Thank You!

Happy Thanksgiving to all of those out there that celebrate. To the rest of the world, happy Thursday! I am, as usual, hosting the family meal today. This means that yesterday was devoted to cleaning and then worrying every time the kids walked by that they undid some part of my cleaning.

When I wasn't cleaning, I was working on the crochet blanket. When I stopped to measure it, I got an unpleasant surprise. It seems it is not growing at the rate I thought it was. Good news though, my blind crochet on the car trip yielded no major mistakes. I'm afraid I'm going to be at it longer than I had hoped. I'll still get it done by the time it's needed...I think, but with not much time to spare.

Since it is Thanksgiving, I wanted to take a minute to thank all of those out there that read my nonsense and ever so occasionally comment on it. Thank you to all of you who have ever bought a piece from me or a pattern, your support is appreciated more than you know. Thank you to all of you who have helped or encouraged me in my tatting journey. I have definitely been going through a rough patch, both creatively and sales wise lately, so thank you too for letting me vent here. I wish the best for all of you and I hope your holiday seasons are stress free and enjoyable!

(p.s.  If you're interested, you can get free shipping this season in my etsy shop with the code THANKYOU and do feel free to share the code)

It's Done

I'm alive! Okay, it wasn't that bad, but it was quite a busy, people packed day from dawn to dusk. We ended up with a total of 20 people for dinner. This after dinner photo should illustrate the level of chaos I was dealing with most of the day. My brother-in-law took the picture and my mother had already left at this point, but this is almost everyone. I'd name them all, but that would take forever. Suffice it to say that the house was full and loud, there was much eating and playing and much to my delight it is silent and clean now.



We still have a few guests left in the house, but today is going home day for all of them. As much as I may have complained about the extra chaos I'm going to miss having them all around I think as will the kids. i do love my family.

Also to my great delight I received a few sales during the course of the day lifting my spirits about this holiday season and giving me plenty of tatting tasks to get back to now that the great Thanksgiving feast is over and Hotel Quevedo is closing.

I shall leave you with some more after dinner photos of our guest cats, who I'm certain my cats won't miss at all, and the youngest child who wasn't tired...at all. It's been quite a week and with two family birthdays this weekend I don't think it plans on slowing down at all until Monday. Of course then it's back to schooling and the children will fight that with all their being and I will have entirely new things to leave me exhausted. For now I shall hide in the house far away from Black Friday and rest a bit.

Thanksgiving Chaos

Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends and a lovely, probably less stressful Thursday to everyone else. This entire week has been one activity packed blur and yesterday brought it to a whole new level. At eight in the morning my sister dropped of her four kids and our last house guest arrived just after noon. That put the total house population at 6 kids, 6 adults and 8 cats for the day. Luckily the extra children were all gone in the afternoon and the chaos died down a bit, but just a bit. There are people coming and going, cats being territorial and the sheer amount of dishes I've been washing everyday is staggering. Amidst all this, I've still managed to pick up my needle and get a little tatting work done. In fact it has become something of a refuge allowing me to ignore the yelling children and stay out of a conversation or two thus maintaining my sanity.

Of course today might be the breaking point. In addition to the current house population there will be the 4 more kids and up to 8 more adults in the house for dinner. I say up to because some people have yet to confirm their attendance one way or the other. If you couldn't tell...this irks me a bit. This really isn't one of those, 'well I might pop by' sort of meals. Calming down now. I need all my patience and grace to get through the days cooking, eating, socializing and cleaning. I am truly grateful to have so much of my family here. I'm also glad this sort of chaos only rains down a few times a year.

This is a picture the husband took last night just after dinner. That's my grandfather there in the foreground. My brother just past him with my youngest and me and the oldest is sitting on the floor. We all have an electronic device. The girls their games and the adults and their computers. Even the husband was playing on his phone before he snapped this evidence of our electronic devotion. I swear we don't look like this all day.

I don't plan on doing any Black Friday or Cyber Monday deals in the etsy shop. They've never done well int he past. That's likely because people save their shopping on those days for the big boxes with much better deals than I can offer. Having said that I'm sure hoping that sales do pick up and with more of my listings including the color variation options, I hope it's soon so I can make sure custom pieces can be made and shipped in a timely manner. So I suppose if you're reading this and you plan on picking up something for holiday gifts I'm saying you might want to get on that soon especially if you'd like pieces in custom colors. Alright, it's time to wrap this up and steel my nerves for the chaos...have a great day everyone.

Turkey Coma

I am slightly less than lucid this morning. There was of course much cleaning, cooking and chaos. The house filled with 18 people and 3 small dogs and shockingly returned to n almost normal state in very little time. The turkey roast far to quickly thanks to out lack of knowledge regarding my new houses convection oven. Though the warming featured allowed us the time to create the rest of the meal before any damage was done. However, I actually had to prepare food and that was not our standing arrangement. I provide house, tables, dishes and workspace...I do not cook, I babysit and baste, but that is the extent of my skill level. Perhaps one day I shall take on these responsibilities from the "real" adults, but not yet man, not yet.

I did manage a little tatting between basting. I got a custom order the other day for one of my slave bracelet designs. I always state that they can be adjusted to other sizes upon request, but I always forget how challenging that can be. Let's face it, a design is created in a certain size. If the adjustment is exactly two motifs large, everything goes swimmingly. If the adjustment is very slight, I usually add a splint ring section to the edge that doesn't disturb the existing design. It's when the adjustment length is in between these sizes, that my brain cells are taxed. It took me seemingly forever to create an appropriate half motif for either side of the bracelet to keep in the design and the function. The saddest part, I will forget what I did next time and have to do this all over again. I know, I could just take a picture of the piece, but yeah...that would make it easy.

If you're looking for my black Friday/Cyber Monday deal...I'm afraid you won't really find one. I have given the entire store free worldwide shipping through the holiday shopping season and that's it for me. I may still put up the occasional one day facebook sale, but honestly it gets tiring maintaining those as well. I'd rather put my efforts into creating pieces as quickly as possible. Once the holidays have past, I'm looking forward to more designing and creating more tutorials for Instructables and maybe I'll actually submit something to the new Stampington publication on string. I really wanted to do that for their first issue, but I just don't seem to have the patience to do the step out photos and get all the instructions together for anything. It's just such a hassle to photograph everything one step at a time, when I've so many other things and people demanding my attention, but I digress. This babble fest is over for the week. I'll be back Monday, hopefully fresh and revived.