Christmas came early this year!

I'm sure many you know about the fabulous give-away at Yarnplayer's blog a while ago, which I won! With so many entries (well over a hundred!) I never expected to win, because my luck abandoned me several years ago. When I was little I always won something at lotteries, but not anymore... Well, I certainly won't complain again! :)

I was barely awake this morning when the doorbell rang, so I didn't bother to get up. My mother-in-law answered the door, and shortly after my boyfriend came in carrying a big box. That got me up in a hurry! I sat on the bed and unpacked all the things and squeaked like a child at Christmas! I've been doing the happy dance all week since last Friday :)

Here's what was in the package:

Marilee's latest book Up and Tat 'Em. I've been drooling over this for a long time and can't wait to try the patterns in it, especially the Atom pendant. Ooh, and the book is signed, too! I love it when my craft books are signed, it makes them extra special :)

A toy dump truck! I'm giving it away to a couple who are expecting a baby boy in March, even though he probably won't play with it for a while yet :)

Thread! Lots and lots :) Ten 50 yard skeins of her hand dyed thread: "Bluegreen Pastel"(40 yard skein) size 10, "Corsage" sizes 10 & 20, "Pizazz" size 20, "Summer Trail" sizes 20 & 80 (eek!), "Nectarine" size 30, "Peace" size 20 + corresponding solids in Light Pink and Light Yellow. A most awsome collection of colors! :)

Two new Clover shuttles and two steel crochet hooks, sizes 0.4mm and 1mm (12). The largest hook will be part of a Christmas present for someone who wants to learn tatting. I won't mention any names, in case people should read this blog by accident :)

And she even sent a Christmas card! With camels! My favorite animals in the world (after hedgehogs, of course!) :) Thank you so much for this wonderful gift, Marilee, I love it!

Now I only need to find something to tat with all this lovely thread! It has to be something special. What can you make with 50 yards of size 20 thread? Does the thread last longer in the smaller sizes? I'd hate to start something that I couldn't finish... Any suggestions? :)

Get well shopping #2 :)

In case you're wondering why I've been so quiet lately (both here, on InTatters and The Tatting Forums) and not answering to all your lovely comments, it's because I haven't been feeling very well the last couple of weeks. I won't bore you with the long story (you can read about it on my other blog if you want), so I'll just say that I've been having problems with a very painful infection that has been very hard to kill. Things are looking up now, though, and I should be back to tatting soon :)

When I can't do anything useful (like homework and housework), I usually sit in my rocking chair wrapped in a big blanket with my laptop and surf the web until I've looked at the same sites a million times. And since I've been out of it pretty much constantly lately, I've spent a lot of time online looking for new shiny things. I've got a lot of packages in the mail last week and I thought I'd show you some of it :)

Today I got two packages from Roseground. Here are the contents of the first one:

Five balls of Lizbeth 20 :) The colors (from left to right) are #105 Confetti, #114 Sea Shell, #120 Denim Whisper, #133 Razzle Dazzle and #138 Leafy Greens. This is what was in the second package:

Two balls of Lizbeth 20 (that should have been 40!) in #140 Country Grape Swirl and #152 Christmas Green Mix, a set of mini crochet hooks, and a free sample of Lizbeth 40. Not sure about the color, but I think it might be #123 Grape Pizzaz. Another surprise was an extra crochet hook! The three original hooks in the set are size 6, 10 and 12. I have no idea if the sizes are British or American, but they look like they are 1.5mm, 1mm and 0.75mm respectively. The bonus hook (the one with the plastic cover) is 0.5mm. So tiny - now I can make my picots as small as I want :)

