blog challenge

Krystle from Krystledawne tats has issued a tatting space challenge for tatters to post pictures of their tatting space.

so I have accepted the challenge, I hope my mom doesn't see these, she will think she didn't teach me how to clean house. but tatting is so much more fun then picking up and putting away, that at the end of the day at work, I much prefer to sit and tat.

This first pic is of my recliner. right now it has a box of threads from my late mother in law. I was looking at them for a project that is at the moment on hold. my tatting books are in the bookshelf behind. they take up close to half a shelf. The light is not an Ottlight, but it works. It was my mother in law's lamp

When I am not sitting in my recliner, I am tatting on the couch. above you can see the project I am working on at the moment. and a box of beads from previous projects that I haven't found space for.

Here is the coffee table in front of the couch. My tatting is allllllll over the house.

Here is my thread stash. all 3 drawers have lots of threads in them. I have them sorted by size, 3,5,&12 perle, 10 and 20 are in the bottom drawer. the middle drawer holds 30&40 . The top drawer holds 50,70& 80 and other miscellaneous items. ?Quit a few of my threads are either from my grandmother Eulalia's stash or HDT from several of the venders on etsy or ebay.

please ignore the stacks of books along side. I read a lot too.

oh well, that is not all of my tatting stuff. I have a display board ( hmm I may post about that another time) and another drawer in a cupboard and stuff in a couple of carrying cases.

I envy Krystle's neat space and Sherry's very pretty room, but I am me and this is me.

Out of the nest and 3rd 25 motif challenge

Today was the day. I checked the baby bird this morning, while out hanging laundry on the line and it looked very alert and had most of it's feathers so I figured it was about ready to leave the nest.

I had to go in to work this afternoon to catch up on some things, but took the time to check on the bird before leaving and was I ever glad that I did.

Take a look at who I found out of the nest. Sitting on a branch just a little ways from the nest.

Here is a closeup. you can see the white eyebrows, wish I knew what kind of bird this is.

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on that tatting side, I have decided to do another 25 Motif Challenge. I started my first one in june 2008. I don't know if you are supposed to count every item that you tat, or only those from different patterns. After finishing that one this spring, (well, if you count everything I tatted I finished it before Thanksgiving).

Then I tatted the items needed for my daughters wedding as well as a few other items. That would have been my 2nd full Challenge.

So I am going to start my 3rd one. I will put the list gadget back on my blog for this Challenge.

Bouquets and baby birds

I survived the hurried trip to Omaha this weekend. While the wedding isn't until November, I wanted to show you how the tatted stars were used in the flower arrangements for the wedding. we used silk flowers and blue accents. The colors are very deep and rich, the photos don't do the colors justice except for the one of the bridesmaids bouquets. There are Hydrangeas, roses, and a bunch of others. We bought out all the deep red from 1 of the Hobby Lobby's in Omaha.

This first photo is of the Mother's corsages, you can see 3 tiny white tatting stars in each. I will be posting the pattern for the small white tatted stars to my pattern blog in the next couple of hours, if you click over and it isn't there yet, check back a bit later.

This second photo is of the Brides Bouquet. There are 11 tiny white tatted stars in it. It is not finished and maybe pulled apart and done over, it is good, but not perfect, since there are 4 mos left until the wedding, there is time to figure out what isn't just right.

This third photo is of the Bridesmaid's bouquets. On the handles you can see the tatted initials and the small red tatted flowers. The pattern for the small red flowers is available on my pattern blog. The Maid of Honor's bouquet is on the right, her small red flower has 6 petals instead of the 5 in the rest, mainly because I goofed and didn't count right, but it also sets hers off from the other gal who has the same initial.

There are small tatted white stars in the grooms boutonniere, but that picture is a bit fuzzy, I didn't realize that I was shaking when I took it.

This 4th photo is of the arrangements for behind the altar in the church. The colors should be as deep and rich as the photo of the bridesmaids above.

And last but not least is an up date on the baby bird. He has gotten much bigger. I have never had a really good look at mama, she is very fast off the nest and the leaves cover it up unless I lift them out of the way to take the baby's picture, but I did get a better glimpse at her yesterday. She is medium to dark grey on the top and creamy on the bottom. her head is darker and she has a white stripe across her eyes. Her beak is sharper and longer then an oriole, so I am thinking maybe a Vireo? but then since I know so little of birds, I can be oh so very wrong.

Time to get moving, I need to get the pattern for the tiny white flowers written up and posted.

Baby Bird Update

This is a picture I took tonight of the bird nest. You can see 1 baby bird and 1 egg.

You may recall in the previous pictures there were 5 eggs, 3 were smaller and white with brown speckles and 2 were larger blue with brown speckles. Sharon said she thought that the larger eggs were cowbird eggs and since I had already suspected as much, it simply confirmed what I was thinking. I did some research and decided that the 2 larger eggs were cowbird eggs. Now I realize that God designed and nature developed birds and animals to fit into specific niches. And in order for cowbirds to follow the large migratory bison and cattle herds to help keep them free of insects, some bird needed to foster the babies as the parents wouldn't be able to get back to the nests to do so.
Unfortunately as a human, I can't leave things alone. Particularly as there are no migratory cattle herds here, all the cattle are in their fences and the parent cowbirds can very well raise their own babies,
If the cowbird babies would co-exist with the host bird babies, I wouldn't have a problem with the situation, but they hatch first, are larger and will deliberately kill the true baby birds. So, Monday, after the 2 eggs blue eggs and 1 white egg had hatched, I could tell that the 2 were much larger and crowding out the smaller baby. the other 2 small eggs weren't hatching either. I removed the 2 larger babies and hoped that the other 2 white eggs would hatch. Tonight there is only 1 white egg left and I doubt it will hatch. Mama bird spent too much time off the nest trying to feed the cowbird babies.
The baby bird in the photo is almost twice the size it was on Monday .

no promises, but maybe next post there will be tatting again.

