Tis the season

Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas from my place. Here's my funny little Christmas tree.

I've been cooking Christmas treats for friends and family. This is toffee - mmmmmm

And these are spiced roasted pecans. They are sweet, salty and spicy. People love them.

And meringe cookies with cereal and chocolate chips. Nummy

Finally - a view from my balcony. The sky being painted by the setting sun.

Blessings to all.... 

 

I'm a city gal now

Yes folks, I have exited Hooterville.

I now live in town. It's an area of Hotlanta much like Greenwich Village - hip, sort of bohemian, easy access to everything. I am a happy camper.

It was a tough move - the movers were still at my place at 10 pm on Thursday night. And I was at work bright and early Friday morning! I still have boxes to unpack, but I'm getting there.

Theo is getting used to being a cool city cat.

The cats are adjusting. They were traumatized for a few days, but they seem to feel better now, and play with each other or spend time gazing out the many windows.

My living space is looking better. Still need to paint and hang pictures, but it's comfy! (BTW - that big overstuffed chair is a recliner!)

And oh what a view I have - sunsets every night. This one was on Sunday evening.

And soon I'll be tatting again....
 

Happy New Year And..

What the heck have I been doing?

I have been tatting, just a little.

This is an earring set done for a friend, my own design. The HDT is Coral Reef size 40, by TatsKool.

I've been working like crazy at my new job. It involves a lot of contact with folks hither and yon, such as London and Cape Town. (Really!) One of the benefits of my new job is having my cell phone set up (on the company dime) so that I can call any place short of the moon with no special charges. It's great!

But talking to folks hither and yon means dealing with them in their time zones. Mine is GMT plus 5 hours, or Eastern Standard Time. So I have to talk to people at odd hours.

Here's a picture I took of the sunrise - taking while I was both driving to work and on the phone with the London office. It was lunchtime in London.

(Don't worry, I use a headset. I have a very excellent driving record.)

Anyhow, I've been working my TAIL off! Lotsa hours! Working on weekends! Video Skyping with my developer in Hyderabad! Conference calls with people in Brazil and Paris and Toronto! Working through lunch! Staying really late! On the phone with London before 7 am!

In short, not much time for other stuff. Like tatting. Sad face.

But - the folks at my company are super nice and the office is in a great location. And it pays really, really well! Woo-hoo!

I have had nice holidays - all the Stooges were here for Thanksgiving (tho Larry couldn't come for Christmas). Thanksgiving was fun and restful. Larry is doing well in Florida, seems happy. He's been enjoying Growing Facial Hair and came home sporting a goatee that dragged his chest. He got spaghetti sauce in it immediately when he came home - yuck!

 

This week Larry sent me a picture of himself. The goatee was longer, and he's now sporting a Mohawk. The caption of the picture was "I pity the fool"!

Pretty awful.

Moe and I traveled some during the Christmas holiday, driving 500 miles each way on various interstates. We noted several things on the road.

• Most folks living in Ohio seem to own RVs. 
• Lots of people from Ontario do too. 
• There are rude drivers on the road - and those of us from the South are generally not part of that group. 
• Some of the RV drivers from Ontario want to OWN the road! There was one (driving an enormous late-model RV & pulling a car) that seemed to be going 80 mph most of the time.

Moe drove part of the time. He did ok - only tried to kill me once. That was when he took BOTH hands off the steering wheel to eat a hamburger, allowing us to lurch across the center line on I-75. I made him pull over immediately. New rule for Moe - no eating and driving.

Lily liked Christmas. She was very excited about the mess. (That's Moe's stuff.)

Santa Paws brought the Kittahs a present. They love this.

Hope your holidays were happy....

Final update on Palmetto Tat Days 2013

One of the cool things at Tat Days this year happened at the banquet.

A nice guy named Tom Venturini was introduced at the podium. Tom is not a tatter, but he has major MAJOR tatting in his family by way of his great aunt, Lucy Concistre. Mrs. Concistre was incredibly prolific. Let me show you what I mean by prolific.

This is Mrs. Concistre, Tom's great aunt, in front of one piece of her tatting. The tatting is not enlarged - that's really her standing in front of it. It's her version of The Lord's Supper, taken from a painting. This picture was taken for a 1951 article in McCall's Needlework Magazine. There was also an article in the February 1951 Catholic Home Messenger.

This is not a joke. The tatting is ENORMOUS. It's six feet by eight feet. The tatting is done in squares of 4 rings, many many many squares.

