Hey, 2 weeks, that's better, right?

 Been busy tatting motifs for the NCRL made goodie bags for next year's IOLI. 

Peacock Heart (found on wayback machine)

 

 Last week was incredibly busy at work. I worked 9+ hours M-Thursday and left early on Friday. 

Went to see my parents yesterday. And took pictures of some plants. 

I was using up thread from my Morse code edging. Beads will definitely work better than the picots.

Today was gaming, our monthly Pathfinder game. Luckily, C reminded me Friday.

Christmas Season Has Begun

And by that, I mean I've gone to my first Christmas party. It was supposed to be my second one but I got sick and didn't go to the first one. I gave Chris the latest Edge book by Ilona Andrews. He had just learned it was out and hadn't gotten a copy yet. I still have his other present but I haven't wrapped it yet.

This one was mostly getting together with friends, playing games, eating supper and then opening presents. It was very low key. My SO bought three books from my wish list while one of my friends found the perfect journal for me to use as a character journal for an upcoming game.

I made some serious progress on my sock. I have about another half inch before I start on the heel. Again.

I am waiting for my brother to call or email me. I have a questions for him. Shopping for my niece is getting harder and harder. She's 16 now and very different from me or my brother, in many ways. She has her own interests, which is as it should be. She should not be a clone. But it was so much easier to shop for her when she was 6.

I've been making a few bracelets. Not a lot, because I've been distracted, but a couple. Here's Pearly Girl (thanks to the nice lady who named it for me).

I've started one in pale pink with purple beads.

I've taken some sky/cloud pictures and some flower pictures.

frost bitten pansy

touch of blue

And the clouds came rolling in

The sun sets

clouds like scurrying sheep

Very red

Wild Rose

December Rose

I've made a Blue Rose character (not that I expect to play her any time in the near future, but I can wish, right?). I'm reading Wu Xing: The Ninja Crusades, with the intention of reviewing it. I bought the new game The One Ring, set 5 years after the events in The Hobbit (by J.R.R. Tolkien if you've been living under a rock or not from an English speaking country).

Saw both parents at Thanksgiving (no, this is not typical and hasn't been since they separated when I was 6). Dad came by for lunch on Thanksgiving Day; thank you, K&W for being open so I didn't have to cook. I at supper with the SO's parents. I was supposed to donate platelets on Friday but I got a migraine; and aspirin means no platelet donation. I went to Mom's for the weekend. We went to only 2 stores; an AC Moore & a thrift shop. I did pick up some new audiobooks.

I found out the cassette tape iPod accessory in my car doesn't work so well anymore. All that noise was not coming from my car stereo, after all. My car stereo is old enough to be in college, so I wasn't surprised when the noise quality declined. Except, those pops and static were from the cassette hooked up to my iPod. I've been listening to some audiobooks instead.

I took part in NaNoWriMo. I wasn't expecting to hit the 50,000 words, I just wanted to finish my short story. And I did. I'm going to wait until the new year to look at it again and start the editing process but I have a beginning, a middle and an end. The end desperately needs work, but it's there.

I've started reading Nalini Singh's Psy-Changeling series. Bluntly, the blurb for the first book turned me off. But I've enjoyed her Guild Hunter series so much, I decided to give her other series a try. I've read the 1^st two books now and I'm looking for the 3^rd.

I just read a book by a new (to me) author, Jessica Sims. Or is it Jennifer? Anyway, the book title is Beauty Dates the Beast. It's an entertaining book and I'm looking forward to the next one.

I figured out what to get my mom for Christmas. I found a really good source for hair henna. Unlike what she used to use, this stuff won't turn her white hair to neon orange.

I'm still working on what to get Dad. He might get a stove or something for a reservation resident. I'll have to look. I think he might like a charity gift this year. I saw a book I thought he'd like. I was right, too bad someone already loaned him a copy.

I have an idea for my brother (he was the 1^st one I figured, I just need to order it). But I'm at a loss for my sister-in-law. My niece will be getting a new pair of earbuds and maybe a bracelet made to order. If I find an interesting cd, she might get that, too. Maybe.

