Heather Johnston over at The Tarnished Tatter recently celebrated her 200th post with a giveaway and I won my choice of one of her pattern books in pdf format or some of her HDT (hand-dyed thread). I chose the book Motifs A Many.

This is the first one, named Blue Jay (hers is in blue) and I'm liking it very much! I can tat it in less than an hour and it uses less than 5 yards of thread. I first tatted the smaller one at the bottom in size 50 that just happened to be on my table. It turned out about 1-1/4" wide. The two upper ones are size 20 and came out at 1-1/2" each. The Christmasy looking one is Lizbeth thread in the Christmas variegated. My lace guild is decorating a small artificial tree this year with lace to donate to an auction for charity. The ornaments must be small to be in scale with the tree and I think these might work out fine!


I took a 2 hour nap earlier today so of course, I wasn't sleepy tonight. I emptied a shuttle by making the next pattern in Heather's book which is very similar to the first one but has 6 spokes and an extra "twist" on each spoke. This one didn't take long either so I'll probably make some white ones for the tree...or silver or gold.

I had hoped to finish my puzzle pieces today but didn't get to it. All I need to do is add some fusible facing and a backing, then finish the edges. Tomorrow is a pretty full day but I'm going to try to finish them off at some point so I can send them to Pat this week. There are some really gorgeous pieces there and it's really hard not to compare your own work with them. The idea is to have fun and share though and that's what I'm doing! I did try to figure out how to make twill tape labels today. I have the twill tape but forgot I need some transfer paper to print on. I'm pretty sure I have some.....but where?

Water is standing in the yard outside because we've had so much rain over the past few weeks. Another storm last night that even had the severe weather sirens going off. I have water in my basement. There is a drain so it doesn't get deep but it takes forever to dry up, even with the dehumidifier going. I used to have this problem all the time but this is the wettest it's been in a long time. My sump pump doesn't seem to be working right either. I hear it go off but there is water on that side of the basement so either it isn't working properly or it's not getting outside. I don't really have time to move everything around and investigate and nothing is in imminent danger so I just put up with it for now.

Ah well....life is really very good to me.