And she tatted it ALL in three years. THREE YEARS! This is phenomenal to me. This should be in the Smithsonian Museum.

And this isn't all that she tatted!  There's tons of things, some of which are detailed here on Tom's family website. You can read the magazine article there too.

The sad thing is that the big pieces are not in the family's possession, and they'd like to have them. No one seems to know where they are. The reason that Tom came to Tat Days was to meet Georgia Seitz, because she had been looking for this Lord's Supper piece for decades. Tom was blown away that someone would want to preserve some of his family's heritage - he was moved to tears. He presented Georgia a gorgeous large doily that his great aunt, Mrs. Concistre, tatted.

What a great guy!

Georgia will continue to look for the Lord's Supper. And we were mighty happy to have family of a great tatter there!! Here are Tom's pictures of the Tat Days.

I leave you with a lovely picture of a recent sunset...

Dullsville

I'm afraid I've not been a good blogger of late. Not much posting going on.

In truth, things have been a bit dull over here - which is a welcome change. I crave dull. There has been too much goings on in the past few months. A relief from all the drama is a great thing, I promise!

Shall I show you how dull things are?

Vader has been declared a worthless beast, as he does little but lie around and show his fat belly all day.

I've been cooking. DH doesn't normally eat anything with cheese on it, but he asked me to make a cheesy item for him yesterday....

It was a huge macaroni and cheese with peas and ham. I meant to take a picture of the whole cooked casserole, but we dug into it as soon as it came out of the oven. It had more than a pound of cheeses in it and was delicious. And it's all gone. Nom nom nom.

Moe has been accompanying my in my grocery trips, and he and I found this item the other day at Aldi. Moe giggled a lot, and declared that the cuke plus the plastic on the outside reminded him of, um, something else. Not a vegetable. Heh.

Spring is coming early. We actually have a pollen count - ugh. But spring has big benefits, like these trees.

I went to book club today. We were there for 3 hours and discussed the book for maybe 20 minutes. (We like each other a lot.) These daffodils were outside our hostess's home - aren't they lovely?

I've been watching Downton Abbey, and wept at the end of last week's episode. Today's wasn't as dramatic, but it's always fun to see the Dowager Countess in fine, manipulative form.

And I'm going to work. Friday I meet with the Vice President of my group, and he told me several times what a good job I'm doing. Which is mighty nice to hear, even if he has no money to give out for raises. Oh, the joy of working for a semi-governmental agency...

Almost home!

After work, I come home. This was a recent sunset - isn't it pretty?

I'm grateful for the drama-free times! I hope your life is easy these days.

TIAS Days 4 & 5

I've been tatting Jane's TIAS (Tat It And See for you non-tatters), and have finished Days 4 and 5. Here are my guesses:

Would you fly away, in my beautiful balloon? Or..

I'm still sticking with my first guess - it's a pig!

 

I saw this gorgeous sunset on the way home the other day. Today won't be so pretty. It's been raining for some time. My drive in to work today was not pleasant.

This is what I'd rather be doing today. See how happy Sophie and Cisco are on my messy bed? So warm and comfy. Instead, I'm working on 1099's for my company.

And here is Vader in his preferred spot, perched on my chair in my home office. He has a good view of the world there (and of a tatted heart Jane made). No real work for him!

Now Jane, how about Day 6?

TIAS 2012 Days 2 & 3

I'm still working on Jane's TIAS. Part of the fun is guessing what it is.

Day 2 - Is it a train?

Day 3 - how about a dragon? (Do ya like my fine drawing skills? I should have an exhibition!)

In other news, DH came into my home office/tatting room looking for some container. Like most of you tatters and crafty folk, I have a bunch of decorative metal boxes that I use to hold supplies. He has a bunch of hat and lapel pins he's collected over the years, and he was looking for a place to keep them.Could he have one of mine? Sure, if you can find an empty one.

DH looked in my containers and seemed very surprised that I had stuff in all of them. (I'm only showing you a few of these - I have a zillion.) Imagine that - I have stuff that fills my containers! Am I the only person like this? I don't think so....

In good news, DH is back at work today. First day since late October. He's watched everything on Netflix and cleaned out things he shouldn't have (like my bathroom sink - no!) and made a lot of bread and read books and got really really bored. Plus this has drained our finances, so I'm SO glad he's better. Life should be better.

Here's a sunset I saw Friday - isn't it gorgeous?

Wish me luck

My first cataract surgery is in the morning, for my left eye. I get the right one done next Wednesday. Hopefully, I'll only need reading glasses when both are done.

I should be able to see things like this amazing sunset even better. Gorgeous, isn't it?

Revenge is sweet

I'm tatting and working away, plus I spent the weekend trucking kids all over the county. I'm tatting a necklace for me, and I'll show it to you soon. No hurricane or earthquake here, that heavens. I did see a lovely sky the other night.

Moe had a full calendar this weekend., which constituted the bulk of my driving this weekend. Friday evening he took his orange belt test in karate. On Saturday, he played airsoft war games most of the day with his buddies, then went to a pool party with his Scout patrol until that 10 night.

The guys planning the games - Moe is in the middle facing away. Can you smell the testosterone?

Moe has a good time with airsoft. The boys play war games in the woods at a friend's place, one with 11 acres for the boys to have fun on. Of course, there are lots of other things on those acres, like fleas and chiggers. Moe came back with his ankles circled with bug bites - he neglected to use his DEET. That's a mistake he won't make again. It was a full day, and he was really tired by bedtime.

I also trucked Curly around to his jobs. He's working 2 PT jobs these days, looks like he'll get about 30 hours for each. Works for me - he needs to keep busy and out of trouble. And he really needs the money.

In cat news (I mean, what else is more important?), Vader has been spending a lot of time trying to dominate the other cats at our home. He is relentless with Sophie especially, but he goes after Cisco too. Thursday night I came home from work and noticed Vader didn't look like himself. He wasn't so aggressive either.

I took a look at him and found that one of the other cats had finally gotten back at Vader. Vader has a pretty good cut just below his left ear. But who did it?

Sophie seems really innocent with her sweet little face. But she hates Vader with a white hot hate, since he's so mean to her. She says bad things to him all the time. I think she's cursing at him: "Your mother is a dog's whore! Your father sleeping in the litter box!" DH thinks it's more like, "If I had a knife I'd cut you!"

Cisco isn't admitting to anything, saying blithely "Who, me?" (Though I think he's the culprit here. And I don't blame him. Vader chases him all over the house.)

One thing is sure - revenge has been sweet for these cats.  A few days of peace for them has been great.

I even woke up from my Sunday nap to find Sophie and Vader napping together in the bed with me. (Vader is yawning. See how big he is?)

But then I caught Vader back to his old tricks, jumping on Sophie and chasing Cisco. Guess he's feeling better, huh?

I should have some tatting to show you next time...

Monday ephemera

I've been having a good time with the Hipstamatic application on my iPhone.

It's pretty nifty, don't you think?

Lots of lenses and film.  (That's a mug I made years ago.)

Try it if you have an iPhone. I'm digging the effects.

In my next house, I'll have fences like this. Aren't they great? (Mercy, that was random.)

DH bought me a Snuggie. Really. The cats will love it. Me, not so much.

I spent much of this afternoon at the mental health clinic with Curly. Always an interesting experience.

This place has a big waiting room with lots of twitchy people in it, many pacing around. Most folks come in pairs - the patient and the patient's handler. (Handler - that would be me.) The handlers sit patiently, holding onto paperwork, waiting for their patient's turn in the back. The patients are easy to spot. A lot of them wander around, going outside for a smoke or to twitch or something. Lots of really, really twitchy people. Many patients have major social issues, and they make the rest of us pretty uncomfortable. Today some tall obese white fella in his early 20's, dressed like an overgrown 5 year old, was lurking around ominously, looking over people's shoulders and gabbering on his phone in single syllable words, which seemed to be the extent of his vocabulary. Last visit, a guy had 4 different cell phones and insisted on showing them all to me, explaining the details of all the cell service. And oh! his birthday was coming! Soon! Really soon! Want to see this cell phone? It doesn't work right now, but it might after my birthday!  I just smile and nod.

Fortunately, we got called back for our appointment with the good doctor before things got too creepy. Curly isn't doing great, been irregular on taking his medicine, and it shows in how he deals with the world. I wish I could get him to go to his therapist. But we did walk out with prescriptions, and Curly told the doctor that he would take them. So it's a small victory.

I've not been very successful in tatting lately. This is the result of tatting homework, which I got a failing grade on. Argh. I'm working on a better idea, with pieces of this still in it. More to come, I promise.

But I did see this lovely sunset. It made my day. Two minutes later, it was all gone. But the memory was so worth it...