It's Finished

I have finished Dani's Choose Your Own Pattern TIAS.

I used option C for my pattern and the letter was appropriate as you can see option C became a cute little Chick

This is the first pattern in a long time that I have had to do much "retro" tatting. I hate hiding ends, so to avoid that I spend the time to open rings and undo the stitches. I did that twice last night and twice again tonight. I spent over half an hour unpicking stitches.

I was to the point that I almost cut the thread "shudder".

Dani, I hope that this is the way it is supposed to look.

I am going to add this to my 25 motif challenge, I have only a few weeks left to finish it. I have tatted much more then 25 items in the past year, but I counted the Christmas Ornaments as only 1 because I used the same pattern many times.

TatsKool has finished her version. She chose option A, what do you think hers turned out to be?

Tomorrow, back to tatting on my doily, I should be able to post that this weekend.

but first to bed, then work, then home for tatting.

Dani's Easter TIAS Day 6

I had a few interruptions over the Easter Holiday, and since.


but tonight I took a few minutes to finish my day 6 of Dani's TIAS



I had to add thread as my shuttle ran out right before the last ring. I had to finger tat the last ch 6.



I am going to try to get day 7 done yet tonight as well.


we will see if that happens.

Later.....Well, won't get done tonight. I didn't like the way it was going, so took out a ring and chain, then later decided that it was right the first time so took out 3 rings and chains. now I hope I am doing it right.

updated picture of flooded road

It occurs to me that I haven't posted a picture of our flooded road since I posted the one of the high water.



above you can see the west (left) and east (right) shoulders of the road, the road bed itself is gone. this is on the south side of the bridge in the picture in the previous post. the picture in the post below is on the north side of the bridge.
this road is the main road to get north of our farm. you need to go north to get to a major town for groceries, for the mail to come from our local post office and for the school bus to get the neighbors kids. It will be weeks if not months before this road is usable. The post office agreed to allow us to put a temporary mailbox on the intersection just north of this area of road. The water had gone down enough that DH can use the 4-wheeler and a bit of wading so we can get the mail. otherwise it is a 30 mile round trip to get our mail.
The water is still pouring across this road, it has cut the west shoulder and is flowing across the road and out the east shoulder.
Gotta get to work, took a few minutes to post this as DSL at work is so much quicker then dial-up at home.
Have a good day

3 pages today

since I haven't posted for a few days, I thought that I would give you 3 pages of the antique booklet.

I have been tatting on my doily, but I won't post that until I am finished.

Day 6 of Dani's TIAS has been posted, but with the meeting for the fire department tonight, there has been no time to tat.

without further ado....
page 5

page 6

page7

to give you a preview of coming attractions.....

Page 8 starts the patterns, and one on page 9 gives some chances for tatted embellishment.

booklet page and TIAS

Palm Sunday today, and we had our church dinner.

the dinner went very well and I think everyone enjoyed bingo and the kids really enjoyed the duck pond.

I am posting pg 4 of the Antique booklet

I have also finished day 5 of Dani's TIAS

It is very much egg shaped except for the extra oval on the upper left corner, I have no idea yet what we are making, so it will be interesting to see how it turns out.

Another page and TIAS

I will post another page from the Antique Booklet and 2 days of the TIAS.

The scan above is of page 3. it details the different items you will need to be able to make the projects in the booklet. you will also note near the lower left hand corner, my mother-in-law's name. The last initial is "L" so I know that she acquired this booklet some time after September of 1946.

I am going to show you 2 days of Dani's TIAS.

Day 3

it is starting to take on an egg shape, but since Dani isn't telling just exactly what it is, we will have to wait and see.

now Day 4

Dani's pattern started out with set instructions, today her pattern gave each tatter 3 options.

A, B and C.

I chose "C" options A & B stopped before the little oval on the upper left corner. Wally Sosa mentioned in her email to Here-Be-tatters, that she is going to have to do one of each. Since I have decided that I need to limit myself so that I get other things done, I wanted to also do all 3 but made myself do only 1. since I am doing only the one choice, I took what at this time looks like the more involved option.

Last evening during supper, I thought, hhmm, I should post about this. but then when I was posting last night, I forgot, soo....

Yesterday for supper I made what is known in our family as Grandma's Noodles.

As I was growing up for special occasions and on meatless Fridays in Lent we enjoyed Grandma's Noodles and browned butter with salmon and a vegetable or salad. I am the 3rd generation that I know of that has enjoyed this meal. And I know that some of my daughters make it too.

The recipe for the noodles is from my grandmother Eulalia.

Grandma's Noodles are really a dumpling

the basic recipe is

2 eggs

2 tbsp water

1 & 1/2 tsp salt (yes that is the right amount of salt)

1/2 tsp baking powder

enough flour to stiffen very thick ( start with 3/4 C and continue until it is so stiff that a lump on a fork will just barely slump)

Start a large pot of salted water heating. When the water comes to a boil, Spoon off small pieces of dough into the boiling water. Boil for approximately 15 min stirring occasionaly to prevent boiling over. check for doneness by cutting into a large dumpling after about 10 min.

drain and serve with Browned butter.

