail. I can tell you that I can't ever remember being that sick for that long. I literally spent the last couple of weeks either in bed or sitting on the couch not doing a single thing.  I didn't even feel well enough to read or do any tatting so that should tell you how bad it was! I also had a terrible UTI at the same time so between shoveling snow, dealing with no water, having no heat and being super sick  it has  been a super miserable last couple of weeks.  Needless to say, so far, 2022 has not been a great year!

Anyway, here are my Christmas cards for 2021. The cards took forever to put together because the die cut that I wanted to use didn't cut the construction paper out very well so I had to “weed out” every single hole of the doily/wreath and in some cases I had to aslo cut out some of the holes. 

The tatted wreath came from an idea I got from a picture I had saved from some site I ran across a long while ago. I think the picture said it was a snowflake but when I went to try to find the site again I couldn't find it. The picture wasn't really clear so I had to tweak the counts a couple times before it would lay flat. I decided to add beads to the piece because I knew I wouldn't have time to do beaded doddads with this one. I used artiste size 10 crochet thread called grass. I used almost the entire ball to make 16 of these but I only ended up sending 11 of them out.  It was a super easy pattern to remember and the thread was very easy to work with.  I probably broke a couple tatters cardinal rule and hot glued the ribbon on top. I have never used glue in tatting before so I have no idea if the ribbon is going to stay but I needed to get these done quickly because I needed to get them in the mail with the elves which were super late as it was.

On a little more positive note, I am well underway to having my Valentine tatting dodads done. I still need to come up with a card idea and get those done but hopefully I can get those done quickly and I will be able to get them in the mail in time for Valentines Day.  Wish me luck!

PS This post has actually been written for over a week I had just forgotten to hit the puplish button! What a stupey!!

Happy Thanksgiving or Black Friday!!

 

Happy Thanksgiving or should I say Happy Black Friday. I guess that isn’t even correct considering that Black Friday has been going on for weeks now as far as the stores go. We had a kind of last-minute Thanksgiving because our plans kept changing. We were supposed to have several friends over including one friend flying in from out of town for a weekend of food and music recording but we ended up doing the socially responsible thing and cancelling due to Covid numbers going up again. So we finally ended up doing a small Thanksgiving dinner on Friday with just me and my husband, his son and his girlfriend.

Once again I am ashamed to announce that my holiday cards got sent out late which is really stupid because I actually had them done fairly early. We try to put a personal note in every card so that can get a bit difficult to come up with those so that’s a part of the reason why we hesitated to get these finished and in the mail. Another big reason why I drug my feet is because I am not really happy with the way these turned out. Probably the biggest reason why I don’t like them is because these are my second attempt at creating my own pattern and I am super critical of myself no matter what I do.

 

I didn’t spend a lot of time trying to tweak this pattern to make it right because I tend to “slip down a rabbit hole" way too easily now days and it is a very slippery slope indeed, not to mention it’s also very long. Also, as I mentioned several times before, nothing ever tends to be good enough so, should I try to make myself happy I would never finish. I got the idea for the feathers while cruising around pintrest when I stumbled across a dragonfly pattern that you can find here. The body is just a pattern that I am sure is found in lots of places and in lots of patterns.

 

These are the first time I haven’t put a little beaded do dad with them partly because I am completely running out of ideas for thanksgiving and partly because I figured since I added beads to them already that would probably be enough.

 I used South Maid 100% acrylic fiber called fudge brown. This thread was a real pain in the butt to work with especially when it came to closing rings. In fact I broke this thread several times when I was doing the split rings for the head, although to be fair its partly due to the fact that I was pulling the  stitches pretty tightly trying to make them even. This is one pattern that I actually used a picot gauge on (just a big wood stick like doctors use for tongue depressors) because I have a hard time making really large picots. I actually made 18 of these because we anticipated having people here for the weekend but by the time I came to trying to get them in the mail I only sent out 13 of them. In fact some of them haven’t made it to the mail yet because we have been working on a project for Christmas and I was just going to send them all at once but the project is taking much long than anticipated and they are still not ready to get in the mail yet. They really should have all gone in the mail already because they are advent calendars for the grand kids so like everything else now days they are going to be late getting them.

 Anyway I hope everyone had a great thanksgiving, I know the last year has been extremely difficult for most people but I hope you all could find at least a little something to be thankful for!

Thanksgiving 2019

It is impossible to believe that we have been in quarantine for 46 days, yet here we are. I have spent most of my days with my head spinning out of control, watching murder shows on ID and trying to come up with a new craft project (dang pintrest is a huge contributor to my stress) . I have an extremely difficult time starting new projects: what with trying to make a decision on what craft I want to do next, like tatting, beading, jewelry making, cross stitching or plastic canvas etc.  and then the fun of trying to choose colors for the project aggghhh! I have an okay time while I am in the middle of a project but then when I reach the end I have a hideous time completely finishing it. I actually have lots of new crafts I want to try but trying to pick one is overwhelming. I am a massive craft hoarder and I have a room full of supplies that would almost put hobby lobby to shame but that is completely overwhelming because there is so much and such a wide variety. I don’t know what my problem is but I feel like one big giant mess.

It is getting harder and harder to come up with ideas for my holiday tatted/beaded cards.  It is just as hard to come up with card sayings and ideas, in fact trying to come up with cards is a good part of the reason why they sometimes get sent out so late or sometime not at all. The next holiday is a perfect example of both.

These are the motifs for Thanksgiving  2019

I had already made leaves for a card a couple of years ago but I couldn’t come up with anything else, so I found this idea by Marilee Rockley. I don’t much like the little beaded guy so wasn’t super proud to send these out. I made 13 total doodads but I only sent 6 of them out, mostly due to the fact that I thought they were not so good and partly because they probably got sent out late. I don’t like any of the colors and the poor scarecrow is just sad. I used 2 different brands of thread and I was a bit surprised how different the 2 threads were size wise. The gold leaf is artiste size 10 as is called topaz and the red one is red heart classic size 10 and it is burgundy.

We couldn’t come up with anything witty to put on the cards so we decided to just tell it like it is.  You probably can’t see what is says in the parentheses but it says “insert appropriate number here”.

I hope everybody is staying safely at home and working on lots of fun projects. It is quite the feeling knowing that the whole world is doing the same thing and going through the same stuff. 

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.