Author: wandasknottythoughts@gmail.com

While on vacation in Buena Vista, Colorado, I stopped into a shop called Bev’s Stitchery. It has a lot of quilting things in it, but also threads and patterns and such for crochet, knitting and tatting (even a couple of colors of Lizbeth thread). She didn’t have a lot of tatting books, but she had this one, which I didn’t have (but do now) by Karen Lindsay. What really caught my eye was the witch. I’m not going to have time to try it this year, but Halloween comes every year so I’ll have another chance later. I don’t have any of her other books and haven’t tried any of these patterns yet. She has them diagrammed and written out. There are several cute patterns in here beside the witch that I would like to try and their seasons are coming. This find, as well as the shop I found it in, was a nice surprise.
Over at InTatters they have a challenge going on with the “Yes-U
-Can” doily. The challenge is to tat the doily that is stamped on a can lid with nothing else to go by. A nice challenge, and I’m sure that there will be as many different patterns tatted as their are people who try it, each person with their own vision of it. I decided to try – though I really don’t have time. Mine is done in brown #692 and gold #611 Lizbeth thread, size 20. I’ve made several miscalculations that I didn’t go back and fix, and it’s not as neat as I would like *blushes in embarrassment*. But I’m doing this instead of several other things that have a time limit (the challenge doesn’t) so it will be what it is. I can go back and do it again the right way another time.
This is day 7 (I think) and the first picture I’ve taken

of it. Once I got started it was kind of hard to put it down. This was blocked a little after the fourth round of individual motifs and then stuck in my bag as I took it with me everywhere. I think the count is close but after the final blocking I’ll look it over and evaluate it for that type of thing for when I want to make it again.
(I’m taking a page out of Diane’s book, using my computer as a background. I didn’t have anything else handy that showed it off very well.)
I’m drinking a cup of Refresh mint tea for this morning’s Tatting Tea Tuesday. As soon as I get a few minutes I’ll be back at the doily – though my mind will be working on some of my other projects:)
I’ll be having a giveaway for my blogaversary this month. If your interested check back next week to find out more about it.
“Chaotic action is preferable to orderly inaction.” Will Rogers

Feel like giving


While on vacation I did do just a little more tatting than mentioned before: I made a bookmark for one of the friends that we went with. She likes pink (a lot) and I happened to have some pink and teal thread with me, so made up a quick bookmark for her.

A very quick bookmark as most of it won’t be seen. Yes, I made it for her Nook. Every book should have a bookmark, shouldn’t it? (Her husband didn’t get it at all). It fits behind the Nook in the case and stays quite nicely. She and I are happy with it no matter how silly it may seem.

I only took a few stitches while we were here – above 12,000 feet it was windy and quite chilly. This is the divide at Tincup pass. You have to take at least a four-wheel drive vehicle (motorcycles can make it, too, and ATVs) to get there. We made it up there on Friday, by way of St. Elmo. We had attempted to get to this pass on Thursday by way of the town of Tincup and Mirror Lake, but we got late a start. We didn’t want to try to get there – or down – in the dark!

This is the road to Tincup pass as it goes around Mirror Lake. You can see my husband concentrating in the rear view mirror. We were told that the road to the pass from here was like this or worse all the way. We aren’t that experienced with four-wheeling, so turned back while it was still daylight. (Note: we were told by an experienced person we met there that by Jeep it was 90 minutes to the pass from the lake, 30 minutes by ATV and 20 minutes by motorcycle.) Going up the other side from St. Elmo had some stretches that looked like this (or worse) but not as much of it. If we make it that way again we’re going to try to rent ATVs instead of a Jeep.
This Sunday at Church was LWML Sunday (Lutheran Women’s Missionary League). On this Sunday the women of the congregation do most of the jobs the men usually do, such as pass out bulletins, light the candles, do the collection. The ladies also sang the closing hymn as a choir. This is done once a year, as a way to let the rest of the congregation see what all the League has been doing. They collect sewing kits and school kits to be delivered to other countries, donate to the food bank, serve at fundraising dinners in the community, that type of thing. They also meet at least twice a month to work on quilts.
The quilts are tied quilts and not real fancy, but a lot of love goes into these (and they are very pleasing to the eye). They are displayed on the pews on LWML Sunday and then boxed up to be taken to Lutheran World Relief and Orphan Grain Train. Unfortunately, I don’t make it to the quilting days very often, though I would like to. We have a small church and there are only a few women that do this regularly. As you can see, even though they are few they do a lot of work. There is something like 40 quilts they’ve made to donate this year.
Seeing all those wonderful quilts to be given away, and also seeing the post over at Umi & Tsuru, I’ve gotten into a giving mood. So I’m going to pay it forward as well. The first three people to comment on this post will each receive a handmade gift from me. [I don’t promise how soon I’ll get it out 🙂 ]
As I sip my Wild Berry Zinger tea this morning for Tatting Tea Tuesday, I realize that it’s October again, which means my blogaversary is coming up. I think I’ll have a drawing for that in a week or so – after I think up what I’m going to do for it 🙂
“The measure of a life, after all, is not its duration, but its donation” Corrie Ten Boom

