Isn't that a beautiful rose? My youngest son and his fiance gave me flowers for Mother's Day. It was a bouquet of assorted flowers and they are still going strong more than a week later! I took several photos at the weekend and this is one of them.

In spite of being behind in just about everything I'm doing at the moment (but catching up fast!) I tatted the ornament from Vida Sunderman's book, Tatting for Tomorrow, on page 41. I just happened to have these two colors sitting on the table next to me (both Altin Basak, size 50) and decided to try using both to see the effect on the motif. I really like it. I decided to make it into a bookmark but had trouble deciding how I wanted to make the tail. I made about three false starts before I settled on this one - a set stitch of 5-5 (5 1st halves, 5 2nd halves) in series of 6 sets, I think, before changing colors. It felt like a weak ending though so I switched to split rings, increasing the size of each ring as I went down and switching the sides of the colors in the split rings. I was really pleased with how it turned out.

I returned a purchase to Walmart this evening and got to talking to the young man processing my refund. I noticed on the board that they cashed checks, sold money orders (only 46¢) and transferred funds up to $500 internationally. That last one surprised me so I asked him if they did much business with that and he said yes. Then he went on to say that a lot of money went to Africa. Scams. I looked at him and grinned - yeah? He got this mischevious look and said, oh, did I say that? LOL! I was just floored. We laughed and talked about how obvious they were. Or at least it seemed that way to me. He said they are mostly women. They go online (the personals, I'm sure) and think they get a boyfriend and that they are getting married.

Now...I know this is off topic, but it's something that really pushes my buttons. I've done my share of online personals. It's not hard to be careful. It's not hard to screen the duds and the scams. So what is the deal here? I hate seeing people who are lonely hearts, usually desperate and suffering low self-esteem, being targeted and taken advantage of. So if you or anyone you know frequents the online singles, take note of this. IT'S A SCAM! Most of it comes out of S. Africa. They target men and women alike. They claim to be trapped there, without money or friends. Or they are trying to finish school and need money. I don't care what the story is, DO NOT SEND MONEY. Or anything that can be sold for money. DON'T.

There are lots of perfectly wonderful people who use the online personals. I've met some good people. But I'm pretty good at sorting them out too. Use common sense. Don't give out personal information that identifies where you live. Take the time to get to know them. Get to know their friends. I belong to a lot of yahoo groups. I've met a lot of people I got to know through those groups, but in every case, other people had also met them and talked about them and we all talked for months, often years, before meeting. They were not people I met last week. I knew them pretty well by the time I met them face to face.

Okay...off my soapbox.