Needle Tatting and other Nonsense

I just realized as I sat down that today is Friday and thus the last blogging day of the year. See, I had grand plans of doing a big end of the year post with a look back at this past years "achievements" and placing some goals for the coming year into print, but the week got completely away from me. So, I suppose I'll wing this a bit. I just went back and looked at last years post and this is what I discovered:

"So where do I go for next year then? As much as I do still adore the round numbers, they are not really a true gauge of my success, they are just reminders that we live in a base 10 world. Sure, I could ask for the fame thing again, but that is a wild crap shoot. If I made half an effort to make it happen of course, but we all know I am too lazy and much too chicken to go out on many ledges. So I guess I'll stick with practical this year. I will try to make another Instructable and another video. I will continue to design, grow and learn. I will watch kittens and children grow, take care of my family, make a few new friends, babble in my blog and try to be better person."

Every year before that post I laid out a bunch of round number goals for the year, but given my paragraph of goals here, this past year was a rousing success. This past year saw not one, but four new Instructables posted, a new video and plenty of new designs. The children and the cats kept on growing and everyone appears healthy and happy. I'm lucky to be online where I am constantly meeting new people and folks read and occasionally respond to my babbling. It's been a year full of getting really close to fame and not quite breaking through, but all of that had lessons to teach. Tatting made it to a New York runway and I sold not one, but two of the fanciest masks I've ever made. All in all it was a pretty good year and I won't muck up next year with a list of numbers either. In fact, that stuff I said last year, I'd like to do all that again.

One last thing for the year, a new mask. I was searching for more inspiration for my next project when I ran across a prototype mask made years ago. I was a complete fail, but I never tossed it assuming one day I would have the skills to resurrect it. Yesterday was apparently that one day.  The original is under the new work there. I made it with medallions all of the same size and it fits like it was made by a five year old with a pile of yarn. This time I decided to shape the design by not only decreasing the size of the center medallion, but also making the medallions on the side asymmetrical so they would grow out to the sides giving the piece the proper shape without losing the overall size.

In the end I also added more to the bottom giving the mask more coverage and I completely reworked the edging I used at the top to a more organic design giving the top more structure so the points didn't flop about. The new mask is on the bottom here. I know you can't really tell how bad the top mask is here without it being on a face, but trust me, this was a design achievement I thought I never get. I probably won't get it listed until Monday since I hate doing photo shoots with the husband around...even when he doesn't actually mock me, it is perceived.

So there you have it, the end of the year, a new mask and that leaves us at the weekend. Thank you to all of you who read this blog or the Wunderkammer, buys my tatting, follows me on twitter or joined the facebook fan page. Many thanks for commenting, consoling, commiserating, offering up ideas and for putting up with my occasional  nonsense...or pretending to anyway. Thank you once again for being part of my year and I hope to see you in the new one.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!