Vacation tatting

We had a little change in scenery last week – a whole week in the Colorado mountains. I took advantage of the beautiful weather to tat outside last Tatting Tea Tuesday. Here I’m enjoying a glass of grape/peach juice while tatting on the porch of the cabin we lived in for a week at Rainbow Lake Resort, a few miles west of Buena Vista, Colorado, on the road to Cottonwood Pass. The cabins over look a lake surrounded by mountains covered in pine and aspen. The trees were turning while we were there, every day bringing new fall color to our temporary home.
I was pretty busy enjoying the novelty of being in the mountains but still managed to tat a bit. The white piece was actually made while my husband drove us out here. It’s made with Lizbeth size 10 in 602 Natural (almost white) with red glass beads. It was just to be tatting as I was too busy thinking about where we were going to have much thought of what I was tatting. The other piece is Lizbeth size 20 in 122 Caribbean and 658 Ocean Turquoise Light with red glass beads. I was practicing looped tatted rings through the beads, which I think I have the hang of, at least for now.
But most of the time we were busy enjoying the change of scenery. This is my husband and I enjoying the view on our way up to Saint Elmo.
This is an easy part of Lost Canyon Road. We rented a Jeep to go up this road, which got a bit rougher higher up.
These beautiful trees are a short walk up the creek from our cabin. I took this about 7:00 AM on my morning walk while everyone else in the cabin was still sleeping.
Looking west over Rainbow Lake at sunset. We had a whole week of this.
Today for Tatting Tea Tuesday I’m enjoying a cup of Country Peach tea and looking over pictures from last week, trying to decide which pictures to share – there are so many! It was very hard to come home! The weather was great, and the company was better. We shared a cabin with some old friends of ours and had the most wonderful time. We’re all looking forward to another vacation together.
“If you come home as happy as you leave, you have had a good vacation.”

Seen at the fair

I thought I’d show you the other tatting that was entered into the fair. These all competed against each other (and me!) as there was only one tatting category.
The snowman won first and the larger snowflake won second. My doily (from last week’s post) won third. The Christmas-colored doily that hung below mine didn’t win anything, but it was make by the same person who made the snowman, and you can only win one ribbon per category.
I thought this was a lovely display. Isn’t this a great idea for showing off your tatting?
This was actually entered as Heirloom Embroidery, not tatting, but check out how she added joined the panels together. Wow!
This is a Bobbin Lace bookmark, made by a woman that also entered tatting. Isn’t it beautiful? The other one is machine embroidery, and looks great, too. I don’t know how the judges make their decisions!
This is a Halloween quilt that took second place in that category. I didn’t compete against these, but I thought they were wonderful. My pictures don’t do them justice.
This one took champion in the holiday quilt category. It certainly is spectacular.
Congratulations to all the people to enter their pieces at the fair. Keep up the great work.
And to all the people out there who tat – think about entering something next year! I know you’re out there. We’ve got to keep the category alive!
“The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure.”
Sven Goran Eriksson

