Unfinished ornaments.....

It is that time of year when you craft like mad to finish new stuff to either display or sell or give away. I have been working on stuff to display. My wonderful husband has let me get a new tree this year that actually looks like a tree. (Sorry, don't do real since I break out in hives when I touch the real stuff.) I really love the smell of a real tree but I just can't take the itch that will accompany it plus the drugged out feeling when I have to take a histamine blocker to stop it.

I have about 7 ornaments that are partially completed now. I am looking at different medallion patterns for finishing the design. I have  the first photos of the ornaments below for your viewing pleasure. These are single shuttle patterns from various pattern books that I have. I am going to make some "wreath" style medallions since I have not been happy with any of the single shuttle  patterns that I have found so far. I will finish out the dozen ornaments with either two shuttle patterns or a shuttle and ball pattern. That will make about 5 patterns left for me to complete. The ball with the "hen and chicks" pattern is a double pattern because the pattern could not be repeated evenly  around the ornament to fit in the middle. I am happy with the way it is turning out and I can interlace the tapes with a weave. It may be the only one that I will not use end cap pieces with.

I will be putting up my tree by this weekend. The really nice thing with this tree is that I have two matching trees that are short and can go on the outside of my window on the porch. This will really set off my bay style window nicely. Now that my daughter-in-law and her kids have left the area, I will have much more time to work on the inside of the house. We have spent the last two weeks working on her apartment, sorting and packing everything up. She is moving the final heavy stuff into storage to day and will travel to her parents home to spend a few weeks while waiting for my son to get out of tech school before they move to his first duty station.

Thanksgiving was pretty quiet as my family around the table was smaller than usual. With one son and his family overseas and the other son still in tech school training, there were fewer of us around the table. I am genuinely thankful for the blessing that I have received over the past couple of years. There has been a lot of drama but the grand kids are worth it. I have been enjoying the two that lived close and longing to hold the newest one who is too far away.

So it is back to cleaning house and working finishing up the ornaments for the new tree. The coming year will be a much quieter affair and maybe I will have more time to post new stuff and just enjoy.

Happy tatting.

Arial - the Tattered Faerie

Working on stuff......

The housework still continues a little at a time. The kitchen has seen the most improvement with counters now being more visible than they used to be. No food sitting around but glassware and other various items waiting to be recycled. Some have been up-cycled into containers for my bathroom. I need to find a place where I can put the glass jars out of the way until I get them re-purposed to something useful rather than letting them go to the landfill.

I have also been working on dealing with some old ornaments. I have managed to get most of them cleared out using bleach. There are some that refuse to give up their silver lining. I have managed to complete one tape to go around an ornament. I have also begun working on a second tape for the center of an ornament. I have several different tape patterns selected to go around all of the ornaments that I have ready to go.

This is not the only project that I have been working on. I finished a pair of hand warmers and a neck cowl to go with it. My wrists get sore with the colder temperatures in the winter and I end up having to put them under some sort of heating pad, or rice pad until they quit hurting.

The picture is of the cowl and the stitch is the Tunisian crochet stitch which looks like knitting. The color may not be that visible with the shot I took but it is a red to black blend of a very soft yarn. It wraps around the neck three times loosely and four times to be cozy warm. I showed it to my sister-in-law and she just loved it. Guess who will be getting one for Christmas. Yeah she knows because  I asked her favorite color.

Well that is enough from me for the night. I need to get this up on the net and formatted to post.

Happy tatting.

Arial - The Tattered Faerie

House work continues....

We have just about got the house ready for the upcoming winter. We spent this last couple of months working on a "new roof", "new gutters", and finally a new top for the chimney. Much of the work was covered by insurance because of hail damage done two years ago to the roof. However, the chimney there is nothing but out of pocket cost for us. This is a matter of poor construction where they chose to just use the same material as the bricks were put together with for the cap. This allowed the cap to break down over the years and let the brick face get separated from the rest of the brick. This year we needed to get this done or it would start seriously falling down and we would be in much worse trouble than we are now. I am glad that once this is done we will not have to worry about this needing to be done again for quite a while.

I am in the process of trying to decide just what to do about this year's Christmas tree. I would like to get something just a bit bigger to fill the front window and give me more space to add new ornaments. I have many tatted snowflakes from years past that I really want to find space for as well as for some of my more antique items. I have begun searching for the snowflake patterns that I would want to work up. I will also look into designing more of my own flakes as well.

I had tatted some snowflakes previously that I added to my tree one year. For those of you who have visited my tatting albums on my main web page these will be repeats. The first tatted snowflake comes from the book "24 Julestjerner i Orkis" by Lene Bjorn. This book contains 24 tatted snowflakes which correspondes to every day from December 1st to just before Christmas.  This is sort of like an advent calendar for tatters. The other snowflakes come from other books which I will have to see if I can find the correct references for each one.

Well, the workers have left and all that the chimney needs to do is cure. I am so happy to have this part of the work done with.

Happy tatting

Arial - Tattered Faerie