Misc catchup post

This has been an interesting summer.  We had a cool and wet spring and summer, which brought a large and amazingly varied crop of mushrooms.  This is just 1 and it was very large.

We always get together for a family camping and picnic over the 4th of July, along the shore of a lake.  This is me and a couple of our grandchildren. 

Then in early October, the 11th to be exact we had a blizzard, and received 4" of snow.  Not as much as other parts of the state, some very "lucky" farmers received about 28" of heavy wet snow. 

below are 2 of the pictures I took

                           

This is a small Black Walnut

All the rain we recieved this year and the snow caused the fields to be very wet and has made harvest very difficult. 

Also in October we went to 2 concerts, first we have gone to in all the 46  yrs we haev been married.  At the end of September, Farmguy answered a trivia question on the radio and he won tickets to a Mickey Gilley/Johny Lee concert.  It was fun.  A week later he was reading the paper and saw that Miranda Lambert and her Roadside Bars & Pink Guitars tour was stopping in Fargo ND.  We were able to get tickets and the date was just a few days after our  Anniversary.  We had a good time at that concert too. 

On November 2 one of my daughters got martried. Below is a picture of our children. 

Left to right: Elizabeth #4 Doctor of Chemistry,

Mary #1 Graphic Artist and para professional for their local school, 

Naomi #6 runs the city and county housing dept, 

Rebecca #5 works in the compliance dept for a multi state bank, 

Joseph #7 works for a national restaurant chain,

Sarah #3 PharmTech in a hosp,

Anna #2 Stockbroker/Financial Advisor.

I am so proud of my kids, they are all silly, succesful, responsible adults who have persevered through good and bad times. They are amazing people and I am glad I know them and am very proud to be there mom. I do not claim any responsibility for how they turned out.  All I did was give them a framework, they did the growing and maturing themselves with God's help. 

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.

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

Wedding tatting

Here is the first post of the tatting that I am doing for my daughter's wedding.
The paint sample cards are the colors that she has picked for her wedding. Like always, the scanner changes or washes out the colors. The background is supposed to be gray.
The blues are the colorway that her bridesmaids can use to chose their dresses. They can (within reason of course) chose any dress they want as long as the color matches, that way they will have a dress that they like, that looks good on them and that they may be able to wear again.
The reds are the accent colors.
The letters are the first 3 out of 6 for the bride and bridesmaids, these will be attached to the handles of the bouquets.
I will be tatting some small flowers with beads for the streamer ends of the ribbons that wrap the bouquet handles and also some filler bits for the bouquets.
There has been talk of possibly tatting initials for the groomsmen and groomswoman ( yes, one of the grooms attendants is a female and has been a friend of the groom since they were very little kids) possibly on the pocket hanky or of anyone has a good suggestion that would be appreciated.

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Just found out tonight that a friend of ours died, the visitation was tonight and the funeral is tomorrow morning. That is what we get for not reading the paper when we are busy. and the durn local radio station thinks that it is cute to have lots of dj conversation as opposed to having some actual news. Oh well, I am trying to decide if I should take the time to post a grouch on the radio station's website blog page.

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Went Etsy shopping at work this evening. Today was payday, so of course I had to spend a bit.
I will let you know what I got when it gets here.

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The boss is very understanding, as long as I clock out, I can stay and use the computers at work. We have DSL at work, here at home we have dial-up. It is sooo much easier and quicker to load pages with lots of graphics at high speed.

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shopping, wedding tatting, 25 motif challenge & Lucet cording

I thought that I would show you a bit of what I have been doing.

this is the tiny heart and flower pattern from Jon you can find the patterns here.

I too am making these for a wedding. our Daughter #4, Elizabeth, is getting married this fall.

And these make the end of my 25 Motif Challenge

This will be the 6th daughter to get married. What she has decided to do is pick a color palette from the paint store. Then give the bridesmaids the paint palette and ask them to get a dress that matches one of the 6 colors of blue that she picked. That way it is hoped they will like the dress and be able to wear it more then once. As an accent color, she has chosen a trio of reds. both of the threads above match the red choices The brighter one is an antique thread size 30 from my grandmother Eulalia that I wrote about before. The other is called Crescent Colours Hand Dyed Perles #8 in Cupid. I picked this up from Nordic Needle in Fargo ND. When I grabbed it, I thought it was a skein, as it said 10 yards. It is 10-1 yard pieces. It took 1 of the strands to make the small flower above, and I finger tatted the last ring so I could make it. I also picked up some beads and will experiment with them too, before sending the choices to Elizabeth for her decision. These small flowers or hearts, will go on one end of the ribbon streamers holding the brides maids bouquets together.

The other streamer end will be a tatted initial so each bridesmaid will have a personalized bouquet. I do have one more red thread, it is a Silk pearl that I also got from Nordic Needle, but I haven't done anything with that yet.

Also at Nordic Needle, I bought 2 pattern books.

I've been wanting one of Iris Niebach's books for a while, now I have one. and the Farm animals will go over well with the grandson's.

While in Fargo, I stopped at the Hobby Lobby. I found a very poor selection of Lizbeth, but did get one ball.

I also did some shopping online at Handy Hands. I bought some of the thread that they had on their Spring Thread Sale.

The pattern book will come in handy and I liked the look of the 3 Omega threads size 50. The yellow is a Manuela and I always enjoyed that brand of thread. The small purple is one of Handy Hands own Cordonnet. Being partial to purple, I decided to pick up a SewMate shuttle in that color. my normal choice for a tatting shuttle is the Silent tatters with a hook from Roseground. but in a pinch.... I wanted a couple more sizes of mini crochet hooks - these are size 14 & 15. I have a size 16 and some of the larger sizes, but occasionally I need one of these. The small spool of thread is a sample of Lizbeth in Magenta/white/teal. I just realized that I missed the second pattern book. Here Be Dragons by Karey Solomon. That will be an interesting challenge.

and I went shopping on ebay.

I have been thinking about Lucet cords off and on, wondering if there was a way to make a heading with picots to join too and maybe a substitute for Coronation cord. So I picked up a Lucet made of cow horn - I could have found one of wood or bone, but the horn appealed to me.

As you can see, I will need a lot more practice before I would use any of the cord with my tatting. The book that I also got gives directions for cords with gimp, picots, and a suggestion for how to make a cord that could sub for Coronation cord.

This post is long, so time to hang it up.