Fair Results

I made it to the fair yesterday, but by the time I got home I was just too tired to do much but go to bed. So the pictures had to wait until today.
This is what I came up with for a Christmas decoration. I didn’t expect it to win anything and it didn’t. I wanted to enter as much tatting as possible, and that I had time to make. It’s not quite what I planned to do, but it’s what got done. You can see the picture that won champion in the same class, Christmas decoration.
As you can see, my doily took third place. When it was shown at the Harvey County fair it was laying down, so the way I mounted it was fine. At the state fair they hung it on the wall and the center sagged a bit. I’ve learned a lesson for next year! Below my doily is a red, white and green doily. It’s hard to tell with it mounted that way, but it looked pretty good to me.
These are the entries that competed with my spider and web. This was Holiday decoration, and you could enter one per holiday. It looks like all holidays compete against each other, not each holiday by itself.
And, yes, it got a blue ribbon! I was pleasantly surprised. I knew it would be competing against a variety of media, and didn’t know if the judges would like the tatting or not.
Next week I’ll show some of the other tatting that was entered.
“If you wait to do everything until you’re sure it’s right, you’ll probably never do much of anything.”
Win Borden

Going to the fair

I plan on going to the state fair tonight after work, where I will see how my entries have done. I hope to get pictures, get back to the house and post before I have to go to bed. This week has been nothing like normal so if you don’t hear more from me today, look for a post tomorrow.

Getting Ready For the State Fair

This is the mess on my table after trying to get things finished for the Kansas State Fair. No actual tatting done, but at least I got a cup of tea in (Country Peach Passion – yum!)
I’ve been busy with getting things made and put together for several weeks now. I haven’t been on the Internet much, I’ve been too busy tatting. And planning. There is only one class for tatting at the state fair but I wanted to get a few more items of tatting there if I could. Looking through the options I found they have a category for Christmas decorations and one for holiday decoration, one per holiday. So that makes three categories I thought I could enter.
I entered my antique motif doily (of course!). This is at a higher level than the county fair but I think it has a chance to do well. Then I had an idea for a Christmas decoration using those snowflakes I’ve been working on. I just couldn’t get my plan to work out but entered them anyway. They still look nice but nothing spectacular. And I forgot to take a picture of it before I dropped it off.
I chose a Halloween decoration for the other entry. I had this idea of a spider on a web using one of Jane Eborall’s patterns. But I just couldn’t get those floating chains! *head hangs in shame* I worked on it for half a day, but running out of time I had to do something else. I did come up with a spider, making the legs out of split rings similar to the way Jane made the legs on her stork. The body has a few issues but still looks pretty good. I added a black bead for the body and glass beads for head and eyes. I had planned a black spider but felt it would not be seen well on the black background I had in mind, so it’s made of gold Cebelia size 30, color 437. This actually worked better than the size 20 black that was planned, because being a smaller thread the legs worked better. The web is made of size 70 Lizbeth color 602 natural (not-quite white) and a strand of metallic coats thread, a Nylon and Polyester blend. I started once, then realized I made a bit of a mistake so had to start over. I got soooo tired of doing this. The last round is made of chains, each of 35 double stitches. Not very stimulating, and a lot of chance of mis-counting. But I’m very happy with the result.

I hope the judges at the fair like it, too. I’m going to call this #22 of my second 25 Motif Challenge. This was very much a challenge!
I might know by next week how my entries did at the fair. I’ve told several people who have plans to go to let me know the results if they get there before I do. The fair lasts ten days but I’m not sure what day I’ll get to go. There is a lot to see and do at the fair – I’m really looking forward to it.
“Achievement is not always success, while reputed failure often is. It is honest endeavor, persistent effort to do the best possible under any and all possible circumstances.”
Orison Swett Marden

Snowflakes and Dinosaurs

I’m still making a few of my old snowflake patterns, and still trying them out with beads. This one I changed a lot from my original pattern besides the beads for several reasons. One: I had done this one with only five points and I want it to have six. Two: I had done it with lots of picots so it looked very frilly. I have been adding beads in place of picots and this snowflake had lots of picots. But I don’t really want to add that many beads, so the extraneous picots had to go. Three: using the original stitch count made it a little bit bigger than what I wanted right now so I reduced the stitches by a few everywhere.
It’s somewhat hard to see the clear beads on the snowflakes, but in person the beads catch the light, making them well worth the effort to add.

I’ve done other tatting this week but nothing that’s ready to share. I keep changing my mind on what I want and keep switching from one project to another. Hopefully I’ll have finished one thing or another by next week. And maybe even post on Tuesday. I had tea and tatted on Tuesday, I just ran out of time to post!

