Marvellous Motives and Creative Challenges

Wendy's kids had a snow day and created some snow sculptures before coming in for hot chocolate and doughnuts. My kind of winter fun!

Laurie is trying out her new camera and pets always make willing subjects.

Bev has posted motives 13 to 15, beginning with holiday earrings, a watering can and a wheelbarrow. She has also taught her daughter Kristen to tat and she's quite proud of Kirsten's ability to master split rings so that she could tat the first heart of a bookmark from Nancy Taylor's book, "Tat's Where I Stopped."

Mary celebrated her 40th wedding anniversary with her husband John.

Mrs John tatted the fan from Annie's Attic Ultimate Book of Tatted Doilies and had cut and tied her ends then realized she had one more ring and chain to tat. Her most recent motif just doesn't seem to want to cooperate. She's having trouble remembering to join, trouble remembering how many picots she should make and she's repeating the same mistakes over and over. It's a good thing it's almost done. A good press with an iron will melt it into submission.

Shay has just heard that her nephew is going to be in the desert for a while.

Diane has had Monica Hahn's book Christmas Angels and Other Tatting Patterns for a while but she was too intimidated to try the patterns in it. She thinks that as soon as she has the cast off she'll give it a try. She is showing us a picture of the first section of Jane's Tat it and See (TIAS) motif. How did she do that with a cast on?

Clyde loves hand dyed thread and treated himself to 12 skeins of Marilee's hand dyed threads. I agree with him that if you are going to spend a lot of time tatting something you might as well use good thread. Anything else is a waste of your tatting time.

Mark has also done the first instalment of Jane's TIAS motif and he's looking for the next bit. He's had to come to the rescue of family members who got flooded out. Please pray for them.

Jon took a look at the vintage pattern that was giving Mrs John so much trouble and she modified the design so that the whole thing could be done in one pass. Beautiful!

I have changed the links on my blog to show the archive pages of previous newsletters. A lot of people asked about the lace on the V neck of the shirt I was wearing. It's in Volume 5 Edition 2

Laura has begun her doily with the Rhubarb Crisp thread and she outlined the centre with DMC Cebelia in buttercup yellow. Doesn't if look yummy?

Charlene had a busy winter break with her father in hospital undergoing kidney surgery and now that she's back to work and back to normal, whatever that is, she has jumped back into doing cross stitching again.

Melissa has just done some SRE embroidery for a purse. It's Victorian and beautiful.

Sherry has been dying some more threads. There's Shades of Gray available from her Etsy shop and Coffee and Cream that she is using for Jane's TIAS challenge. The pattern she has been teasing us with is an edging design that she worked from sketch to final design tweaking it along the way going from size 100 to size 20 and her most recent variation is done in her hand dyed Rainbow Sherbet tatting thread.

Wally's latest entry is a classic one shuttle flower and she has provided the pattern for it. Classic and pretty. Her next entry is a take off on a Jan Stawsz design that she has named Polish flower.