Happy Halloween

I absolutely adore it when the Universe listens and grants me my silly requests. Yesterday was a busy, busy day. We had to be quick with schooling to get to the oldest child's teacher meeting. Even so, we still had more to do when we got home, taking us right up to lunch time. After lunch, I had promised to put up more sugar skull pieces in the window with the kids and then we decided to make more skeleton cookies. This time we did snicker-doodles...they didn't look great, but they were tasty.

All this family time put me pretty late in starting some tatting for the day, so I really concentrated to get as much done as possible, still I didn't even finish the pair of ankle corsets I was working on. This is a shame because while I was working, I sold the last pair I had on hand as well as a few other pieces. This means I now have a full queue of items to remake again.

Today is not only Halloween, which means a trip to the Husband's job with the kids for trick-or-treating in the afternoon, but it's also my Mother's birthday. So with all that and plenty to get tatted up and schooling, I have yet another busy day on my hands. Man, do I wish this was a Friday.

Happy Halloween to you all...once tomorrow hits, Christmas will be everywhere and personally, I'll start getting a tad annoyed that they can't wait until after Thanksgiving. For today though, enjoy. I'll be handing out unsold tatted spiders to all the adults I run into I think.

Stand Up

If there's one thing that ruins the possibility of a lazy day, it's housework. Specifically that housework that really can't wait, like laundry and dishes. So with that on the agenda yesterday, I was far less lazy than the previous day. Schooling also ran longer than usual because we needed to collect work samples to turn in and I confess we do far more work online or verbally than on paper. This is partly by design of the program and partly because I am generally more concerned with making sure they are learning than I am with a perfectly written paper. I know, I need to change my expectations.

After schooling and in between the other chores I managed to complete both masks that needed to be finished. I've also decided that whenever I am just working on orders or remaking pieces that I'm going to just go ahead and take an abstract photo so I can have some lace to share in the blog at the very least.

I also got an order in yesterday for a pair of ankle corsets, so I started remaking a pair of those. It's actually been some time since I sold some, so the pattern didn't immediately come to mind. There were a couple of false starts before I really got the rhythm of the piece. Speaking of rhythm, well not really...um, I decided to give tatting while standing a try. This relates to rhythm only in the sense that I was listening to music at the time. I realized that I sit far too much because I am working and I wondered if I could stand and still tat at full speed. I knew I could tat standing, I just didn't know how much it would slow me down. Not as much as I feared, it turns out. So I am going to make an effort to do so at least for a time everyday.

Of course as I made this decision, I was confronted with my lazy lounging cats and wondered why it is that they can lounge and it doesn't shorten their lifespan, but we sit for too long and we lose years even if we exercise. Ah, the cruelty of life. Well, I have those ankle corsets to work on today as well as a teacher meeting in the middle of the morning. Hopefully everything goes smoothly and the orders keep steadily coming in to keep me busy and standing.

Lazy

What an incredibly lazy day I had yesterday. Sure, I did schooling int he morning followed by some light cleaning and then there was the mask order I worked on all day, but I felt lazy. I suppose my definition of lazy may not be the commonly accepted one.

The kids decorated more sugar skull foam shapes and I just sat there, tatting at the mask. I should have that done today and there is still one more mask that needs to be remade. That one is almost finished as well so I should get it finished too. I stopped working on it to get orders taken care of. I should also make up some more kitty ear headbands as I am again down to the last one. They actually seem to sell all year round, so it's always a good idea to have more than one on hand.

That's about it though. I really did nothing of interest to share and I don't have much faith that today will be any different. Maybe I should ask the Universe for something interesting to happen...you know, just so I have something to write about in the morning. Here's to hoping.

Making

It was a Halloween sort of weekend. With the holiday on a Thursday, we used this past weekend to do those things which must wait until closer to the holiday, like pumpkin carving. I didn't do one this year, since I had already done the artificial ones and the pumpkin the youngest got on our outing to the pumpkin patch last week had already gone south. I gave her mine and helped her a bit. The one in the center there is a fake one...I just thought we need something else out there. I'll put the ones I carved out later, so you'll see them when the whole display is complete.

I did do some tatting on and off as I had a custom mask order over the weekend. Honestly, I'm still a little worried that the customer is expecting it in time for Halloween. As soon as I got the order I sent a message making sure they were aware that the mask needed to be made, wouldn't arrive in time for Halloween and I gave them an approximate ship date. So either they got the message and everything is fine or they didn't and I'll get an annoyed response in a few days. Or worse yet, I'll ship it and they'll cancel the order and I'll have to deal with all that drama. I am definitely hoping for outcome number one here.

The rest of the weekend that wasn't usual errands was used making sugar skulls. Well, made is probably not the right word, decorated would be more appropriate. I made one late year, but left it black and white. This year I made two and experimented with a little color. Of course these really have little to do with the Halloween decorations. It's just that this time of the year is the only time to buy the paper mache bases. These will be on display year round.

Then I had found some foam skull shapes on sale and girls and I decided to decorate them as sugar skulls as well. Currently they are in my front window for the holiday, but I have a feeling they might relocate somewhere in the house for another everyday decoration. We actually made and added a whole bunch more after I took this picture. Also taking pictures of windows is incredibly pointless, but I suppose you get the idea. We spent the weekend making things, now it's back to finishing up mask orders and schooling and errands and I miss the weekend already.

Scallops

As usual, once the idea for a new piece was in my head, little could keep me from playing at it. First I did remake the bracelet for the shop. I even further modified it to a size I liked a bit better than the one custom made. It's still a little big for me, but I have stick wrists, so it should fit an average wrist just fine.

Once that was done, I got to thinking about the idea I had had while writing yesterday morning. I thought that perhaps the necklace would have more presence if I gave it a three motif arch instead of a single pendant like the custom order. It still needed to be adjusted though. The bracelet has three, but it's meant to lay mostly flat. I wanted the ones on the necklace to curve and that meant more join changes and more stitch count changes as well. These are the sort of things I should have mucked with when I first played with the original antique pattern. I must have been feeling particularly lazy then.

As you can see, no hardware on the necklace, so I'll get to that today. Then I suppose I could get back to the mask that needs remaking. It's far too late for it to see Halloween, but I actually tend to sell more masks in late winter for Masquerade balls. Nothing too interesting came along yesterday, so that's all I've got for you.  I'll just keep working and hopefully something new and interesting will pop up this weekend.