I went trippin'

Last Thursday my BFF and I went on a trip.  We drove all the way from North Dakota to the East edge of Wisconsin.
I did some tatting during the trip and was able to finish an edging that I have had in as my purse project for the past 2 years up to the last join.  I will have to get it smoothed out and steamed into place so I can do the last join correctly.  I have posted about it before, let me see if I can find it in my Picassa archive....

The thread is Krystle Dawne's Wisteria Lane in size 40.  The pattern is Mary Konior's Beauty Spot
I also tatted a bookmark for one of my grandsons who had a birthday the other day.

The thread is size 40 Lizbeth Jelly Bean (don't know the color number) The pattern is by Diana Stevens and can be found on the wayback machine at http://www.allcrafts.net/crochetsewingcrafts.htm?url=web.archive.org/web/20000824105730/http://www.domesticarts.com/patterns/snake.htm  although as usual I made a few "improvements" to the pattern. I started with the head and ended with the tail so there were no cut and ties except when I finished. Since I was feeling my way abit, I ended up with the head curved off to the side.  I tried using the double double stitch so the chains in the head would be straighter between the body and the eyes.  If I had put the correct number of stitches in the orange side, the head would have been straighter.  I am going to do this again and will correct my stitch count, but this will work very well as is for my grandson.

Now a few pictures from my trip.

 There is an awesome old style chocolate candy shop in Manitowoc Beerntsen's it is amazing the candy is so good. The picture above is from the shop into the booth area as they also serve a simple soup and sandwich lunch.  The woodwork is walnut and the booths each have mirrors with cast iron framing.

 The lunch counter side and some of the candy

The other side of the shop with more of the candy.  All the candy is hand dipped on site.  Check out the link above to see some of it.

We did see some nice fall colors.  Some of the pictures I took as we drove down the highway so the focus isn't as good as I would like.

For some reason it just seems strange to see log buildings in Wisconsin.  The above building is missing it's roof but it just seemed so lonely in the middle of the corn field.

The Silos are different from what I am used to seeing around our neck of the woods ...

... concrete tops.  generally ours have steel tops.

This past Sunday was Fatima Day and we went to the Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help near Green Bay. This is a very reverent place.
We were able to attend the Rosary and Holy Hour while we were there.  Afterwards I was able to take a few pictures

 A grotto of Our Lady of Fatima and the 3 children who saw her. 

 A Statue of Our Lady of Good Help.  The apparitions have been approved by the Catholic Church as authentic, and worthy of belief, but we are not required  to believe in them.

One of the outdoor Stations of the Cross.

This last picture is of a sunrise over Lake Michigan from the window of the bedroom where I stayed.  The trees and grasses that you can see is the edge of the bluff above the shore of the lake.  The bright flare above the cloud layer is a plume from something on the Michigan shore across the lake.  The sunrise the day before had been even more awesome, but I had left my camera in the car so missed that one.

The drive is about 9 hours if you don't stop for gas or to stretch your legs.

Now time for bed.

Lest you think I bin a slackin'

I haven't posted for a bit, but I have been doing some tatting.  I will show you some progress pics as well as a test tat I did for someone. (wow, this turned out to be a long post)

I tested a pattern for a ZigZag Hair Slide by Sue Draney. The pattern will be available on her etsy store in the near future.  What is a Hair Slide you may ask?  it is a doily style tatted motif attached to hair combs to cover up a knot of hair similar to a snood.

This picture was taken before I attached it to the hair combs.  The thread is Lizbeth Vineyard Harvest size 20. The chains in the first 3 rows are lock chains ~ 1st half DS flipped 2nd half DS unflipped ~ which makes for pretty chains when using a varigated thread.  This pattern does require a tie and cut after the 2nd round.  I hate ends, and I know it is a bit arrogant, but I didn't follow the pattern exactly,  I did a lock stitch split chain so I could climb out to the 3rd round.

when you make a normal split chain, you leave a bit less then the length of the chain as it tends to stretch just a bit.  When doing a lock stitch split chain, you leave about 1/3 - 1/2 extra, because instead of simply encapsulating the bare thread, you will have to "pop" the half stitch to transfer it so it becomes a lock chain.

