New, New, New

Yay, so much tatting done and there are even photos to share. First up we have the wedding lot that includes the new tatted moth and a fine bevy of boutonnieres. There is a little finishing work that still needs to be done on these before they are off, some jump rings, a little stiffening and a few pressed petals. Otherwise though the pile is complete. I think I might post up the pattern to the moth once I get some time to write it out properly.

Next up we have a brand new set based on the Tenebrous pattern that I mentioned yesterday. Sometimes all I need is a good reason to muck with a pattern. First I came up with the choker version by converting half the design into an edging. It is very similar to other edgings but this one matches perfectly. I was over thinking the conversion at first with split rings and other nonsense. In the end it was just moving a picot, dropping another and adding a strategically placed chain and done.

Last was the conversion of my Petite Goth bracelet into a matching piece. This one had to be over thought and once I had the plot I started the bracelet. This wouldn't have been a problem except my original idea was to make the little edge motif first and then tat it into the bracelet when I reached the center. Rather than stop and start over once I realized I jumped the gun, I just figured out a new way to work it in. Surprisingly the unholy union of the two designs seems to have worked. I still need to lengthen the piece and make its mate as well, but I'm happy with the matched set at this point.

Lastly today, I would like to thank everyone who offered suggestions and help regarding the Wunderkammer both here and elsewhere. I appreciate the advice and the offers. I had a handful of folks willing to do guest curations and my response was that I am too much of a control freak to keep my hands off of them at this point. Rather than abandon the idea though, I will be brainstorming for a way that I think they might work. I also think that the posting dates of the Wunderkammer will be shifting to Tuesday through Saturday so I don't have to do them on the weekend at all. It was also suggested that I do some in advance and schedule the posts for later. I have tried that in the past and almost every time something featured would sell in the meantime and I disliked having sold pieces there meaning I'd go back and redo the whole thing. So that's the plan for now...crap it's bill day, I've gotta fly.

Photo Unrelated

Well happy Monday my friends and a hearty Huzzah, I have slept. After my husband took over the weekend sleepover duties in the kids room, last night I returned only to stay for a mere half hour. They appear to have slept though the night, as have I. Of course there's all that sleep deficit that I'll be working through for the next week or so added to be a weekend full of weed eradication that gave me claw hand, but the task is complete and we have just those backsliding days to look forward to now.

I'm afraid I have no shiny tatting pictures to show though it is not for lack of working. There was much tatting over the weekend as I made up many moths and boutonnieres for an upcoming wedding. The only sad news I have to report, is while the hand dyed yard arrived and it is stunningly gorgeous, my monitor lied to me and it is far lighter than the pictures I saw. My husband kept chirping wysiwyg at me, but in the past the color difference from the images has been so slight as to be irrelevant. It's not a problem though, I had ordered some commercial thread in advance as a fall back position and it's shade is just fine if not as exotic, so that is what I used.

I also had another customer return to ask for a custom colored set. The pieces she wanted, while similar didn't really match so I offered to design her set a little more cohesively. She accepted so after today's home school sessions, I'll be designing a nice simple new necklace based on the Tenebrous sets. They themselves are based on a vintage diamond or square shaped motif so all I really need to work out is the best way to chop them in half and string them together. I've already got that worked out in theory, so it's really just about doing today.

In other news, I'm getting sick of my other blog, the Wunderkammer. Well not really sick of it, but rather enslaved to in. I've made both of my blogs Monday through Friday endeavors and with the Wunderkammer that means writing the day before. So the only day I have off completely is Saturday. I know, I don't 'have' to do it those days...it's not like I'm getting paid or even have more than the one project wonderful paid ad. Point is I'm starting to think of that one as a job...that I don't get paid for. It started because I was always making treasuries at etsy and this way they might actually get seen by an outside audience. I wanted to not only help out sellers that I thought were talented, but help other people wade through all the crap at etsy to find the interesting gems in this niche, but I guess I'm starting to feel like I need to get 'something' out of it. The simple satisfaction is not cutting it so much anymore. Is it wrong to want a little, I don't know...something? There really wasn't a point to this ramble, I just needed to vent. Now it's off to the tatting and I promise there will be pictures of tatting in the morning and hopefully a lot of it. In the meantime please enjoy this picture I took of a pair of dragonflies...in love.

Kuroneko Sama

Night three of sleeping on floor...tired...shall attempt complete sentences momentarily...yawn. You know what's funny, I really did just yawn while writing that sentence. This isn't fiction people, I'm exhausted. They were better last night and while the youngest did come down for cuddling, there was no sad whimpering. Tonight I trade with Daddy and we can see what they do without Mommy and more importantly, we'll see how I do on a real nights sleep.

Yesterday wasn't an amazing day, but it did have several moments of wonderful. From the early morning 'thank you' from a customer telling me how her earrings made her outfit to the lovely bride two weeks from her wedding telling me how much she loves her necklace and can't wait to wear it. The day was full of pleasant sentiments. I went about reading a few blogs as my cat had bit through my finger...again and I needed to stall a while before I could tat again pain free. I commented and received a few more utterly sweet responses. In fact all my dealings with people yesterday were wonderful. Twitter people were funny, etsy people who just wrote to say they liked something and my moth was shockingly well received by it's commissioner. I don't know what was in the kool-aid yesterday, but please keep drinking it, I like this world.

