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? :)

Good news!

1 - I had my Biology exam today, and it went great! I got a B :D I'm quite pleased with that, even though I think I could've got an A if I hadn't hesitated on a few of the questions, the answers of which aren't even in my book (I have checked!). Since this was just a final exam and not following a course, the students are free to choose between two or three different books with the same basic contents and varying detail information. All I could say was that what they were asking for was not in my book, but still all my answers were correct... That sort of bugs me a little, but most of all I'm just relieved that it's over. I really don't like oral exams :/ But, afterwards my boyfriend surprised me with a bottle of wine! So tonight I've been enjoying a glass of red and tatting happily away on the snail from Tatted Animals :) Trying out the Lizbeth "Razzle Dazzle" for the shell. Looks promising so far!

2 - When I notified Roseground that two of the Lizbeth balls I got were the wrong size, they apologized and shipped the balls in the right size, and I got to keep the wrong ones! Bonus :) So now I have "Christmas Green Mix" and "Country Grape Swirl" in both size 20 and 40. Sweet!

Happy tatting to you all! Hope I'll have more new tatting to show you soon :)

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 :)

Get well shopping :)

I haven't been feeling too well lately. About three weeks ago I had the flu, or possibly just a common cold but with some flu-like symptoms. I got better, but then I had the almost tendonitis in my wrists from crocheting too much, and I felt a bit unwell again. I went to the doctor a few days later to see if there was anything to do about it, and while I was waiting at the doctor's office my mother-in-law called my boyfriend, and she freaked out a bit when she heard where I was, all worried and stuff. But when I later told her it was nothing serious she was very relieved and sent some money for me to go out and treat myself to something nice. The choice was very easy. Can you guess? *tamtamtam* Thread! 

A ball of Idena Dixi and four balls of Coats Puppets (or is it Eldorado? I've never seen this thread before). They are all somewhere between size 10 and 20, and I hope I can combine them with Lizbeth 20 :) I also got these lovely buttons:

I asked if the store had any of the plastic tubes they keep their buttons in, and I got a whole bunch of them! Thought perhaps I'd get one of the really thin ones to keep tatting needles in (yes, I have ordered some!), but this time they only had the fat ones. I can use them to sort out my button collection, but the biggest one is even large enough to keep shuttles in! I got them for free since the store just throws them away when they're empty :)

My mother wanted me to pop by a fairly expensive craft store I rarely visit to check out the quality of some yarn for her knitting. While I was in there I looked around for tatting stuff, and tada! I found these two shuttles:

Unfortunately none of the ladies at the store could tell me the brand of the shuttles :( The plain blue one has GERMANY printed on it, at exactly the same place as another shuttle I got on eBay, which was bought used and came in the package saying it was an Aero. 

When I saw the bobbin shuttle I just had to get it, because it's pretty and purple! It has the exact same shape as the normal Aero, but it has no print. But the best part is the bobbin, which is also purple! 

I don't think I'll ever get tired of collecting stuff in different colors! I'm still not feeling 100%, so I'm mostly staying at home to read biology and relax as much as possible. And of course I tat a lot :D

Tatting to go

I went by the book store to get a new notebook today, and look what else I found! (Sorry about the quality of the pictures - I just used my poor old phone bacause I don't transfer pics from my camera unless I have at least 30 photos to upload, and I just emptied it yesterday...)

A pretty ordinary pencil case, you may think, made of black nylon canvas and (fake?) brown leather. But wait... These are not pencils!

Just look at all the stuff I can get in it!

Three balls of Lizbeth, a bigger ball of some other thread, and eleven shuttles of various shapes and sizes :) Now I can bring my tatting around easily, including WiPs that are attached to a ball, and I don't have to worry too much about squashing or breaking anything. I chose this because of the shape (wider at the bottom) and the fabric, plus it will be even sturdier if I don't remove the piece of cardboard that came with it. Now I am one happy tatter and ready to tat anywhere :)

I bought this for two reasons: one, I have seen some pretty tatting bags out there, and I've wanted one for a good while but can't really afford one; two, my precious tatting box is showing some signs of wear and tear on the lid, and I don't want to ruin it, so I've decided to leave it at home. Unless of course I'm going on a longer holiday - then I would have to bring my entire stash! Here's my dear tatting box, in case you haven't seen it before:

I love that little goblin so much, he's such a cutie :)

Lizbeth thread & a small motif

A few days ago I got three balls of Lizbeth 20 in the mail, ordered from this site. I simply love all the different colors this thread comes in, especially the variegated ones. At least from the site I'm using, the color selection is much bigger for size 20 than size 40, so that's what I ordered. I'm used to working with size 20, but I'm starting to realize that using thinner threads isn't as scary as I thought! Two balls of Lizbeth size 40 is on their way already, and at least one of them will be used for a Christmas present for my mother :)

The colors I have are #131 Vineyard Harvest, #119 Jelly Bean and #146 Mocha Swirl. Love them! Naturally I had to test the thread right away, and last night I finished this small motif from Julia E. Sanders's Tatting Patterns:

Pattern is "Oval Motif for Triangle 2" (fig. 59 on pages 25 and 27), color is Vinyeard Harvest. As usual this thing needs some serious blocking to become symmetrical :)

I has heard a lot of good things about the Lizbeth thread, but also a lot of bad, so I was really exctited to try it. I love it! It does twist a little, but so does every other thread I've worked with so far, and there's a really simple solution to that problem: drop your shuttle and let it dangle until it stops spinning :) One problem I had not foreseen, though... With the variegated thread I end up finishing the piece with ends that totally don't match the colors of the parts they need to be worked into.  I don't like to cut & tie, because that tends to unravel after a while... What other options do I have? Hmm...