Now, this package has a long story to it... I actually made this order early in September (it was shipped on the 13th), but Roseground printed out the wrong address label and the package was sent to my mother's address (that's where I stayed when I made my first order from Roseground this summer). I suspected this had happened when the package didn't show up after about ten days, because my last order had been sent to my mother's a couple of weeks earlier. This was not really a problem, as it doesn't cost that much for my mother to forward my mail. However, I had just officially changed my address to the one I'm staying at most of the year, and it turned out that my package had probably arrived at the post office at my mother's place, where it had been forwarded to my current address. The problem was that some moron (or bad scanner, I don't know) couldn't read the address right, and it was finally returned to Roseground marked with "incomplete address". I can clearly see that it has the correct zip code! Sigh. Anyway, Roseground have been nothing but professional and helpful the whole time, and they now have my address right :) BUT, then there was another problem, when the threads I'd ordered came in the wrong size... I didn't really want to bother them again since it been so much back and forth with this package already (don't want to be the grumpy customer that's never satisfied), but friendly Twitterers advised me to let them know, so I've sent an e-mail. We'll see what happens...

Yesterday I got a package from Lacis :) This turned out be a bit silly, since the only reason I made the order was to get one of those really tiny crochet hooks (0.4mm) because the ones in the set from Roseground would be a bit bigger, and I hadn't expected the bonus hook... Oh, well, at least I got three new colors of the Lacis shuttles :) From top to bottom the colors are Oyster, Silver and Green:

 

Some more threads I got a while ago:

Two balls of Lizbeth 20 in #695 Bright Orange and #130 Island Breeze. You might understand from the orange that I plan to make pumpkins for Halloween? :)

Lizbeth 40 in #100 Falling Leaves, #604 Black, #115 Springtime and #147 Red Burst.

And a set of tatting needles in sizes 3, 5, 7 and a free bonus needle size 8:

I've also done some book shopping lately :) The first to arrive was this treasure:

A Pattern Book of Tatting by Mary Konior. It was fairly expensive (though not really by Norwegian standards - it's just my budget that can't allow it), so I asked my grandmother  if she would want to give me this as an early Christmas present, and she agreed :) I bought the book used on Amazon, and it came with a little surprise inside! 

I'm guessing the previous owner (possibly "Jean Mortimer"?) tatted this and forgot she put it in there before selling the book. The pattern is "Wild Rose", the last pattern in the book. Also I finally got Rozella Linden's Celtic Tatting Knots and Patterns and Tatted Animals by Inga Madsen:

All three of these books have so many things I want to make, I don't know when I'll ever find the time! Now I just have to take my medicine and get well, and hopefully I'll have more tatting to show soon :)

Oops! Just realized that this has become a really long post! But it has lots of pictures, and you all like to look at pretty pictures - right? *grin*

Flora thread & two small snowflakes

Last week I got these three balls of Flora 20 that I ordered from Tatting & Design:

From left to right the colors are #55, #56 and #58. I was a bit disappointed when I got them because the two orange ones are a lot more similar than I'd expected. I thought perhaps I'd picked the wrong numbers when ordering, but I found out that it's more a case of the colors in the chart being photographed poorly. I thought that the middle ball would have more yellow in it (and possibly some red), but it's really just orange and white. The right ball is a pinkish peach (apricot?) and white. Plus the actual color numbers were hard to make out on the chart - I almost ordered 66 instead of 56... Too bad. I enjoy working with this thread, though it feels a little stiffer and coarser than the Lizbeth. However, I think it doesn't twist as much :) I had to test the thread right away, and I made the little blue and white snowflake:

The pattern is "Pinwheel Snowflake" from Vida Sunderman's book Tatted Snowflakes. I had hoped that the blue would make the snowflake look sort of frosty, but it came out too blue because I had to change shuttles more often than I was supposed to. My boyfriend didn't even see that it was a snowflake :/

The white snowflake one that I made a while ago to test some thin thread I found at my mother's. It's Mölnlycke Virkgarn size 50 (eek!), the pattern is "Whirlaway Snowflake" from the same book as the other one. I didn't like working with that thread, because it twisted so bad that I had huge problems closing up the rings :/ It's probably quite old...

Speaking of snowflakes - I have Lene Bjørn's 24 Snowflakes in Tatting, and I intend to use it as my Advent calendar this year. One snowflake every day in December until Christmas :)