Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Believe it or not I wrote this post before Christmas and before my son and his family descended upon my house. So below is what I wrote before Christmas and the PS is something I picked up after. 

Well the tree is trimmed and most of the packages are wrapped (NOT). The tree is up and trimmed but I still have a package or two to purchase. The older g-kids are easy to buy for but the little ones are much more difficult. I am posting a picture of the tree trimmed with the new ornaments. I managed to finish up the new ornaments by tatting a ring that I had used in my own pattern for one of my egg shells. I managed to get the pieces threaded together to where they look pretty good. Not all of them went on very easily but I did manage to make a pattern that worked.

I took part in an exchange on one of the lists on Facebook that I belong to. It came by way of a plain brown box through the United States Postal Service. The box contained a pale green handkerchief and sort of seafoam green size 20 Lizbeth thread. There was also a smallish tin box that contained a beautiful shuttle from Georgia Seitz and some red thread. This is not the first shuttle that I have from Georgia but it is the first one bought by someone else for me. The two pictures below are of the contents of the box. I was seriously trying to keep it until Christmas, however, I obviously did not make it. :)

I guess that my next project will be to find the right edging to put around the handkerchief with the thread that I received. Then there comes the Easter egg projects that I do every year. I will begin soon to blow out eggs as I use them to have shells to put my tatting around. Maybe this year I will hand dye some of my own threads to use in the various projects. I will be getting back to the hand dyed threads this spring as my house will be much quieter.

I am making little progress on cleaning up my house and it will be going even slower in the next few weeks. I have been put back on physical therapy by my doctor with this last physical. I am healthy other wise but have to start counting calories rather than portion control. This is seriously when the monster comes out stating that she will not count calories and will attempt sabotage at every turn. I know mentally that it would be the best thing for me but that is not what my heart is saying. I really want to be able to do something where my focus is not on how many calories that I can consume but how I can eat healthier as a way of life and not really think about it. To tell me that I must count calories challenges the inner child to find every possible way to cheat and make it much harder to make the changes necessary to lose this weight. My biggest issue is that my metabolism has really stopped working after so many years of being told that it had to go into fat storage rather than fat burning. I have to find a balanced way to reverse that without issuing the challenge to the inner child to be naughty.

Well that is all for now and most likely for the rest of the year. Here is wishing that all you tatters have plenty of threads for your shuttles and needles to last through the upcoming year.

Happy tatting!

Arial - The Tattered Faerie

PS: The photo here is my latest purchase from our local Hobby Lobby. They finally had the Aerlit shuttles and mine is pink. They also finally had more than just the simple plastic shuttles with a bone and wood shuttle by Yarnology. There is also the thread winder by Yarnology. The two balls of thread are the Lizbeth size 40 waiting to be dyed for the spring tatting.

Boy am I exhausted trying to wrangle the pictures in this post. Most likely, I will not put this many in a post again. But it is what it is. Happy Tatting!

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

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