I did get some better pictures of the cat mask and I kept thinking that it looked just like an anime cat, but which one was alluding me. When it came time to name the piece I thought harder and the answer came to me. It's the cat from the Trigun series. So that's what I named it, Kuroneko Sama. I'd also like to point out my...interesting picture here. I wanted to show what it would look like were you to wear black makeup around the eyes when wearing the mask, but I did not want to muck up the mask with makeup, so I drew it on the picture in gimp. I know, sad right? It actually looks fine in the thumbnail, but as the picture gets bigger, well you can tell how 'awesome' I am. I also didn't wear any extra makeup before taking the pictures, didn't put on anything interesting. In other words I totally phoned these in. Luckily I think the mask looks neat anyway.

I didn't get my thread in yet, but I didn't really expect to. It might show today, more likely tomorrow, but I did start work on the wedding piece anyway as they are all two color and I can get some stages knocked out while I wait. On a side note, needle tatting with a band aid on my index finger is quite cumbersome. On another side note, the fellow who initially sparked the boutonniere in the first place with a request and then vanished, reappeared this morning. I guess I'm not the only one who, if I don't respond immediately, will forget my head only to remember it many moons later. This is of course why I reply to things so very quickly. In fact if you ask me something and don't hear from me within a day...you might want to ask again or you never will...seriously. Well that's it, I'll be working on wedding pieces and perhaps a little remaking over the weekend, but otherwise no big plans. After last weekends massive party, I look forward to a little nothing. Oh and never think you're speaking out of turn when you offer a friendly opinion or comment. I mean, I may not listed to you, but I love that you shared, really!

Black Cat Mask

Night two on the floor was a bit like night one, nearly identical actually. So I sit here with two nights of ineffective sleep, but knowing that it won't be much longer until I have two independent sleepers. Of course I had my own little emotional freak out last night after realizing that I have cuddled a child nearly every night for over six years and that is about to end...that gives me the sad. It's okay though, I suppose this is just one of many 'letting go' moments of motherhood and I best present a stiff upper lip and deal with it. Besides since I home school I've got all day to sneak in extra cuddles.

Know how I said I wouldn't get around to the cat mask? Yeah, I lied, I totally got it made yesterday. Without all the extra colors and embroidery that I used on it's Cheshire cousin, it worked up fairly quickly. I opted for the hand dyed light emerald for the eyes and the hand dyed gray for the ears. Oh, what would I do without all this great hand dyed thread about...thanks Heather! I also ended up changing the section around the ears quite a bit from the Cheshire. Of course I made it all up as I tatted so I wrote nothing down again. I also tried for a more almond shape in the negative space of the eye. I didn't keep the change though because even though it did indeed look more cat like, seeing out of the mask was...challenging. It's always an interesting balancing act to keep functionality along side design without losing too much of either.

As I don't really expect my thread for the moths until tomorrow, finishing the cat leaves me in the position of deciding what to do with my day. I have been very good about keeping the house at a maintainable level of clean as there are more guests on the way at the beginning of the month. No major clean ups needed. There are still a couple of pieces waiting to be remade, but nothing terribly popular so I hesitate to get into production mode. I currently have over 160 pieces in the shop and not counting simple color changes or slight differences that still leaves well over 100 designs sitting about, so I don't really need to design anything new. Of course when have I let 'need' dictate that sort of thing, but I have no pressing ideas either. Maybe something will just come to me, or maybe the thread will come early or maybe I'll just be too tired to care.

On Sleep and Moths

So, something you might not know about me is that I've been a bit of an attachment parent. What does that mean? Well for us, it meant extended nursing, carrying my children in a sling rather than a stroller and for over six years now, a family bed. Last night I tried the impossible, to get my kids to sleep in their own room at night. They take their naps in there with no problem and they are just getting too big for us all to have a useful nights sleep together. I decided to sleep in there with them on the floor as a transitional thing. As you might have guessed, I did not have a great nights sleep. The oldest slept perfectly, the youngest woke up and wanted to cuddle once during the night and whimper cried a bit, but I think it shouldn't take too many floor sleeping nights to get them settled. This is where you tell me I'm right and this is really easy.

Back to the tatting, I sussed out the design for the graduated arm band and was pretty proud of myself, but the larger the piece looked like it was going to be, the higher I had to raise the price. When I shared that bit with the customer, though understanding, they were unable to agree to the price. I might still make one up to sell at some point just to see how it would turn out for certain. Then it was more Luna Moth madness. There were a couple more prototypes and then this one. It laid the way I wanted and a couple of inward facing picots pulled the body together nicely. There is just one more adjustment I made on another prototype and that was a tension thing to make the lower wings a bit straighter on the inside bringing the tips closer together. Now I wait until my perfectly hand dyed thread arrives and I get these made as well as a few other wedding pieces.

My goal today is to first of all stay awake, then I have a necklace to finish remaking and list. I still want to get a black version of my cat mask done, but I still haven't decided what color to make the eyes, green, I suppose.Oh and then there are the ears, do I use the dark gray for a subtle color difference or go all the way to pink...likely gray I think. I will likely not get to the mask yet and there are a few too many of them listed as custom orders anyway. I do think it's time to pull out the spider necklaces from last year and get them listed as everyone has mentally moved onto Halloween...yeah, who knows what I'll get done today, if I stay awake.