Yes, I Really Do Tat

See...I told you I was a tatter. I recently tatted this from a pattern I got off the interwebz. I'll try to look it up for you and post the website later {Found it: http://tatslife.voskes.eu/e/index.htm }. It is tatted from some Tencel "yarn" (more like a thread-about the size of #5 perle cotton) from an etsy shop called Yarntopia Treasures. I just love the bright colorway-quite a departure from what you expect for tatting.

It's clipped to my office cubicle wall at the present moment to remind me that there's more to me than just my job. Sometimes I get so wrapped up in work that I forget that work is not who I really am. It brightens my day to look at it and remember that I am actually a much more creative person than my job allows.

StitchMAP Stitch Challenge

Since it's been 26 years since my last attempt at Crazy Quilting (heretofore to be known as CQ cuz I'm a lazy blogger). I've joined the StitchMAP Yahoo group. It's a wonderful group of stitchers who offer mentoring services and classes for those interested in pursuing needlearts and stitchery. They are a really kind, funny and generous group of stitchers.

I signed up for a Stitch Challenge while I wait for the next CQ class to start so I can brush up on my long neglected embroidery skills. Here's a pic of my fabric preparation for the challenge. We will be learning three stitches and using what we create to cover an Altoid tin.

Stay tuned for further developments.

ROFLOL!!!

Please laugh with me and not at me. Even on my PC I kept making this same dumb mistake...of course the computer won't recognize your camera....IF YOU DON'T TURN IT ON!!!! What an idiot! Actually, it's the story of my life: failure to learn from previous mistakes. So with no further ado, here are pics of my one and only foray into crazy quilting. Oh, and back then my last initial was a "J" not an "H".

P.S. Can you believe those itty bitty boullion roses? How on earth did I do that?

Piffle!!!!!

Wouldn't you think by now I would know better than to plan anything? I got up this morning and began my photo shoot with a framed crazy quilted piece I did in 1983 that I was going to share on the Yahoo group I was just accepted to called stitchMAP. I got some lovely shots of it on my really nice digital camera and guess what? I don't have anyway of reading the card on my laptop nor do I have the cord for it (that must be in my storage unit). So, I dig out my newer simple digital and re-take the photos and guess what? I have the cord for it, but the PC has gone up on me and the laptop won't recognize the camera and I don't have the disc for the camera to load in the laptop (that must be in the storage unit also). So I have squat for you in photos...I'm so sorry.

How about this? Here's something from my Flickr account just so you can have something to look at. I was on a roll one year with ballband dishcloths and had all these little tiny bits left from every skein of cotton I used. So I took some plain ecru cotton and made what I call a stash-bustin' dishcloth by using up a different leftover in each stripe.

Stay tuned-I'm gonna get this camera thing figured out yet...I don't want to resort to using my cell phone for the pics cuz it takes awful pictures.

TTYL

Check It Out!

Woohoo! I adore this new background and header from "Cute n Cool". I'm amazed at how simple it was to put it here...I am so lame when it comes to bloggie html stuffs. I'd still like to figure out how to put my blog title back in an appropriate size and font.

I think today will be picture day. Gonna break out the digital cameras, go outdoors, and take some pics just to prove to my readers that I really do knit, crochet, spin, tat, cross stitch and quilt. The down side will be my utter embarrassment at the number of UFO's I have accumulated as well as the number of finished objects I've never done anything with. The up side will be that I will have blog fodder enough for many future blog posts.

Great News! After seven months of having no wheels, I will finally be able to get the transmission replaced in my Dodge Grand Caravan sometime in the next couple of weeks. Yes, peeps, this means I can finally get a life. I know my son will be thrilled as well, cuz this means I won't be underfoot all the time.

More good news! One of my coworkers recently got an iPhone. Now he doesn't need his iTouch anymore and is selling it to me cheap. I have it this weekend to try it out and OMG am I having fun with this new toy. I already have an older model shuffle and a fifth gen 80G iPod, but this iTouch is just a bundle of awesomeness-I can plurk, twitter and facebook from it.

Well, gonna stop blabbing and get on with the photo session-stay tuned for the embarrassment of riches in the form of a zillion fibery UFO's.

So....I Lied :P

Okay, so no swatch last Sunday. It's the whole camera thing-I have always been a lousy photographer. I use my digital cameras so seldom that I have to get the manual out to figure out how to use it every time.

Okay, so I missed my PlurkBuds and signed back up again. Mine is a big lonely world and I need my cyber buddies to help keep me sane. Oh, and I restored my Twitter account too-mostly I just read, not post.

So here's the deal-sometime today I'm gonna dig out the digital camera and take a picture of the swatch I'm doing for the Ravelry Symbol Crochet Mystery CAL and maybe the Cold Mountain Shawl KAL (I love Kieran Foley's designs-this one is really lovely).

And if I get real ambitious I'll do a shot of the SAL of the Quaker sampler by Mary Wigham from Needleprint.com. I'm not very far on the sampler so it'll just be a shot of the floss and the fabric and the fifty or so stitches I've managed to do. It's been a long time since I did any cross stitch and geez are my eyes getting old-gonna have to find some young person to thread my needles for me LOL.

I think the deep blue funk has finally lifted. Ever since April I've been spiralling downward-delayed reaction to all the chaos in December I guess. But thankfully, the blues seem to have passed (good riddance to bad rubbish, I say).

Well, it's too beautiful a day here to sit and blog all day. TTYL.

Swatchkeeper Sundays

Swatch is not a dirty word...swatch is not a dirty word...swatch is not a dirty word.

Intellectually, I know that swatching is crucial to the success of any knitted or crocheted article that must FIT something as opposed to scarves, afghans, and various other projects that will forgive the lack of swatching. I tend to stick to the non-swatch requiring sort of item myself. But I also know that swatching is a great way to create a stitch library as well.

As an exercise in discipline and in an effort to create my own swatch encyclopedia, I'm establishing Swatchkeeper Sundays on my blog (not that it really matters-there's no one reading my blog at present). Every Sunday, I will select a yarn from my stash and a stitch pattern that intrigues me and I will swatch. Do you hear me? I WILL swatch.

The procrastinator in me must tell you that Swatchkeeper Sunday entries will begin next week (or possibly later today, depending on whether my lazy a** gets a swatch done and whether the sun comes out so I can take a decent picture).

Off Topic Blathering: If you happen to go to Target(pronounced Tar-zhay of course) anytime soon you must check out the Soap and Glory Clean on Me Shower stuff and the Mist You Madly body spray-they smell absolutely gorgeous!!!