I have a couple things for the SO already. But there's still quite a few people I'd like to get something for them. I need to pull out my list and make decisions.

The VCR died. Or maybe just the tape that's in it did. The tape is kind of hanging from the VCR, like a cat holding a mouse by its tail. There went my copy of Strictly Ballroom.

Last night I went to a presentation about Chang and Eng Bunker. Do you know who they were? They were the original Siamese twins. They took a physical drawback, and it was severe (the King of Siam almost had them beheaded for being a 2-headed Chinese demon) and became businessmen. They were sharp, too. They were successful enough to buy a good tobacco farm in North Carolina. They married and had full lives. They were articulate and made sure all their kids had a good education.

WARNING: Politics Ahead

This is a speech before the Iowan Congress

Lots of links and some pictures

Ouch, sad blast from the past. I was checking my email address book and saw the address of a deceased friend. Sudden, sad reminder of the fact that he's not on this plane anymore.

Oooh, contest to win books and stuff from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.

This is an incredible idea and shows what two people can do and how they can change the lives of other people; one stove at a time.

Some geek soaps and stuff. Personally, I love the d20 soap on a rope.

Hey they have School House Rock on YouTube. Here's My Hero, Zero.

Chatty DM has a thoughtful and reasoned editorial about traitors in the geek population.
And another great editorial on racism in sci fi/fantasy. Take your time. Read the editorial and the links. It's worth it.

And here's before and after pictures of a bench.

BEFORE

A

AFTER

T

The bench as a whole

And here's my loot. First is one of the bags from dragonchow. It's stuffed full of sugarfree hard candies, to fight the drying effects of the pollen.

And here are the threads from LadyShuttleMaker. They are Plum Tickled, Raspberry Mousse, and Marina. All of them are size 20 cotton. You can see why I'm drooling, can't you.

Thank Goodnes It's...Tuesday?

It's hard coming back to work after a long weekend. And the weather was so beautiful. I would like to have seen more of it, but I started my spring cleaning. I've been so tired since October that not much got done. I started with the boxes that I saved for Christmas, 'to wrap presents.' We have a small bin and large rolling trashcan for recyclables (yay, no sorting). Even broken down, boxes take up a lot of room. By Monday, if I'd filled that bin full one more time, it would not have all gotten into the trashcan.

Tatting: I finished a couple of TotusMel's cameo pendant in that green. The second one turned out better than the first. That's not surprising, is it? Which do you think looks better, the round one or the ~oval one?

I started another one in red, but half way 'round the chain, the core thread is unraveling. I'm worried about it breaking, now. The thread is about perle 5 & very old (see the label? That company apparently went out of business in the 1940's). The color is 12505, sort of a Christmas red.

 See the threat? See how untwisted it is?

Here's what I do with the thread left on the shuttles. 

Gaming: We found where a loose end went at Thursday's M&M game. We just need to tie it off. The GM (David R) plans to wrap up the campaign this summer. Then he wants to run a short Traveller game. I haven't played Traveller since I was in college, or maybe high school.

And that's all, for now. Dun-dun-dun

Gaming & Craft links

I manage to tear another nail today. Don't wince, it didn't go down into the quick. It's just 1/3 the length that it used to be.

I also finished (minus the charm/bead center) the TotusMel cameo pendant with beads.

Fun links
combat tracker for 4e D&D
A wonderful steampunk clothing vendor
Adopt a word site
transform an old book into a new journal
I found a great site with blank postcard templates & now I have lost it. Bummer.

And just cause, here's a cloudy dawn picture.

Tatting & scratchies (pictures)

Here's the edging that I did. I'm not happy with how it turned out. I think that if I don't join the points, it will look better. I didn't make those picots long enough. It's an antique pattern that I found on-line. Of course, now I can't find the link.

Here's the unfinished pendant, TotusMel's cameo pendant. It needs to be ironed/pressed and it needs the central bead.

