New goodies!

Its been a crazy week this past week. Actually all month has been pretty nutz. I thought I deserved to be spoiled a little, so I went ahead and did the honors.

For my tatting pleasure, I bought some new picot gauges and a new shuttle that is shaped like a fish. I bought them from Georgia Seitz. I like them. The fish took a little getting used to and since it is so large I really cannot tat with it quickly.

I did this small bookmark to test out my new supplies. Actually I say small bookmark, but this is the second time I have made this and this one is longer. If you look close on one end you can see that I used a pull thread to hide my ends. Didn't do such a great job. Maybe if I rinse it and then use my fingers to reshape it, the piece will look better.

And because what girl really has enough hobbies? So I went out and bought a drop spindle! I'm so excited. I got the Hi-Lo spindle by Schacht. My first attempt was not so good. My second attempt was a little better. Then I found a video showing how to park and draft. This worked a little better. The left is a piece from my first hour of attempting to spin. As you can see there is some on the spool from my park and draft attempt and I really like how it is coming out. On the right is some roving I bought for when I can get a little more consistent.

And for those keep tabs on me. I'm caught up with my nano-wrimo novel. I am at 48.5k now and counting! I expect to win by the end of the day.

Fly Free Mimsy budgie

Well a couple of days ago I lost one of my little budgies. She was only about 4.5 years old. The vet believes it was either liver or respiratory disease. She hid her illness well. I had no idea. We ended up spending quite a bit at the vet office on her, but to no avail. I probably would have let her slip quietly away had I believed she was deathly ill. I thought she had broken a blood feather. She was having a serious moult. I had never seen her growing so many feathers in at once. I thought she was weakened from the blood loss because such a small bird doesn't have much blood to begin with. The illness overtook her and she left us around 10:30pm on Thursday the 12th.

I miss her. I have one other female budgie and she looks very depressed. I have two male budgies and they are singing and causing a raucous as is typical for them. I think in a day or two they will have once again lifted Myrtle's spirits and hopefully she will move on and not mourn her little companion of 4.5 years for too long. Mimsy and Myrtle used to always be found without a doubt side by side on a perch. It is sad seeing Myrtle sitting alone as the boys are too busy to settle down and just perch with her.

Fly free my sweet little Mimsy budgie.

I always thought she had such beautiful colorings of blue and yellow.

Here Myrtle (left) and Mimsy (right) keep each other company.

Again, Mimsy (left) and Myrtle (right) are inseparable.

This is a photo of Borogove (left), Mimsy (center) and Myrtle (right) when Boro and Mimsy were still babies. Myrtle was already an adult when they came to keep her company.

Tatting!

Well I have been taking a class in tatting. Two weeks ago the class ended. I would like to share a few photos of some of my accomplishments. I began tatting back in August and took a class this past month. These photos are not necessarily in order of date completed.

I just bought a nice 5x7 binder with acid free sleeves to put these pieces in. The only problem I have with it is the top is open and the pieces could fall out. I plan on trying to put them in order with dates finished, but so far they are in there randomly by pretty colors.

Some of my first silly pieces: butterflies, fish and running person.

A flock of doves.

First larger piece: boomkark.

Something for the holidays.

Celtic knot pumpkin--was harder than it looked. Not sure I knotted correctly.

Self Closing Mock Rings were my bane in the tatting class. The right is my first attempt. The left is my attempt just this past week after our kind instructor, Cynthia, stayed an hour after class to help a few of us with this technique.

Jellyfish....

ok ok it was supposed to be a fan, but I'm not good at split chains.

Autumn leaf. I did this back in August I think. The first thing I did with the online group.

Ringtrim. A cute design from AnneB.

I had to use regular split rings as I couldn't figure out the single shuttle split ring.

I <3>

A cute piece I did on my own.

Spanish Insertion. I need to block it, but I don't think that will help the spray of picots that shoot out in all directions. This is actually a very early piece, I'd like to think I'm better now.

My first very complicated piece.

I've learned enough in class I think I could climb from level to level a little more daintily now. And I think blocking would help this piece.

Split Ring Flower. Split rings were kinda fun to learn!

Halloween lameness

With diabetes in the house, we don't like having candy around or we'll eat it. So we decided not to pass out candy this year. My husband and I settled in for a quiet evening, but we kept getting trick or treaters even with the light off. So, we posted a sign.