Fair, Glasses, HDT, and still settling in...

So, with a title like that, I shouldn't have to say to much, right?

I entered Livi's Doily in the local fair.  It won a blue 1st place ribbon!

The doily is not finished yet, but I am most certainly taking a bit of a break from it. 

I also entered this hair clip.  It's an abbreviated version of the flower in Mary Konior's Tatting with Visual Patterns.

This won a 2nd place ribbon. :o)

It looks like I passed my bad vision genes down to Livi.  I finally got around to getting her eyes checked and sure enough she needed glasses. 

She rocks them, don't you think?

I got a new colorway dyed up.  I tend to shy away from the warmer colors, such as red and orange.  I don't usually feel as confident with them.  Anticipation for Fall put me in a mood for rich warm colors though.

At first, I thought it would be a nice leaf color, but I decided it would make a nice floral color as well. :o)

And as the title suggests, we are still attempting to settle in around here.  I find it difficult to find opportunities to get on the computer.  We have a plethora of laptop computers but I do my best work on a desktop.  I'm sure it will all work out eventually! 

Coming Back Slowly!

Well, we are officially in Knoxville.  So, if you live near here, please email me.  I would love to meet people in the area.

Anyway, with looking for a job and getting settled in, I haven't had much tatting time. I have finished a few items though.

And!! This week, I finally got back to dyeing!  It was nice to get back to it!  I didn't know how it would work out at the new apartment.  So, it'll be slow and I am still getting settled in.  Moving from a house to a small apartment is quite the adjustment.

Here is my first colorway from Knoxville, which I have called Birds of a Feather.  I did a sample of it while tatting Jane Eborall's Reversible Motif.  It was quite the fun motif!  I paired Birds of a Feather with Lizbeth's Gold.  :o)

Livi loves it here in Knoxville!  We do miss Dadda so much though!!  He is still back home in Collierville.  But!  We will get to go see him this weekend and we are so excited!

Here Livi and I are walking through the park to find the perfect place to play soccer.

and she's already on a baseball team!! 

short note.... and a couple of annoucements

I will be so glad to get moved and be able to sit, tat, and blog again!!

But for now... I'm going to try one more thing to try to clear the etsy shop so that I can start fresh at the new place.  There's nothing like clearing out thread from my collection to get me back to dyeing :o)

So, now, through the end of the week, "Movingtruck" will save you 25% in my shop!



OH!!! And how could I possibly forget!! I graduate this weekend!!!
I graduated with a Bachelors of Science in Biology with a minor in Chemistry!!
Woohoo!!

Now, it's time to look for a job and get ready for some post-bacc education. :o)

Free shipping and an interesting predicament...

First off!  I'm offering Free Shipping this week in the Etsy shop using the code "freeshipping"

I am trying to get everything together for the move and it would help greatly to move some more thread.  I'm so scared that they are going to get lost in the move somehow.  Hopefully I'm just being paranoid though. :o)

Next.....

So, when I started this doily of Livi's , I couldn't be bothered to actually look at the original pattern.  I mean, if Tatting with a 4 Square, doesn't have patterns, and I've already tatted one of the pieces... then why look at the original picture again, right?

So, I just looked on to doily I did last year for reference.  That is, until I got further on this one than I did the last one.  Then I broke out the book to make sure there weren't extra stitches slipped in that I had forgotten. 

I flipped through the book, didn't see the pattern.  Flipped back through... still on doily that looked like mine.  At the point I was very puzzled. Then I looked at the first doily in the book and suddenly remembered what had happened!

Last year, I wanted to make this doily and I really liked the triangles that were created with the negative space.  But those triangles were added until like row 15.  And, I was NOT going to tat 15 rows.

This is really all well and good except that Livi wants the doily to be bigger... so I will just keep on, making educated guesses how and where to add extra stitches.  

Or maybe I'll come up with something different all together.... who knows!

:o)

Livi's doily update

Got batteries for my camera! YAY!

So, here is an overdue update of Livi's doily.  It's going to be quite bigger than the one I made last year.  Livi will make sure of that! lol

So far the colors are (from inside to outside): Cream, Sugar Plum, Purple medium, Pink Medium, Navy Blue, Sugar Plum, Cream, Raspberry Pink Medium, Seagreen Light, Purple Medium, Pink Medium, Raspberry Pink Medium. 

OR!!! 610, Sugar Plum HDT, 632,622,654,Sugar Plum HDT, 610,624,686,632,622,624

Those numbers correlate to Lizbeth's numbering sytem, of course, and I've used size 40, per (my) usual! :o)

You can get your own Sugar Plum HERE!

Livi has told me that I will be able to use the Sugar Plum again, but not yet. AND she doesn't want it to be on the outside round.  She's being quite picky.

I will say that I have had to limit her on color choices though.  She's has asked to put red, yellow and lime green in it.  

I talked her out of them though and promised her a doily one day that has all of my solid colors in it. :o) 

Rainbowlicious!

This photo is actually from the last batch, but it looks almost identical this time around. :o)

I have both size 20 and size 40 this time!

I'm excited, I'm working on a small piece with it now.  I need batteries for my camera though or I'd show ya :o)

How would YOU go about this?