Oh, I will be on the way to Omaha NE this weekend. I will be meeting my future son-in-law's family and since they will be creating the silk flower bouquets and also my daughters real flower bouquet for the wedding, it will be nice to get together to be sure we are on the same wave length concerning the filler flowers for the bouquets.

Omaha is a 6 hr drive from here and my daughter and her fiance will have to drive an additional 4 hours to get here to pick me up. They live in St Paul MN so there is no direct route to Omaha anyway, either way they go west then south or south then west it takes them about the same amount of time.

quick postie

Yippee!
we now have high speed internet.
The local phone company put a radio receiver on the top of our house. They mounted it to the TV anntena pole. It receives internet signals from a broadcaster located on the top of the water tower in a town 15 miles away.
we are too far from anywere for DSL, so this was the best solution. We are 1 of the first 5 to be able to get it. Now they will wait to see how everything works before getting any one else set up.
This is like going from walking speed to 100m/h. what a difference this is. we still need to get a router so we can get both computers up and running on high speed internet. DH's computer is stilll on dial-up until we get the router.

on Heather's blog, Tarnished Tatter she is requesting craft items for a charity auction to benefit a friend of hers who has stage 4 Breast Cancer. If you are interested in donating a craft item, please visit Heather's blog and contact her.

Wedding Tatting

I am posting some of the wedding tatting tonight.

First are the Initials that I have finished.

E for the bride,
J,J,M,R,R are for the maid of honor and the bridesmaids and the A is for a groomswoman. The initials will be mounted on the ribbon wrapped handles of the bouquets except for the A, it has yet to be determined if that will be used and how. I used the patterns from the book Tatting ABC's & 123's by Houstine Cooper and Handy Hands Inc. available from Handy Hands. I do not like to hide ends so modified the patterns to be tatted in 1 round, using SCMRs and floating rings. If anyone has questions about altering the patterns, please contact me.
The brighter thread is a size 30 antique Clark's O.N.T. from my grandmother Eulalia's stash, so it has sentimental value to my daughter, it was used for the initials for her and 2 of her sisters bouquets. The darker thread is Subtlety Silk Pearl #12. The colors are not acurate, they are deeper and much richer then the scan shows. there is too much orange in the scan and I am not bold enough to alter the colors using the photo editor. I have Irfanview which I really like. It is available for free.

(peeuw - one of the disadvantages of living in the country is skunks, don't know where this one is, but I can smell it)

The second picture is the tiny beaded flowers.

They will be used at the ends of the ribbons that wrap the bouquet handles, they will be left long enough to dangle. I have posted the pattern for the tiny beaded flowers on my pattern blog. The thread is Subtlety silk pearl #12 and the beads are Mill Hill Antique Glass Beads. Both Subtlety and the beads are available from Nordic Needle.

The third picture is of some experimentation of filler for the bouquets.

I am seeing my daughter this Saturday so will see what she likes best. My preference is for the first 2, they are daisy picot flowers based on Linda Davies' (toptattyhead) Queen Anne Lace flowers. The thread is another of grandma Eulalia's stash - Daisy size 30 ecru. The beads are whatever I have around.




Happy 4th of July everyone

If you could stock a store full of Tatting materials . . .

Heglajhess asked that question on the Here-Be-Tatters email list so I thought I would post my answers here too.

FIVE BOOKS FOR BEGINNERS

1- The Complete Book of Tatting by Rebecca Jones

2- Tatting with Visual Patterns by Mary Konior

3- Beginning Tatting (can't find my copy so don't know the author)

4- Tatting by the Tatsy company

5-

FIVE BOOKS YOU MOST DESIRE OR CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT

1- Ben Fikkart's books

2- The Shuttle Brother's books

3-

4-

5-

FIVE FAVORITE SHUTTLE TYPES/BRANDS

1- Silent Tatter

2- Detach-A-Spool

3- Handmade by my dad out of walnut from his backyard similar to the Silent Tatter

4- Grizzly Mountain Arts with a sewing bobbin and hook

5- any shuttle using a sewing bobbin and has an attached hook

FIVE BEST THREADS/FIBER

1- 6 cord mercerized cotton

2- hand dyed thread

3- silk

4- linen

5- blending filaments

FIVE TOP TATTING TOOLS

1- magic thread/floss threader

2- short crochet hooks with rings

3- beading needles

4- clover thread cutter

5- yarn swift for handling skeins of thread

6- picot guages

FIVE MOST DESIRED ITEMS TO INCLUDE IN YOUR TATTING

1- beads

2- glass ornaments

3-

4-

5-

FIVE MOST NECESSARY DESIGN AIDS

1- 1' tatted measuring thread

2- pencil

3- paper

4-

5-

PLEASE INCLUDE ANY REMARKS HERE

beginning tatting videos - I like Sharon's