More blinged shuttles from Umi & Tsuru! Aren't these lovely? I think the one with the roses is especially appealing. My other Clovers are feeling rejected lately because I use these blinged beauties so much!

Here's is one of the 3 Kings from Peel's book. This is size 30 Cebelia and it is much smaller than I expected. I probably had enough thread on the shuttles to make the entire set of 3 but I want them in different colors. Rosemarie shows them on a card and said that is how they look in size 80. Even so, I expected this one to be bigger! It's very easy to tat although it took me awhile to figure out what an 8mm picot was and was that the height or the length? I figured out it was the height. That picot looked like a toothpick or something in the photograph and I didn't realize it was a picot until I read the instructions. It's a very good diagram except there are no numbers or starting point marked so I traced the diagram and filled all that in from the text. It was first published in 1992 and notation has changed considerably over the past 18 years!

I tend to tat the fun symbols of Christmas more than the religious ones. After years of study, I can't say I subscribe to any one belief, seeing the connection in all and more or less developing a concept I'm comfortable with but I appreciate all the different interpretations. There is a cowboy analogy popular in the Western part of the nation that is surfacing and Ruth Ann Adams tatted a wonderful representation of it. I'm trying to find time to put her pattern in writing and diagram form and as soon as I do, I'll post it here with her permission.

As I was writing this post, the furnace repairman showed up, made his diagnosis and gave me the bad news.....bad inducer motor. He just left to try to track one down. Might have to order one and it probably won't show up until Monday if that is the case. Sigh...I think it's going to be a lean holiday season.