I have been sitting in the car a few times as farmguy did the driving and have been able to get more of my hanky edging tatted.  Here is an update

The thread is Krystle's Wisteria Lane in size 40.  I have completed 3 corners, and have 3 repeats left on the 3rd side, and then the 4th corner and another 13 repeats for the 4th side.  I will then have to attach it to the hanky.  The pattern is Mary Konior's Beauty Spot from Tatting with Visual Patterns.

Last month on my trip to Manitowoc WI, I started Linda Davies Star Attraction Doily using Jess's  Peacock and DMC green from my stash both in size 40. Here is the post from the end of my trip with the progress on the doily at that point.
This is as far as I have gotten now,  round 5 is finished.  The ends are still there, because I never trim them until the item is complete and has been dampened and dried at least once.

Going good so far.  I have broken a tatter's cardinal rule for joins with this doily.  I started out doing the normal up and down joins depending on if I was on the front or back side.  I tat fs/bs automatically.  but was not happy with the little color blip.  I know that several people have posted various ways to avoid the dreaded color blip, Jane Eborall's Blipless join and Lily Morales Larks Head Picot Join are just 2 but I have found the LHPJ method that Krystle has devised very easy and have switched to doing that style of join.  So if you enlarge the pic you will notice color blips for the first 3.5 rounds, after that I used Krystle's version to avoid the color blip. 

Can you stand more?

I have one more pic to post about.

Georgia Sietz has been asking for help with tatting for the Scholarship quilts for the Palmetto Tatter's Tat Days convention. Isdihara over at Ambitaterous has posted links to pattern and requests for tatting.  So I have started tatting a long row of Josephine Rings.  I have used up about 1/2 of a Aero Bobbin of size 40 Olympus in deep green and will finish the bobbin before sending it,  may get another bobbin done as well, as there is other tatting I want to do. We will see. 

 

and one more thing,  

I live not too far from Fargo, North Dakota, the daily newspaper there, The Forum, hosts an online community of bloggers from all walks of life.  They feature various blogs in the paper and online every now and then.  They put out a call for crafty people to blog about their art.  I contacted the person in charge to see what they were looking for as it occured to me it might be a good way to get more people introduced to tatting.  Their blogs are hosted on WordPress.  I would not want to run 2 blogs, and I was told that I would be able to migrate my past content from here on blogger.  It would mean an address change for my blog.  I would also have to learn a new format.  

I would appreciate any advice you can give if I should or should not pursue moving my blog. 

Any pros or cons to WordPress would be welcome. 

nearly midnight again, and I need to get to bed.  

See you all tomorrow.

Hanky Edging Progress

I have been working on the Edging for the hanky I won in Michelle's giveaway earlier this year.

I chose to do Mary Konior's Beauty Spots Edging from her book Tatting with Visual Patterns.
I also chose a HDT from Krystle, one of Dr VonThreadmore's pretty threads called Wisteria Lane in size 40.


I have been working on this edging on and off since May
well, here is what I have been able to get done in between other projects.
 

















as you can see, I am 1 repeat short of the 3rd corner. and I learned an interesting thing about this hanky,  it isn't square, it takes 13 repeats between corner elements on the left and right sides and 14 repeats on the top and bottom.  gave me a bit of a panic the first time I realized this, but decided that it wouldn't be that noticeable.

I have unfortunately run into a snag,

sorry for the shadows

the amount of thread that you can barely see on the shuttle is all that is left of a full skein of Krystle's thread.
I contacted Krystle, Dr VonThreadmore's associate to see if there was any of this thread still available, however, all of it is gone for the present.  There may be a new batch coming later this fall, so for now, this will go in the WIP section.

I cooked another 18qrt roaster full of apples again today.  the last batch made 16 pints of apple butter,  this roaster full should give us about 7 qrts of apple sauce.

The garden frosted 2 nights this past week.  only covered the tomatoes the 2nd night and the first wasn't supposed to get that cold.  I have been waiting for enough tomatoes to ripen to do some canning.  since they only got touched on the tops of the plants, I am hoping that they will recover enough to finish ripening the many tomatoes on the plants.  should be above freezing now for the next week or so, maybe I will get lucky.

I was able to can 26 pints of green beans, 7 qrts of dill pickles and did get 16 watermelon out of the garden, and will have to gather the squash tomorrow.  and the Carrots need digging.



hope you have all had a productive Saturday and will be having an enjoyable Sunday.