This last weekend we went up to visit our daughter and family. We had a great time, going to an air show on Saturday and the Omaha Children’s Museum on Sunday. I had never been to a children’s museum, though I knew that the exhibits were meant to be touched and be interactive with children. They currently have an exhibit of dinosaurs there, something our grandson likes right now.

We found something interesting to see right away when we arrived, before we even went in.

This praying mantis was on our parking meter. We had to stop and check it out before we went any farther. You can see she was quite large. She only moved a little bit the whole time we stood to watch her, which didn’t impress my two-year-old grandson.

We decided to go to the dinosaur exhibit first, to make sure we had plenty of time there. For all that he likes dinosaurs, my grandson was a little intimidated by the robotic dinosaurs that moved and made noises.

The dinosaurs are not full-sized but quite realistic looking (how does anyone really know?)

My grandson didn’t take too long to get over being scared. There is so much there for them to do.

This is a robot skeleton that the children can push buttons to move, up down, side to side. It was very popular with the kids.

They can also uncover fossils in a sand box.

There were more activities in the display and many more throughout the museum. We were there for several hours and didn’t even get close to seeing everything. If any of you with children or grandchildren are in the Omaha area and are looking for something fun to do I recommend this. They do have places for the parents to sit and watch while the children explore 🙂

(I am not being paid for this endorsement, it was just so much fun to watch the children there I wanted to share with it everyone else.)

“Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death”

Albert Einstein

Where were you when the earth moved?

Align CenterDid you feel the earth move under your feet today?
If you were anywhere on the east coast today you might have. Most of you have probably already heard about the Virginia (USA) earthquake that happened today. IsDihara lives in Virginia, and she says she’s okay. If you’d like to read her experience today check out her blog here. I hope that everyone else out in tat-land are okay and not too shook up.

Did you know there was one in Colorado (USA) late last night as well? I don’t know anyone personally that felt it, but on the news tonight they spoke to a woman in Hutchinson, Kansas, that said she felt it. That’s an earthquake over 400 miles away. I guess she noticed because she was awake at 1:15 AM local time, and was on the fifth floor of an apartment building. As there aren’t many buildings that tall around here, she was one of the few people that had the right conditions to notice. I personally slept right through it 🙂



This Tatting Tea Tuesday evening I had a wonderful glass of iced tea, which really hit the spot. We had record-breaking temperatures today, 109 deg. F. I can do without breaking anymore records like that! I’m really looking forward to fall weather. I didn’t get any tatting done, though *sigh* I had to do some work around the house instead. We ran out clean plates (and glasses and cups and….)

I did get a little tatting done over the last week, a few more snowflakes. And I think I’m getting carried away with those beads.



“We learn geology the morning after the earthquake”

Ralph Waldo Emerson



It’s Never Too Early

For making snowflakes for Christmas anyway. In fact, I might not have gotten started early enough. And this year I’m doing – or at least starting with – something different. Or you could say the same… I make snowflakes to go into Christmas cards every year and usually try to come up with at least one new one every year. That may happen yet, but I’ve started this year with some old patterns but am adding beads to them.

I’m using clear glass beads, trying for a crystalline look, or at least a hint of it. This picture really doesn’t do the snowflake justice; it looks better in person.

I worked on these two Saturday while we drove (I did not tat and drive, I let my husband do the driving) to and from a family reunion a few hours away from our home. Beads and all! I usually don’t try to work with beads in the car due to the trouble of not loosing the beads, but thought I’d give it a shot this time. Amazingly, I only lost a few beads and had very little trouble.

I did a little TIPping (Tatting In Public) this week as well. On my way to my office a few days ago I stopped to talk to a friend of mine and show her my current project. As it was in process the shuttles were still attached. A person standing close by saw them and started asking some questions; then another person. So I demonstrated a split ring for them, as that was the next element of the piece. They were quite interested in it as they had never seen tatting before; had never even heard of it. It was a nice start to my day, sharing tatting with new people.

I didn’t have tea today for Tatting Tea Tuesday (I had coffee) but I did have chocolate and did get some tatting in – working on another snowflake. Christmas is only a bit over four months away you know. Lots to do and not much time to do it in.

“Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared. ” Buddha