Fiber fun

I've been having lots of fun with my fibery crafts lately - trying anxiously to distract myself from the wheel countdown. If you remember correctly, I was expecting Feb 14th to be the day, but it turns out that is the day they were supposed to ship it, so, alas, I am still waiting and jumping at any ring of my phone to tell me that she's arrived. I'm not terribly hopeful she'll be here by the end of this week, but maybe next week! (fingers crossed). So, to distract myself, I've done a little tatting. I made this cute little cat face and put it on a notecard to serve as Marc's birthday card. It ended up really cute, although a bit wonky in one bit - I'm still working on reading the tatting patterns and knowing when to "reverse work" or not. It's coming along though, and I'm enjoying it. Marc really liked the card! Here it is:

A few weeks ago, when I brought my first tatting into TYF, I had several people offer me some more shuttles. I greatly appreciated it because I only have the two and they are somewhat hard to find. Cora Lee, one of TYF's employees brought in two big boxes of over 100 shuttles that a friend had given her. They ranged antique silver to cheap plastic and everything in between. Cora Lee let me have a few of them, so here they are! I have three favorite and the others are more utilitarian. These first two are in the favorite category.

It's hard to see in the pictures but the one on the right has faint flowers carved into it and has the date Aug 1868 on it. That one happens to be my favorite of them all.

All three of these pictures are of the more modern but still pretty type that I ended up with.

This last is one of the three favorites, made of shell.

When I first brought the tatting in, Laurie let me buy two balls of thicker crochet thread to practice with, because the thread I had in my stash was over 60 yrs old and very very tiny. I'm using the light purple to practice and the hope is with the pink sparkly one I will make Christmas ornaments for gifts for next year. I've really been getting the hang of tatting, it's been fun to learn a new craft and study my way through new patterns. I've started a bookmark for Cora Lee to thank her for her gift of the shuttles.

Browsing Ravelry last week, I found the cutest pattern for mittens. I just had to make them for the executive director of my horsemanship program - they have little owls on them. I made them out of Cascade eco alpaca and they turned out fabulously. The hardest part was sewing on the eyes! They are blocked and ready to be gifted, but alas I was not able to go to horsemanship this week (see future post) and will have to wait until next week. They are super soft and not heavy at all. I hope she likes them!

Now, I just have to keep waiting on my Ladybug... (big sigh)