Sunday, June 06, 2010

I spent Friday and Saturday in a workshop to get my CEAS, a certification that is not currently required but probably will be in the next few years. At any rate, it's helpful for my job. I have been doing ergonomics, mostly office ergonomics, for nearly a decade now. I was pleased to find there was only one new thing I learned about office ergonomics and it was more of a personal experience advice thing. I did learn a little more about Labor ergonomics, which is the weak area in our department for the simple reason that there is not enough manpower and resources to focus on it pro-actively. It's in the works though.

I brought way too much with me to do. I didn't feel good after sitting in a freezing room all day and my back has been hurting from something I did while mowing (???) and the conference room chairs were far from comfortable. I tried knitting and it looked like a 6 year old had done it so I abandoned that. I looked through some beading magazines I brought with me because I wanted to try some simple projects but couldn't bring myself to pull anything out of the bag and sort. I didn't even feel like tatting. So I read. The night before I had finished up a book, High on Arrival, by Mackenzie Phillips,a disturbing memoir. When we're young, we often dramatize the events in our lives because they ARE high drama to us, but reading about someone else's life and drama certainly puts it in perspective and makes one grateful for the simpler challenges in life.



So my next book (can't believe I'm getting to read this much!) is one I picked up at the Half-Price Bookstore a few weeks ago. It caught my eye with the title The Lace Reader. It was fiction so I knew it wasn't a how-to book. The website says it was on the bestseller list but obviously I never knew that. LOL! The character reads lace like some people read tea leaves. Now for those who think it's all woo-woo stuff, I've always viewed tea leaves, candles, bones, stones and such simply as tools of focus. The Rosary in Catholicism serves the same purpose, as does prayer and meditation. It's a way to focus inward and connect. Prayer has been called the state of asking and meditation the state of receiving an answer. Many people are able to do both but you can never do both at the same time. You can't be in a state of asking and receiving at the same time. One will follow the other and often very quickly, seeming instantaneous, but there is a gap between one and the other. So...I'd never heard of "lace-reading" though the overall concept is familiar to me and I found it intriguing. I've only started the book. In 2003, I made a trip to the East Coast, meeting and visiting friends I'd met online. Near the end, I stayed with a friend in Cape Ann (mentioned in the book) and one day we drove through Salem on the way to his doctor appointment. My friend was a wealth of information about the "witch" town as well as Cape Ann's former glory days so I'm finding the location exciting in this book too. The lace seems to be bobbin lace and already I'm learning new stuff about that. I wonder if the author makes lace herself? Well, it turns out she made up "lace-reading" but really...think about it....how many AHA! moments or wonderful insights have you received while making your lace? I think I'll enjoy this book much more than Phillips' "High" book.

I got home last night, still not feeling 100%, but I wanted to do something besides unpack. LOL! For a long time, I've been wanting to go on a dragon rampage. A tatted dragon rampage. Anne's pattern sort of popped up in front of me last night so ...why not? I tatted a dragon. Started it anyway. When I realized it was after midnight, I stopped and left the rest for today.

I don't know why I keep trying to put eyes in the ears of these dragons! When I was done, I realized my beads were in the ears or head of the dragon so they weren't eyes at all. So...it just means this is a female dragon and those are earrings! She's got all the fluffy picots so that means she's a girl, right? You can find the pattern on Anne's blog! I hope to make more soon but I have other commitments still in the works.

8 comments:

  1. I have tried Anne`s dragon but did run into some trouble, maybe I retry soon. Let me know if ``The Lace Reader`is a good book. One you may also enjoy is called The Lace Makers of Glenmara.I quite liked it.

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  2. I read The Lace Reader last year and loved it. You might also want to read The Lacemaker by Janine Montupet.
    enjoy.

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  3. Oh, the dragon is gorgeous! The pattern for the Chinese Dragon is on my desk, ready to go, but for choosing thread, however, I might just tat this one first, as a warm-up. This is really enticing and so pretty!

    Fox : )

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  4. Have you read some of the knitting/crochet/lace focused mysteries? There's one (the one that got me hooked-pardon the pun) in which the protagonist was trying to identify some lace, found with a murdered body.

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  5. Thank you all for the reading suggestions. I have Monica Ferris ( http://www.monica-ferris.com/) in my "other" links but the site does not have a feed so it never shows when it's updated. She writes mysteries about all kinds of needlework scenarios. I've not read any yet, mostly because I don't generally have a lot of reading time, but I've been making an effort to read more. For awhile. LOL!

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  6. Fox, I want to do the Chinese dragon too AND AND AND (notice the empahsis?) I intend to make at least one of Karey's dragons. I started one at a tat day in Hector but have since cut the thread off the shuttles. I didn't really want to tat it in the color I had. I'm also trying to visualize some kind of fabric background to put them on display. I have no interest in wearing dragons, but I'd like to create a display for the exhibit we're having, mostly to show the varied potential of tatting. It's not all hearts and flowers!

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  7. Kelly, I did want to mention that the diagram on the dragon was hard for me to follow. I plan to enlarge it and add numbers and arrows. It was mainly to show which shuttle to use for what but since I did things differently to begin with, I couldn't pay attention to it. I used it mostly to know where to make joins. I did not use the SSSR because I used two shuttles throughout and just made split rings. Since you're a needle tatter, I'm not sure if that would work out better for you or not. When I work it out, I'll email you.

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  8. Thanks so much for dropping by at my blog and your suggestion on the tatting book. I have contacted Janette asking about the shipping to Malaysia.

    I hope in time I will be able to share my tatting artwork on my blog so that others will be interested (and not feel intimidated) to learn it.

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Emails and comments both are welcome and always read.