Sewicked's crafty look at my life

What a new year

I'm sorry that it's been so long. And I have a load of snowflakes that I made for Christmas. I still need to take pictures of a few but alas, I don't know when I'll get them posted.

Let's have a moment of silence for my poor, dead laptop. The hard drive crashed & according to the shop where I had it looked at, it would cost as much to repair it as it would to buy a low-end new one. Needless to say, a low-end one would be leaps & bounds better than my poor, dead dear. On the other hand, one of my good friends from high school is a computer tech type and he says that he can probably fix it (ie replace the hard drive) for a lot less than the shop and he's 90% confident that he can pull the data from the crashed hard drive.

 

Now for the bad news. He does not live close enough for me to 'pop by after work'. It might be faster to ship it to him. The sad thing is, it might also be cheaper to ship it than the cost of the gas to go deliver it to him.

Until I have some access to a computer that can read my camera, alas, it's no pictures.

Necklace pendant: finally

Here's a close up of the pendant to the necklace that I was going to enter at the state fair.

I have made another necklace but I'm having trouble uploading the photo.

I'll just put the other photos on my blogger site.

More "Do I really know how to read a pattern"

This is actually an old piece. I post this as a note of hope & despair for new tatters. I've been tatting for 19 years. I still make mistakes. So, newcomers 'don't despair, everyone makes mistakes.' And newcomers 'despair, no matter how long you've been doing this, you'll still make bonehead mistakes.'

I started this while in class with Jane Eborall. It went great. I went home & continued working on it. I got to ring 30 & noticed that something was wrong. So I checked. Re-checked & finally traced the problem to a mistake that I had made. On ring #11. *sigh* So I clipped it off & started over. And over. And over. After my, literally, sixth attempt, that never got farther than the wheel, I gave up. I decided that I had a mental hiccup and now (ie mid-September) was a bad time to work on the wheelbarrow. I did the small scallop heart from Martha Ess's Tat's Amore and broke the hiccup.

Of course, it was after this that it took me two tries to get Jane's bookmark right. But hey, I'm only human & I was distracted.

Vacation Tatting

Yes, I tatted while on vacation. I took a couple of my new books (Tat's Amore & Tat's Where I Stopped) plus a couple of patterns that I printed from the internet.

I did a bookmark that Jane published, twice. I did that because I was so unhappy with the first one. Apparently, I forgot how to read a pattern. The printout was a good idea because I could fold it up & slip it into a pocket, along with my tatting shuttles.

Apparently, I was really distracted while trying to tat this one. I made several mistakes along the way. Here are a couple close ups, see if you can spot them.

Now compare that to my second attempt.

Differences: 1) I used two different threads & 2) I didn't make any obvious mistakes.

Highs & Lows of State Fair Entry

I finished my State Fair entry before leaving for vacation. And I took it to a friend who said that she'd actually take to be entered for me (since I'll be out of state during the period - or what I thought was the entry period). Turns out, entries were due in mid-September. So a week before the State Fair is just too *(&%^$% late.

Anyway, here are the pictures that I took while the necklace was in progress. I forgot to take one of the finished product. I'll have to post that later.