Laborious

I know I do this far too often, but what a weekend. Straight to the point, on Saturday my siblings, and other family members moved my mother out of her rental home into the one she just purchased. I won't go into all the drama that this house buying has been for her and subsequently for me, but hopefully that is all behind us now. We spent much of the day finishing up the packing, and while the others loaded and transported the household, I staged boxes and cleaned and cleaned and cleaned some more. Did I mention she has two large dogs, a cat and since the house was in the country...a mice problem? We won't speak of that again. It was one of the most laborious days I can remember and it left me sore and mentally exhausted so Sunday was almost a wash...almost.

 Well let me go back and say I got some more lovely strange lace pictures on Friday as I was almost done. I was going to put them all here, but I think I'll just put up one and add the rest to my flickr. On Sunday, once I was feeling more focused again I got back to work on the art lace and managed to finish the tatting! Yes, all three are tatted up and now waiting to be cleaned and pressed. Not sure I'm going to rush to do that step, but I'm still pleased that they are done.

I also had a few more interesting tasks to tackle. First was a request for the small flower earrings on posts. I have a bit of a confession first, I generally don't make jewelry that I don't wear, in fact I rarely even think of doing so unless asked. For example I don't wear post earrings ever so it never even occurred to me to make them. I knew that I could tat onto a post, but what I wasn't sure about was whether they would wear well or not with the lace so close to flesh. I don't glue them on, but tat around the base so the lace is on both sides.

So I picked up some inexpensive post bases and made a quick pair for me to test. They tatted up ridiculously easily with almost no pattern adjustment to fit the bases I got and then I popped them in my ears. They're still there now being tested for wear. I'm actually pretty impressed, I slept in them and they're still in perfect shape. Next I'm going to "accidentally" shower in them and see how that works out for them since I never remember to take earrings off myself. If they survive they'll probably get a small crystal or bead in the center to hide the post and then become a shop offering, well not this exact pair of course.

I also have one other task I'm working on that requires much thought and fiddling round as a proposal to create something unique has been passed by me. I didn't get to work on it as much as I would have liked over the weekend because of all the physical labor and recovery time, but that's on tap for today after I get a couple of small pieces remade. It's going to be a bit of an odd week though as we have an all day field trip tomorrow and a teacher meeting for the other child on Thursday, but I'll see what I can do. Hopefully in the middle of all this some of the potential customers that have contacted me with requests will come back and I'll have some paid work to get to as well. Then it would be a perfect sort of week.