Tatting Away and Preparing for the April Shuttlebirds Workshop

I've been keeping busy in my tatting.

The week before Easter my cousins were up for their Spring Break.  I had a blast with the three boys - lightsaber fights in the backyard and Nerf gun wars in the basement.  My cousin Emma (the youngest and only girl in the lot the came to visit) loved the look of my tatted things, and probably would have took home my entire completed stash if I had let her.  Instead, I tatted up a bracelet for her.  It's the accidental heart on a split ring chain.  She loved it.

Little girl wrists are tiny!

Heart on a string.

I really like how the two variegated colors worked with each other!

 Then it was on to birthday time.  Last weekend I had to birthdays to attend.  A sweet wonderful nine year old (for whom the following bracelet is made). And my Evil Twin (it's a camp thing) for whom I made a heart necklace.

Butterfly bracelet.

Again, little girls have tiny wrists.

 Then it is onto angels and the Shuttlebirds Workshop which is coming up, April 19-20.  The theme for this year's workshop is Angels Among Us.  This will be my first workshop and I am super excited!

My contribution to a guild project.

An angel for the themed contest.  This little cutie is my own design.

The themed contest is open to all tatters, not just workshop attendees.  So if you have an angel you would like to submit - check out the official rules here. [You'll want to act quickly as the mail-in date for entries is fast approaching.  My apologies for not getting this post up earlier.]

I'd love to hear what you think of my angel.  Happy tatting!

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!

Of Dolls and Princesses

So my little sister turned 6 earlier this month.  Her gift from me was a doll that looks like her and wears her favorite color - pink.  The week before her party I was telling my Mom about the doll and she asked if I could make K Rapunzel hair.  We sized a hat for her head and I took it home to use as a template for a winter hat that I then added long strands of yarn hair to, two strands at a time.  It was very time consuming, but my little sister loved the end result and it is a favorite for dress-up right now. Before the party was over she asked for it to be un-braided so that she could twirl around and have it fly around her.  It was cute.

Princess K in her Rapunzel outfit.

I made the hair.  It took 4 skeins of yarn looped through a yellow winter hat that I also made.

Her first comment after I put it on.  "It's too heavy!"

She had fun decorating it with flowers like the girls in Tangled decorated Rapunzel's hair.

My sister as Rapunzel.

She had so much fun wearing it.

Such a pretty princess.

This is a doll I made to look like my sister.

I think she turned out pretty cute.

The headband is one my sister can also use in her hair.

And my sister has named her Kendra.

The finished hair before braiding.

Front view.

Back view.

Kaylee inspects everything I make.

Front view on the table.

Back view on the table.

Side view.

Bevan's Portal Birthday Cookies

My husband finally caught up to me in age (he's 22 days younger than me) on Sept. 28th.  To celebrate his birthday I made him cookies (because he doesn't like cake).  While discussing what to make, he had suggested Portal cookies.  So that I what I made him.

Stick figure Chell.

Makes her first portal.

Add it looks delicious.

Time to make the second one.

Remember: Portals only stick to surfaces coated in moon dust.

Time to test the portals.

Well, the gun seems intact.

That must mean she'll be safe.

It works!

More portals.

They were delicious!  The blue cookies are chocolate chip cookies and the orange ones are butterscotch chip cookies.

Leveling Up - Level 27 - Human - Bard

I turned 27 today.

Last night I celebrated with some friends and family with a BBQ.  Today, I spent the morning with my mom discussing the online business we are starting (selling crafty creations).  My late afternoon was spent at work.  Now hubby and I are ordering pizza and plan on playing a board game after dinner.  This weekend we will have some more friends over to celebrate with a board game night.  It is always wonderful to catch up with friends.

As for birthday wishes, I received well over 100 happy wishes from the various online communities I am a part of.  I even got a birthday greeting from a random stranger as I left work (because work gave me a balloon as part of my gift).