Browned Butter

You can find directions for Browned Butter at Allrecipes

we always enjoyed the canned salmon with this meal, we could eat the bones, for kids that is good for some giggles ( we were so easy back then)

I have a couple of other comfort meals that I will share from time to time.

Last night I did some shopping at Lacis.com due to having a dial-up connection it takes a long time to load pages and lots of waiting so I was up way too late.

I will share my purchases when I receive them.

but because of that, I am very tired and really need to get to bed.

Oh, I dont' know if I will find the time to post tomorrow. we have our annual church dinner tomorrow and I am games coordinator with another couple. the only games we are planning are bingo and a duck pond.

Have a very good rest of the weekend.

Antique How to book

I will post my tatting tomorrow for Dani's TIAS step 3

Tonight I am just letting you know that starting this weekend, I will be posting scans of the Antique How To booklet that I told you about in a previous post.

I have heard from Shay of the Little Grey Bungalow blog ( at least I seem to remember that I did, but I can't find the email anywhere). If I get this wrong, Shay, please let me know.
Anyway......
if you can't find any date information, or any contact information, and the material appears to have been printed before 1980, then it is in the Public Domain and you can post it.

She also gave me the information that the Spool Cotton Company was a division of the Coat's & Clark Thread company.

so here is page 2, the inside front cover of the booklet posted below.

I believe if you hold down the Ctrl key when you click on the picture it will open in a new window.

There are a total of 32 pages counting the front and back covers which are the same.
I will slowly post all the pages in order, so have patience and eventually you will get to see all of the booklet.

T.I.A.S day 2

Here is my attempt at the second day of Dani the geek's T.I.A.S She won't tell us what it is, just that it is Easter related.

The thread I am using is some HDT that I bought on etsy last fall from kreativekitties. It is very nice thread to work with. I have retro tatted a couple of times, and rings are really easy to open.

Just a note on our weather, it was sunny today and just above the freezing mark. it is forcast to be in the 20's for highs for the next several days, but nearly 40 by next wednesday. and no precip for the next week, so that is good news.

International Tatting Day and a new T.I.A.S

Today is International Tatting Day, the day to take some time for yourself, eat chocolate and do some tatting for fun and hopefully in public to promote the art of tatted lace.

Since in the previous post I mentioned that I didn't leave for work until noon today due to the snow we had, I did my tatting at home, as there wouldn't be time after getting to work.

I did eat chocolate at work though.

I am working on a doily based on the medallion that I posted about before leaving on vacation, I will show it to you in a couple of days when it is finished.

but I do have some tatting to show you today.

this is step 1 of a new T.I.A.S (Tat It And See) presented by Dani

you can find the directions for this new project at the T.I.A.S blog

so without furter ado....

hhmmm what will it be???? What will it be???

STuff happens

Well, I have been back from my vacation for a couple of weeks, but with the getting back into the swing of things, the flooding, the road closures, and the severe snow storms, I haven't had the inclination to do much but the essentials.

I very much enjoyed the vacation in Charleston South Carolina area, lots of flowering bushes and trees, warm air and green, so much different then the snow storm that happened 2 days before I left. Coming back home however, was a rude awakening. I will try to remember to tell you more about my vacation in later posts.

You have no doubt heard about the flooding in Fargo ND. we are about an hour southwest from there and had the flooding first.

we had some water in the basement, although not as much as some. No, I didn't take pictures YUCK! Marvin was out in the pouring rain trying to dig a ditch in the frozen ground to drain the water away from the basement. We have occasionally had some seepage in the oldest part of the basement since it is over 85 years old and mostly rock. We have also had a bit of water come in around the windows as they built this house at the beginning of a ravine and the house is lower then the yard and fields (some one must not have taken a really good look when the original house was built back in the early 1920's).

There are 3 parts to our basement, the oldest as I said is 85+ yrs old. the middle part is 60 yrs old and the newest we added on 24 yrs ago. The middle part of the basement walls sprung a leak about 4' from the floor directly onto a couch. That was fun.

Enough about this.

The overland flooding was so bad this year that many roads were washed out or cut by the water. to illustrate the difficulties, last weekend we were invited to the neighbors for supper, they live 2.5 miles directly north of us. in order to get there we went 1m east, 1 m south, 1m east, 1m north, 1 m east, 4 m north, 3 m west, 2.5 m south. Good thing they always have good stuff to eat. we will not be able to get our mail delivered for several more weeks. The main county road north of us still has water running over it and the snow we just got the other day will have to melt and drain away, and then it will have to dryout enough for the road crew to get the road fixed. I am able to go south and around to get to work, and a couple of times a week take the time to drive to a nearby town where our mailman is leaving our mail for us.

This picture is of my husband looking at the level of water under the bridge north of our house. just south of this bridge is where the road is washed out. Normally the river is about 20' wide under this bridge and it is about 10' deep. as you can see here the river is a whole lot bigger than that and this is after a week and has gone down a couple of feet.

This past monday night it started to snow a lot. by the time it was finished on tuesday, we had received 20" of heavy wet snow. we were unable to get out to go to work on tuesday, and it wasn't until noon today that I tried to get to work.

This was the 5th time this winter that I was snowed in at home and unable to get to work.