I'm going to do this one again, in perle 5 again, same thread. But I'm going to add silver beads to the outside edge.

Oh, and here's a glimpse of my arm, the 1st day of the amoxicilin reaction. By the Wednesday, my BF was making redskin jokes.

Surprise! 2 posts in 1 week

Shocking, isn't it? I'm finding politics to be particularly distressing right now. But it's spring, flowers are blooming (too bad that includes the Bradford pear trees), the sun is shining warmly, and the days are longer.

I mailed my postcard today (the one that I mentioned yesterday). It's not a crafty one that I made myself, or one showing local sites or sights, but still it's a postcard. Maybe I'll send a second one that is local or crafty. If you have some postcards, just sitting around, gathering dust, try making a little notebook/journal out of them. I've made some of these and they are so cute. Here's two from postcards that I got in Williamsburg, Va. The first one uses a ribbon to tie the pages into place. The 2nd one is stapled.

I think I have a certain nerd's (or maybe his wife's) birthday present. I think she find this book helpful; based on the blog post.
Here's a couple crafty links
This one is for simple fabric flowers, add to shirts or make pins
Fold towels to make pockets (like at fancy hotels)

And this is just neat, English spoken in different accents

Gaming: I think that I'd like to read through this; it's a simple, cliche driven game system called RISUS
I love these dice bags

More Photos of Fair & some of my own crafts & contest alert
tatting & ~knitting & my HallooBoobies entry [cleavage alert]
Not my contest, someone else's
Fangs, Fur & Fey are having a belated 3rd anniversary contest

Go to their site for instructions. Grand prize is a Kindle. Whoot!

Now to Picture fun

Rebecca/Tatmom03's cross - burgundy DMC perle 8. I start with a chain at the top. I leave a picot (using a large safety pin), so that I can end on a split ring & used the ends in a tassel.

Here's my entry in last week's BoobieWed contest (for Breast Cancer Awareness).


Not tatting, but a gorgeous State Fair Entry. And look, there's a matching hat!

TotusMel complained that she never got to see her pieces 'in the wild'. So I spent some time finding wild places & taking photos. The 1st one is just of me, wearing the pendant.

Then, one of my wearing the pendant on a pin (it's on my c.1812 pinafore that I was wearing on Saturday).

I put it on a tree (the one that the rughooker used to show off her ornaments)

Mum's the word

Do you ever wonder is someone is out of her gourd?

Look, the pendant made a friend!

I loaned it to one of the trolls in the Village of Yesteryear & had the dickens of a time getting it back (those trolls are known pranksters).

Luckily, that's a very patient duck.
I'm keeping my eyes open for other 'wild' places to put the pendant.

Last year, I ordered a basket for my tatting. Janet made a lipped basket with a secure lid and, well, here's a couple pictures.

A tisket, a tasket, a custom tatting basket

As you can see, it has a bar across the handle, so I can put a ball of thread there to either load my shuttle or as the chain thread, without it rolling away or getting tangled. The bar is high enough that I can fit a ball of size 10 knit-cro sheen without it hitting the lid handle. She made three baskets, although with shorted handles and sold two of them by the 1st Saturday of the fair. She started another basket for me, with a longer handle, and the 3rd one sold. If she'd had a 4th one, she would have sold that one, too.

I did a little knitting (Operation Gratitude, care packages for our soldiers in Afghanistan & elsewhere). I made a couple scarves. The first one is about 3' long and 3" wide. The 2nd one is about 2.5' long & 5" wide.

I have a horrid cough and am quite tired (I went home Wednesday & immediately went to sleep, woke up long enough to eat supper & then back to sleep - after 2 nights of full sleep!). I stayed home yesterday & that's when I finished the 2nd scarf. I didn't go to gaming either; I needed the rest & why chance infecting the others.

If you're interested this is the yarn that I used:

Here's a shot of the Fair, not far off the midway. Can you see the oak tree? It's huge.

Another ride photo: