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.

 

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year or whatever!!

 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year or like it says in our holiday cards..whatever holiday this is posted on!

 

I have some good news and some not so good news about my holiday doodads.  The good news is some of them got sent out unfortunately, the really bad news is that I still haven’t sent out some of them to my family members mostly  because I have still been trying to decide what to send for gifts.(Several reasons for this but most of them revolve around me sucking at life right now) My plan was to get these in the mail super early but, as you can see with the cards that were already printed out from  last year, that wouldn’t make much sense.  But we finally decided about a week before Christmas that we would send them out and just hand write in the cards that “it may be a Christmas miracle that they may actually arrive before Christmas “.

 

 It has been another extremely difficult Christmas. First and foremost, I just really hate the holiday for several reasons. My stress level always goes through the roof around Christmas but this year has been beyond stress. Add the whole 2020 thing, very little money coming in because I haven’t been working for so long, plus not being able to spend it with family, pretty much equates to a terrible holiday. It was definitely very difficult not to travel and spend it with family especially because our new grand babies are getting old enough to know what Christmas is about and the hubby actually had some time off. But we did the socially responsible thing and stayed put.

 

 

I am going to post this even though some of them still haven’t been sent out because I have actually been working on these stupey ornaments for several years now. I have talked about why in previous blog posts but I guess the short reason is I suck! I had started making these for 2018 Christmas but they didn’t get sent out that year, so I continued to keep making a few more for 2019 but I got super overwhelmed that Christmas as well and was still embarrassed to be sending out such tiny motifs with super simple beaded doodads that I didn’t send them out then either.

So that brings us to 2020…I had made 30 of these because I had planned on giving them to the people I work with and the people my husband works with as well as all our family. But as of right now I still haven’t been able to find a job yet and my husband has been working from home so we only will be using 19 this year so I guess we will still have a start for some people next year.

 

 The Angel comes from a pattern that can be found all over pintrest so it is a bit difficult to find out who actually started the original pattern, I am pretty sure it is a pattern by Patrizia Pirocca as that is the name that is watermarked in the picture that also has the stitch counts on it.  I changed the  count on the pattern and added picots to try to make them a bit bigger. I made the picots different lengths on each one I did so each angel actually looks a bit different . The pattern also had a bead as the head but I knew that I was going to be mailing these out so I made the head with thread. 

 

 The motifs are small enough that they really didn’t need to be starched but since I used white thread and apparently didn’t wash my hands often enough, some of them didn’t stay so white so I used gold glitter glue to cover that fact. Since I used gold I wanted to put a gold hanger on them but I couldn’t find any so I decided to make my own ornament hanger. That worked out pretty well because I was able to add the beaded star in a different way than I normally do. The white thread I used was some crochet thread that was not very nice to work with but I just kept working with it anyway. Please don’t ask me why because every answer I would think to come up with isn’t very flattering toward me!

I guess I will just try to focus on the good news that some of these actually got sent out, the holiday is over and the next couple of holidays are my favorite. I am getting close to having the doodads for Valentines done so please join me in crossing fingers that they will make it in the mail in a timely fashion! I have been pouring over the internet (thanks to all you bloggers out there for providing inspiration) trying to come up with an idea for St Pats but so far it has been a solid week since I have worked on any project at all (that is a terrible, terrible admission and one I am totally not proud of, not to mention it is aweful for my sanity). Please wish me luck with coming up with something before I completely loose any sanity that I have left! Thanks!!

 

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!

Happy Halloween!!

 

Well look at that, its actually Halloween and I am actually posting about my holiday dodads. Its been a while since I have been able to say that so I will count this as a win.

 I know I have already done a cat for a Halloween motif but I am running out of ideas, so I ended up doing another one. This is a pattern called Small Stretching Cat Down and it’s another one by Jane Eborall that you can find here. It is a pretty fun pattern to do because it has lots of split rings.

I first tried these in grey but when I went to look for a beaded doodad idea to attach with it I decided to do a witch hat so I went with purple Artiste #10 thread called wild berry (why did they call it berry I wonder?) to give it a bit more color. I also tried one without the eye but I didn’t much like that one so here is what I ended up deciding on…

 I ended up making 17 of these (not including the 2 samples) but I only sent 9 of them out. I kept hoping that we would be able to either have friends over for a Halloween dinner or that we would do our “normal” tradition of going to friend house to carve pumpkins and dinner but thanks to Covid that didn’t happen. So, I will just put all the extras together with the ones from previous years and maybe come up with another idea to give them out.

I have actually had these done for a while now but of course we waited till the last minute to send some of them out. I had spent the last couple months thinking “I am going to get these in the mail early” but thinking and doing are pretty much on the polar opposites for me right now. I think most of the ones I put in the mail at least made it on time. But the better news on this one is that my parents were actually here around the middle part of October so they were able to take most of them back home with them and deliver them for me. I also was able to send back some Halloween goodies for my kiddos and grand-kiddos since they probably won’t be able to go out trick or treating this year which is kind of a big bummer since it falls on a Saturday. But maybe good news because its also a full moon tonight which always seems to bring out more craziness!

The card idea was mine. I actually started out with it saying “ whats the scariest thing about 2020..Covid, being out of toilet paper or the thought of Trump winning the election” but only part of our family would think that was funny so I changed it to something a bit friendlier. I usually stay out of politics but this election is going to be extremely critical so I hope you will all remember to vote!

 I also hope everyone has a Happy Halloween and that everyone will do it safely!!

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!!

St Patricks catch up

Next catch up holiday is Saint Patricks day so I hope you are all wearing green!

There are not a lot of ideas for Saint Patricks tatting motifs. I pretty much have just found variations on the four leaf clover. For this one I just used the pattern that I used in  2017 doodads and changed the stitch count and added picots. Its kind of fun using 2 different colors for each shuttle.

 This is another holiday that I had done last year, I even had the cards done but they just didn’t get sent out. This year, I am happy to announce that these actually went out in time, in fact I got to hand deliver them to the part of my family that lives in Idaho! I made 12 of these and in looking back it looks like that I forgot to send a couple of them out, probably partially due to the fact I was in Idaho over the holiday  and partially because I was still reeling from being fired and my brain was not on straight.

I believe this post catches me up to the holiday tatting I have sent out so far. The next holiday will be 4^th of July. I know they need to be sent out immediately if they are to arrive anywhere near on time. Wish me luck because I am having a hard time getting motivated to get them out.