Just thinking

I love playing. Mainly with shuttles and threads but I also love playing with the computer and the tricks you can do on it and with it.

Teri Dusenbury told me yesterday how she manages to get little hearts into her email signature. Thanks Teri - I was only being me - drop dead nosy!!!

It's the same with this blog. I love 'tinkering' with it - mind I do get 'shouted at' when I suddenly change the colours to VERY bright!!!!

When I found the 'followers' gadget of course, I had to play!! What's that saying about babies and playing? This IS my second childhood (who said 'only second'?) so I'm allowed to play. When I found it I added the 'followers' gismo to the blog. It's amazing to find that over 40 people now follow the ramblings of the 'old git in the UK'.

BUT what's really, really, REALLY good about this gadget is that you can follow other people. I find that this is an advantage as those I follow are easy to find on the dashboard. When they've updated their blogs it shows there straight away.

I use Mozilla Firefox or Opera as browsers as they have 'tabs' which you can leave open all the time. This way I can 'hop' from one tab to the other. In the first tab I've got my emails, the second is igoogle (customised to show all my favourites like the weather, the time, translator, currency convertor etc), the third tab has yahoo tatting groups, the forth my Etsy shop, the fifth has my blog (dashboard open!) and the other tabs are usually stuff I'm currently interested in.

This means I can just click on my blog tab and keep an eye on 'who's doing what' in tat land. It's a brilliant idea for a nosy tatter. Thanks, blogger.com. Thanks.

The last lot!! I hope!!!

I think this is the last of the Christmas dangles. Well, it will be IF I stop giving them away to all and sundry!!!

I've decided to 'dump' three people off my giveaway list. Why? Well it seems to be one way traffic with them and I haven't heard from two of them (apart from a card) for several years. In fact the one person I haven't ever met and another not seen since I was forced into another stage of my life - and that's a loooong time ago.

I suddenly realised yesterday that I don't have a 'set' of Christmas trees for myself to wear this season. So that's my next task!! I've listed all the ones I've made in my Etsy shop - how daft is that? So I will make myself a couple of brooches and a pair of earwigs. I may make three more brooches for three women who have 'put up' with me popping into their office many times over the past few weeks and who thought I was so wrong to trust somebody else. I must add that my trust paid off!!!

Change of direction

Why can't I ever stick to just one thing?

The story behind this owl is that I had a letter yesterday. Well, several and all in one envelope!! When I left school at the age of 18 (left as in 'almost' expelled for being a clown) the few of us that were left in the sixth form decided to start a round robin letter. This was almost fifty years ago now. We lost one or two during the years and one or two returned. We also picked up another who left school the year before us. One of the group dropped a BIG hint that she'd like a tatted owl so that's what I made for her yesterday. I'd forgotten how long they take to make so it almost didn't get finished yesterday evening!!! I had to get a move on with it as it's got a long journey ahead. Nita lives in Tasmania!!!

I forgot to mention too that last week I added some bits and bobs to my Etsy shop too.

Christmas Sequins

OK so today I'm going to show you really, really ugly tatting.

The story behind this is that one of my son in laws LOVES my tatted Christmas ornaments so requested some for their tree. I've done lots of these sequin dangles for giveaways but he particularly wants red and gold for their tree. (I might add here that I'm not fond of Christmas colours at the best of times!!).

So I've revisited the pattern. The one on the left below is OK but the one on the right (with the green) is really, really ugly. I'm going to make a couple more just to get over the ugly one.

Finished!

As promised - pictures of the finished jacket.

First one is of me trying to get back into the house on halloween. Nick had locked me out!!!!

OK, that's the day's sillyness over with!!! Here it is - done and dusted!!! I think I might wear it when I meet up with other lacers in a couple of weeks time. It needs an outing!! At the moment it's drying out as I rinsed it yesterday to remove the washable pen marks. I use one of 'those' fabric pens when I'm sewing to mark things like buttonholes!!

Back to the jacket!!

To Carol and anybody else who might be wondering what's happened to the animal jacket, let me assure you all that it's back in favour again!!!!

As is my normal way of working - I'd fallen out with it for a while!! I'm now working on some braiding for the cuffs!!! After some thought I decided (or rather, 'him wot must be obeyed') suggested that there shouldn't be animals on the sleeves. I agreed that it would be 'overdone' with them on there so have done some cuff trimmings. Jennifer suggested snakes for the cuffs and I may get two done for the sleeves. Not sure until the cuffs are finished if this will 'happen'!!!!

I'd like to add to Martha's comment on yesterday's post - and point out that giving blood is not only good for the community but also a regular health check for yourself!!