Christmas Trees

 

I'm preparing for tomorrow's craft group meeting. The project requires glue! I'm sure it's good for me to go outside my comfort zone, but I find that difficult to believe as I get all sticky and try to keep track of little red blobs. 

I finished 15 bags yesterday, with the help of the cutting mat that appears in the top picture. It's marvelous for keeping everything square and ship shape. 

Bag Lady

 

I'm sewing bags for jewelry again. It's easier than the bags I sewed a year ago because all the bags are one size and there's no dyeing involved. I've been asked to sew them because the lady who usually does it, Liz, is ill. Liz is a quilter and very meticulous; I hope I can keep up her standards! She sewed the bags in the picture, I just finished them off by threading the ribbons. 30 bags a month are needed. I'll carry on until Liz feels better. 

I'm also still working on the lavender. I delivered eight on Sunday and made two more yesterday. 

Tatting Lesson

 

I took my shuttles to the knit and natter session yesterday because Maria wants to learn to tat. She learnt beaded crochet rope in a flash and a blur, but tatting is a bit more tricky. Especially as she is left handed and I am right handed. I showed her briefly last week and then she looked on the internet, but didn't find a tutorial that helped. I showed her again yesterday, starting with two colours so that it's easy to see how the flip works. Maria did see that, and feel it,  so now she knows what she's aiming for and I'm sure she'll soon get the hang of it. Slightly disturbing was that she discovered a way of tatting a ring with direct (unflipped) stitches! I said I thought she'd be better in the long run to learn the correct way to tat a ring, even if her version did move. 

Christmas Decorations

 Already? Well, the group in the retirement home will be closed in December, so we thought we could make a start. I've just been making a sample for this week's project, a fabric bell. I found it via Pinterest, it's here. It says it's a tutorial, but really it's a picture and a lot of adverts! But the bell is very simple, so I guess I've worked out what to do. 

Last week we made angels out of tongue depressor sticks and ice cream sticks:

Pinterest had a picture from Erika Trechova. 

The week before, we made Christmas baubles using styrofoam balls:

The balls are coloured using a mixture of glue and flood colouring. Messy to apply, so I did that job at home and just took them along to be decorated. 

Fixing The Link

 I tried to review my own lavender pattern yesterday and found that the link on the sidebar didn't work! I've now fixed it. I think the problem is that http// or whatever it is, is already on the layout and then appears again when you copy the link. So a lot of deleting went on the put the link in properly. 

One Leaf Or Two?

 

I have another order for tatted lavender, 20 this time. I was a bit short of green on the shuttle on one stalk, so I left the leaf off. The leaf is definitely the most time consuming part of doing the lavender. I wondered if I should only do one leaf per bunch to speed things up a bit. Or does it look better with two?

I've Been Tatting

 

I spent yesterday afternoon tatting Frivole's new snowflake pattern. Mine is not really presentable, I made a few mistakes, nothing to do with the pattern itself!