Trial by Fire and Long Lost Friends Reunited - Thanks Maxwell!

I haven't written as much in the last year as I would have liked to - well, at least not as much fiction as I would have liked.  It's been almost a year since a pretty life shattering event happened and I think I've finally come to terms with it.  I won't be going into details about the "Event" here, because this is my happy place and I'd rather not see it marred.  Besides, that is not the purpose of this post.  This post is about finding joy in writing again.  I pretty much shut down the creative portion of my brain last March.  I was wounded and dealing with the fallout and I just didn't feel creative.

I ended up in a rut.  My energy felt zapped and I didn't want to do much.  I wish I could say I held my head up high and rode out the aftermath of the "Event" unscathed, but I did not.  I went through my own journey and learned a lot about myself in the process.  Many of my priorities shifted and now that some wounds have started to heal, I'm okay with it.  Would I willingly go through the "Event" again - not for a million dollars, but I also wouldn't give up what I've learned through this journey.

I didn't really allow my creativity to resurface until late August when a friend asked if I wanted to learn how to tat.  If you've read any of my recent posts, you can see that I quickly picked up the craft and I am loving it. 

In November, I won another NaNoWriMo, but a lot of what I wrote needs a severe edit.  Last November was more of a prove to myself that I can still write even when I feel like my muse is gone or that my brain is overloaded with real life drama instead of fun plot twists.  So I powered through it.  Sadly, since November, I've only jotted a few ideas down and haven't really sat and focused on my writing.

But now, now I am feeling like I've come back to myself.  Now I'm ready to go back on adventures with my friends who have been waiting for me.  I owe a thanks to my fantastic friend, Maxwell, who has reminded me why I love to write in sharing her own journey.  Check out her blog: http://thewanderingquille.blogspot.com 

As for now, I'm off to write about adventures in a land that eventually will have a name.  Thanks for reading my ramblings.

Birthdays and Tatting

I had a lot of fun making birthday gifts for my Mum-In-Law and my Sis-In-Law who both share the birth month of February.  As you may recall, I was introduced to the wonderful art of tatting last August.  So they both received two sets of earrings and complimentary necklaces.  Since they have both been able to open their gifts, I can now post this.  Enjoy the pictures!

I keep seeing cute jewelry photos with earrings hanging off of coffee mugs or tea cups.  I think the earring placement made my mug look like a fancy owl face.  The mug was a bit distracting to me - so my clock won out as the place to hang the jewelry for photos.

I love the simple little butterfly.

This was the first time I used seed beads with my tatting.  I really like how they turned out.

Jewelry waiting on the clock (and out of reach of my kitty) to be packaged and shipped to my family.

The small butterflies are from Barbara Foster's Butterfly pattern which can be found in the Handy Hands (http://www.hhtatting.com/) catalog. 

The larger butterfly is from the diagram found here: http://puntoypunto.myblog.it/archive/2012/04/25/schemi-a-chiacchierino.html  It is the second butterfly I have made from this pattern.

The hearts are from my Accidental Heart pattern.  You can see the pattern and story behind it here.

Those are the ones I used patterns to make.  Now onto the pieces that I did not have patterns for.  I've been challenging my understanding of how tatted pieces are put together by tatting from pictures.  When tatting from pictures I tend to leave off or add bits at whim.

So the blue pendant was tatted from a picture of Gosia's Little Black Lace Earrings (http://littleblacklace.com/2012/05/14/black-royal-lace-earrings/).  This was my first time using seed beads in a tatted piece (I had used a few larger beads prior).  The blue earrings were a simplified version of the pendant.

The pink swirl earrings were tatted from a picture of Swirl Earrings by Julie Strier (http://www.etsy.com/listing/114008536/pink-green-purple-variegated-tatted).

Lastly, the butterfly pendant earrings were a simple design involving split rings and a clover that I arrived at playing with the leftover thread in one of my shuttles.

That about sums up my most recent tatting adventures.  Thanks for reading this post and following my blog!  I always get super excited when I find out my blog has more followers!