I have some very precious doilies that need washing and very likely, blocking.  These doilies are from my grandmother and my great grandmother.  They are both crochet.  The plan is to wash, block, and frame them so that my Mom can give them away to her brothers and sisters as presents.  So, how would you go about it?

As you will, they are quite dirty.  Unfortunately, we had a house fire in 2004, so, the dirt that is on them is probably soot.

Of course, I would like to get this done before we move in August, but I don't want to rush them either.

They are gorgeous, aren't they?

Livi wants a doily!

I started the center of this doily, just to show off the new "Sugar Plum" HDT.  Livi liked it so much though, that she asked if this one would be for her.  I said "Yes, of course!".  How could I not, right?

So, she's been helping me pick out the colors. :o)

The pattern is the same one as this one, that I did last year:

Tat Days and Sugar Plums!

As it stands now, I am not planning on attending or even visiting Tat Days this year.  Life is just too crazy right now to be making those kind of plans.  I am however sending my thread!  So, for all of you that are planning on attending, you can look forward to my thread being in the vending room!

This means that I have a huge job of labeling and super organizing all the skeins!  Last year, I ran my own cashbox, so the skeins didn't need to be labelled in any specific way.  So, it's been quite the job!

Here are just part of the 20s that are being sent!

So, even with this task to overcome, I did get a small batch of thread dyed!  It's so pretty!  The blues are actually more teal in real life.  Once I get to the store and get some batteries, I'll be able to take a picture with a flash, which may bring out those teal-er tones. :o)

Not too much tatting going on lately though 

:o(

Seems like every free moment I find, it gets filled quickly with requests to play Barbie, or to make food.... or keep packing! 

Improvisational tatting and Red Hat!

I know that I'm not old enough for the Red Hat crowd, but I was drawn to the red and purple tones for this batch!  Which I have named Red Hat.

I really like how this batch came out.  This is more what I was trying for with the Blue Tango, but I went too far by adding the blue.  

This little motif I just kind of tatted on a whim.  I wanted to show off the thread but didn't know what pattern to go with.  The center round was inspired by Jane Eborall's style with the split rings.

And then I just kind of winged it from there, utilizing what I learned from Mary Maynard's Tatting a 4 Square.  If you haven't noticed, it's one of my favorite tatting books.  

That being said, all the stitch counts between all the picots are 4, so you could probably figure out the pattern, just by the picture.  Heck!  Maybe one of you will come up with a 4th round for it, staying within the same (4-4) fashion. 

Is that a challenge.... Possibly!

Oh, and I paired the Red Hat with Lizbeth's Seagreen Light, on the third round in case anyone wants to know. :o)

Hand Washing a Tatted Doily

Recently, God's Kid discovered that one of my colorways (Queen Anthias) was bleeding color when she went to block it.
This of course caused concern on my part of many levels.  1st a business related level, I would hate to be selling something that wasn't top notch.  2nd a personal level, I am currently tatting a doily that I hope will be an heirloom, as it is going to be a wedding present and it has some dark pink thread in it, used with the exact same dyes that were bleeding on God's Kid's bookmark.

I fretted over this tremendously as I formulated a battle plan.  I considered cutting the whole section out and replacing it with another thread.  But, I said.. "No!"  I must have faith in my own product enough to carry this thing out and then wash it.  So, that's what I did!

Here is the doily, which may be finished at this point, I don't know, before washing.

And a close up of the row in question.

So, I started by prepping the area.  I picked up some Shout Color Catchers for a little added measure, I put two of them at the bottom of my "washing tub" (rubbermaid container) and I had the Dawn nearby.

I filled the tub with hot, but not boiling, in fact, I could have gone hotter.  This tub is pretty shallow, so the water cooled off faster than I would have liked.  It started out uncomfortable to the touch though.  I went ahead poured plenty of Dawn in the water (hence the suds)

Plopped in the doily

And because I was being obsessive.... threw in 2 more color catchers... lol

But... the color catchers didn't get a chance to pick up any loose dyes.  Which is about the point that I really regretted wasting all those sheets of color catchers. 

Then I poured off the water..

Rinsed it off and spotted it dry on a paper towel

The paper towel was clean as well.

So, my conclusion is that if you have one of my earlier colorways, to maybe use some color catchers when you wash them.  Or, use them anyway as a precaution.  

I think my method of cleaning the thread has probally gotten better as a whole which is why this one didn't bleed and the Queen Anthias did.  The scientist in me knows though that it could be a great many things.  We tend to have soft water, so I have no way of testing how the dyes hold up in harder water.  

This is something I would really like to know though.  

Also, feel free to comment with your suggestions on either how you wash your tatting, or ways that I can continue to test the colorfastness of my own.

Thanks!

<3

OH!! And thank you so much to Martha for helping me out by sending me the Silver thread I needed to finish up on the silver row on the doily!  You were a life saver!

I did eventually find the silver thread.... 

Apparently Layla had knocked it unto the floor and then proceeded to play with it under the coffee table lol.

AND!

Another big thank you to Ladytats for the Rhubarb!

I can know say that I baked a pie and had rhubarb pie, both of which I am really excited about!

Rhubarb pie

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie