Happy New Year to All!!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas.  I was completely exhausted by the time it was over and took a couple days off to just rest and recuperate.  There were extra church services, extra bell choir practices, gifts to wrap,  last minute shopping to finish, extra cooking and baking.  It tires me out just thinking about all the extra work.  But it's always worth it and I spent a lovely holiday with family and friends.  I got all my holiday tatting done just in time, but I'm not ready to give up the Christmas patterns yet.  This is a WIP that I started just before Christmas, knowing that I wouldn't get it done in time for this Christmas, so I'll save it for next year.  It's a wreath with red seed beads.

It is round,  not oval, and the outer round is ruffling a bit, but I just fell in love with this pattern for it's simple elegance.  And Christmas green is a nice change of color after working in white and Ice Blue for snowflakes for the last month.  I found the pattern on Tat-man.net here and tatted it in  Lizbeth Christmas Green size 40 with red seed beads.  I'm hoping that blocking will flatten out the ruffled outer round.

Thank you all for reading my blog in 2013 and leaving encouraging comments.  I hope to see you all in Blog-Land in 2014.  Happy New Year!!

Christmas Bell

I finally  finished the Renulek bell in gold.  I will give it to our church hand bell choir director tomorrow.  It was really hard to get a good picture that shows off the beautiful gold filament in the thread.

 I used a gold bead cap at the top and a small gold jingle bell as the clapper, so it actually rings.

The idea was to make it look as much like an English hand bell as possible, which is brass but looks like gold.  That's why I chose gold thread.  This is what an English hand bell looks like.  I play hand bells at church and tomorrow is our big Christmas program.

The pattern is found here on Renulek's blog and the thread is Altin Basik metallic gold size 50.

Snowflakes everywhere

Since I've been tatting so many snowflakes lately, every snowflake I see in the store looks like a tatting pattern to me.  For example, I found this wrapping paper at Hobby Lobby today.

I have tatted at least two or three of these snowflake designs.  Here's a close-up.

And here are a couple of the snowflakes I've tatted recently.  I made very simple cards with the snowflake in the front and the string to hang it with pulled through a tiny pin hole to the back of the card.  The idea is for the recipient to un-tape the snowflake and hang it on the tree.

See, the tatted snowflakes look just like the wrapping paper.  How many of these designs have you tatted?

Celeste in the sleet

So far, this is my favorite Celeste thread/bead combination.  Ice Blue Lizbeth thread in size 40 and clear glass seed beads.  The clear glass looks like ice on the snowflake.

The white you see in the background is not snow, it's sleet that fell four days ago and we're still waiting for it to melt.  We got about 4 inches of sleet on top of 1/2 inch of freezing rain on Dec. 5 and 6.  But Texas doesn't usually get very much frozen precipitation in the winter, so there are very few snow plows or salt to clear the roads.  We have to wait for Mother Nature to get above freezing to melt the ice, and we are still waiting.  School has been cancelled since Dec. 6, and no guarantee that they will go back tomorrow because the ice keeps re-freezing over night.  So I'll just stay inside and keep tatting.

This pattern is by Frivole and you can purchase it at her Etsy site.  Here's another pic where you can really see the beads sparkle.

Lovely Celeste

I was very fortunate to be one of the winners of Frivole's pattern give away.  I won her Celeste snowflake pattern and I just love it.  I have made two so far and plan on making more.

The top one is made with Lizbeth Ice Blue in size 40 with blue seed beads.  The bottom one is made with Lizbeth white in size 20.  The biggest challenge for me was making the large picots.  The pattern calls for measured picots in centimeters.  Being from America, all my picot gauges are in inches. After digging up a ruler that had centimeters and measuring all my picot gauges, I found none of them were the required length. So I had to make two picot gauges out of light weight cardboard.  Problem solved.  Actually making these large picots and then joining to them without my thread twisting was a bit fiddly at first, but got easier with practice.  I love how light and airy the snowflake looks, and the beads really make it pop.  My next snowflake will be in Ice Blue thread with clear glass seed beads.  It will look like ice on a snowflake.  Frivole is selling the pattern on her Etsy site here.

Here's a close up of the Ice Blue snowflake with seed beads.

Motif # 3

Thank you Frivole for a great pattern!

Ice Storm in Dallas Fort Worth TX

I may get some extra tatting time this weekend due to Mother Nature.  We are in the midst of a huge ice storm.  We are not used to a lot of winter weather in this part of the country, so there was no school today and we'll probably be stuck at home all weekend.  The temperature is not expected to get above freezing until next week.  Here are some pictures of the ice/sleet from my neighborhood.  We haven't gotten any snow.  All the white stuff is sleet, i.e. little balls of ice.