It's that time of year...

When you start thinking about Christmas. Well, if you are a crafter, you do. I have had these ornaments for a few years and wanted to make tatted pieces to put inside of them. The package shown below comes with 4 instead of the usual half dozen or dozen. They are about 3 inches in diameter and 1 inch thick. This is more than enough  space to suspend a tatted snowflake or mini doily inside. So this is my current search to find patterns that I can work up to not exceed the 3 inch limitation and also not look too rediciously small inside. I would not want anything less than 2 inches as it would leave way too much space.

The second image shows just how flat the ornaments are. This would rule out anything too fluffy or 3D. I will most likely look through my library and find some of the pattern books that feature snowflakes. One comes to mind that I used in the making of the necklace from an earlier post. I am also going to make some flakes that I can just hang out by themselves.

I am thinking that I might just look for a shorter table so that I can put up a slightly bigger tree in front of my bay style window in the front of the house. It is not a true bay as there is a 4 to 5 inch gap between the windows. This will allow me to display more tatted ornaments on my tree each year.

The house cleaning continues on very painfully slow as I have about 20 years of kids' stuff to clean up as well as lots of dust bunnies to round up. We are fixing up the house as we go along. For the winter we already have a new roof and gutters. Now we are waiting to hear back from a contractor about replacing the top quarter of our chimney. The issue with replacing brick on an older home is that the new bricks will be about 2 inches smaller than the older ones. This is the result of the "downsizing" in the brick so that they can charge more.

That's enough of my life. Leave comments below about yours. What are your plans to decorate for this "holiday season". Seems like the holidays run into each other this time of year.

Happy tatting!

Arial - The Tattered Faerie

Been a long time...

Here I sit waiting for my back to quit complaining at me. The reason for this is I am working on cleaning up my house. For years I have let things get out of control just so that I could see to my family's needs. Now that there are only two in the house, I have much more time to actually work on cleaning up my living space. I am in a quandary though. I really don't know my decorating "style". You know, that thing that gives a theme to your home. Right now I am faced with leftovers and also a mixture of new stuff too. My living room for example is somewhere in the 70's as far as the paint and wall goes. My furniture is a warm chocolate brown with high wing backs. I want to paint my walls brown and figure out what sort of carpet I would like that is NOT just a shade lighter than the furniture.

My office was once a bedroom with bunk beds in it for the boys. Both boys are now grown and married with families of their own. The top bunk is long gone but the frame remains. It is time for me to clear it out and all of the junk that is now in there sitting around in stacks. Now I am not saying that I am a hoarder but there are many things setting around that I just plain need to give up. As far as what I want in there to replace it, I have a beautiful secretarial desk that I want to build the room around. It is a dark wood piece but then I have decided that I really like dark woods. I have not yet decided on the colors and floor. I am happy that I found Pinterest because it allows me to dream and imagine what a room would be like with the right stuff. Right now I have decided that besides the desk will be a couch/bed but not the fold out kind. I have my eye on  one from Walmart that is black pleather (plastic that looks like leather). It will sit like a couch until needed and then can be folded down to a full bed if needed. This room is the place where I hope to not only design and work on my tatting but also work on my computer graphic arts. I want it to be warm and inviting so that I can be inspired to create new and beautiful lace and pictures.

The rest of the house is also in much of the same shape though I have managed to keep the food confined and put up in the kitchen. I do not believe in letting food sit around without being cleaned up. Yes, I will leave dishes in the sink but the food is taken care of first and for most because it would really smell if I didn't. That is one reason I will not watch a program about hoarders. I just can't understand why someone would let the food set around and build up and invite the bugs and creepy crawlies in to the house. If you are one, I am sorry if I offend you but I find it hard to see why someone would not at least take care of the food issue.

Enough of my journey back to a clean house. This will be a long time journey but I hope to also get back to creating tatting and doing some of my other favorite activities such as 3D graphics. I am going to try hard to have my next entry to be more about tatting. That is, after all, just why you have elected to follow this blog.

Happy tatting
Arial - The Tattered Faerie

Abstract Tatting......

This week I have decided to begin a study of sorts playing with abstract tatting. There are two books that no long time tatter should be without:

This book is the first of the two books that I am looking at. "Tatting Innovations" is translated from the original German book by Helma Siepmann by Etha Schuette. This is a good book to get one thinking "outside" of the box when it comes to tatting. This first book teaches some of the basic elements and how to think about combining elements in a very different way to create tatted pictures.

"Tatting Artistry in Thread" is the second in this group. This book further explains additional techniques for creating images. There are even more photos inside this book to provide inspiration on how to expand the use of tatting in images. 

My goal this week is to try to create a fall tree scene to hang on my wall. Eventually I hope to have all four seasons created to place on my wall. I have already begun by creating the first of the branches using fall colors. I may rethink using a variegated brown that I have for one that has truer browns in the color way.

Here are a couple of places where you can get the books but I am sure that there are more.

Tatting Innovations

Tatting Artistry In Thread

Happy tatting!
Arial - Tatting Faerie