It was a nice day and I am surrounded by wonderful friends and family, on and offline.  So thank you all for making my day a special day.  I look forward to what level 27 has in store for me.  Oh, and because one of my awesome friends made me think about it.  I would allocate my skill points for this level up into Artisan (this would aid in the new joint business endeavor with my mother), Languages (because I want to learn more Japanese), Music (because I'd like to make progress on the violin), Craftsman (due to plans for an awesome Pai Sho table and wanting to finish a chain mail piece), Reflexes (this would be helpful in learning to fence as well as in generally staying on my feet :p), and Stamina (so that all of the above don't kill me).

Recent Food Endeavors

Fun with food creations.

My recent food endeavors have included:

Using my Star Wars pancake molds for the first time. Probably shouldn't show them to my younger siblings... they might want to play with their food too...

Baking my first Pavlova - a very delicious Aussie/NZ dish (thanks to Mum for the family recipe - I can't share it, so please don't ask for it). There are several Pavlova recipes on the web if you'd like to try it. It's a yummy meringue cake topped in fresh made whip cream (not the stuff you buy in the store) and berries. So delicious!

Baking my first carrot cake (it was from a box). I made a double layer cake. One layer was carrot cake, the other layer was chocolate cake. This is the D20 cake in the pictures. The pans I used were a bit on the small side so I made cupcakes with the extra batter. I then used the cupcakes to shape the D20 for the top of the cake. It was frosted in cream cheese frosting and then I used sprinkles to do the decorating (cutting out printed letters/numbers and placing them on the cake before adding the sprinkles and then peeling them off for sprinkle free words and numbers. This was made for Joe's birthday as he said carrot cake with chocolate cream cheese frosting was his favorite. I couldn't find chocolate cream cheese frosting (and didn't think that all I really needed to do was mix in cocoa) so I layered the cake with the chocolate instead.

And the Discworld birthday cake for Nora which I detail here: Discworld Dessert

As I am typing, I currently have my second Pavlova baking. This time I do not plan on opening the oven door until tomorrow morning. Hopefully it will not fall this time (though last time was still yummy). My Mom is looking forward to the Pavlova as my Mum (Mother-In-Law) got her hooked on it during my parent's last visit to Colorado.

I've decided recently that I'd like to try a new dish each week (doesn't have to just be desserts). My friend even loaned me a Celtic cookbook to look through. But don't worry, this won't turn into a food blog - though I will probably share about my new endeavors.

Kandra's Birthday

Thanks ketchuplover & Debbie!

Day #9
1. Salad X2 & Brocolli - check.
2. 8 glasses - check.
3. Leslie Sansone's Walk Slim 3 Fast Miles - 3 miles - check.
Health Points Earned Today: 6
All goals met for Day #9!

Day #10
1. Salad- check.
2. 8 glasses - check.
3. Elliptical - 63 minutes - 4 miles (half mile with my toddler brother in the front pack) - check.
Health Points Earned Today: 7
All goals met for Day #10!

2010
Points Earned: 53
Miles Traveled: 23
Longest Streak: 8 days!

I hope everyone had a fantastic day! I know I did. It was my little sister's 4th birthday.

Quarter of a Century

Today was a fun day! I turned 25 today. Hopped on the scale for the first time in almost a month and found out that I had only gained 2 lbs. This was fantastic news because the last time I was on the scale was when I was still on my diet (I've been off of it for about a month and one of the thing I worried about was the weight rebounding the second I stopped the diet). So it is very good to know that I can maintain my weight without doing much.

I received EA Active from my husband and I am very excited about this game/workout program. I had tried my Sister-in-Laws copy and ended up breaking a sweat and very sore the next day. I started the programs 30 day challenge today and will continue it. It is nice having a plan for what I need to do to workout because I've been slacking in that category.

I've got my next costume figured out. My friend Nora and I are doing Tautaun & Hoth Rebel costumes (where our legs are the legs of the Tauntauns and fake legs drape off the saddle. We plan on debuting them when we walk the Spokane Half Marathon in October. We have the structure planned out and Friday we will start our sewing. I am very excited!

Tomorrow should be a fun day too (have a bbq/game party planned to celebrate my birthday).