Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

Woo-hoo - I'm a winner!

JB had a 3 year blogaversary contest. And I won! Here's what she sent me - it was a lot!

Wow! JB sure is generous! She sent me a big bag of rainbow beads, some bangles for tatting on, a pale blue Starlite shuttle, a very nice note, a great green pendant on a leather cord (a Marilee Rockley pattern), and a gorgeous tea towel that JB machine embroidered with my initial. I love all of it, and will use every piece with joy.

That black fuzzy thing in the picture? That's Vader's tail. He insisted on being part of things.

I also got a little shipment from Lady ShuttleMaker - one of the last of the original hook pins, and some Juicy Grapefruit. Mmmm, juicy.

And I'm tatting. I making SSSRs, which are soooo easy and fun. I use a paper clip to help me tat the second side. Cool, huh? I'm tatting with Lizbeth Juicy Watermelon.

I wanted to show you this pretty tree near my house. Isn't the orange color lovely?

Tomorrow?  International Tatting Day! Tatting and..

Yum!

Spring is sprung

It's officially Spring. Much sneezing happening, though the pollen count is down some (thank heavens!). Want to see what's blooming near me?

These trees are blooming  all over. Not sure what they are - crabapples, maybe? I like them.

I used to have some of these when we lived at another house. Don't know the name, but I'm here to tell you, don't ever plant these next to your home, as they grow fast and take over. (The prior home owner made this error.) Bees love it. Doesn't smell great though.

Azaleas are everywhere. You can get azaleas now that bloom twice a year, which is great.

Really, everyone has them. They're a great shrub. A major pop of color in your yard.

The classic dogwood tree. They are wild here too, very hardy.

Here's a dogwood up close. Four creamy white petals. They get red berries on them that birds love, and the leaves turn reddish in the fall.

We have pink dogwoods too! Pink ones are not wild, it's a developed color.

Here are the pink dogwood blossoms up close. Dogwoods are slow growing and the wood is very tough.

These are early blooming hydrangeas, big balls of flowers. We have many more types in all colors that bloom in the summer. My little town has a hydrangea festival in June.

And finally - a portent of summer, an early rose.


I hope things are lovely where you live...

Joys and sorrows of the season

A little taste of spring fun:

A bit of my current tatting, a pattern for Tat Days.

And a bit of my household's current pain:

www.atlantaallergy.com

This is the current pollen levels for this month in Hotlanta. That's pollen grains parts per cubic meter, and high is anything above 199. Monday beat the prior record of about 6000, from April of 1999. And then we had Tuesday.... Moe continues to suffer. DH has finally relented and turned on the air conditioning to help ease the suffering. And we are grateful for it. I was ill yesterday (not pollen) and stayed home - the AC helped a lot.

You heard me, air conditioning in March! Not just for pollen - we're having a record week of temperatures of 80F (27C) or above. That's late spring weather, not the end of winter. What's it going to be like in August?

But, yeah - spring! And pretty much everything is blooming. The purple is some wisteria in woods near me. I wanted to take pictures of the big huge hunks of it hanging over walls on I-20, but I was in heavy traffic, and don't really relish taking my life in my hands. Not that you guys don't mean anything to me. I just don't like bleeding.

This is about 1/2 a mile up the same road, white blossoms of wild dogwood. Dogwoods are everywhere. You can look in the woods and see them blooming, white blossoms deep into the woods. It's lovely.

And now I need to go to bed, 'cause my eyes are filled with pollen gunk, and I can't see to tat. Night-night!

A lovely present, and more spring

I ordered some thread from Tastkool, and it came. It's her new version of Flame Lantana, the one done in honor of our late Tatting Goddess, Gina. It's very, very pretty. The colors are bright and well blended - I like it a lot.

And there was a little something else in the package from Éire. Tatskool had made this gorgeous bookmark for me, tatting in Gina's Flame Lantana (pattern by Julie Patterson). I am really tickled to have this. It's a lovely present - thank you, Tatskool!

I'm tatting away on patterns for Tat Days, so I'm no going to try and show them to you yet. But I can show you some things about my day. Because Spring is in full swing!

I got up this morning, and spied this blue sky and budding leaves out of the high window in my bath.

I headed off to church and found this row of blooming trees facing me. The blossoms flutter by like snow, yet the temperature has been about 80F (27C).

On the way home, I found this nice man tending his azalea bushes. The azaleas are just really beginning to bloom.

And coming into my neighborhood, I saw more blooms. I love spring. Unfortunately, spring's lovely blooms bring much pollen - Moe is suffering a lot.

I'm suffering with my latest addiction. Curse you, Unblock Me! (I'm in the 400's now.)

To take a break from my addiction, I offer you a special little something. I promise it will make you laugh.





It even made Prince Charles smile. Enjoy!

I'm in heaven

I got a lovely thing in the mail yesterday.

I know you all remember Angela's Traveling Book Adventure, a generous book sharing done by Fox. You sign up for the book, and get a month with it, then send it on to the next person on the list. I'm on the list, but it not my turn yet. Martha Ess has her own version of this book sharing, known as Mary's Traveling Book. And oh, what a treasure it is. This month is my turn with this book.

OMG OMG OMG. I'm so happy. I have the other 3 Mary Konior tatting books, but not this one. Tatting in Lace. It's like gold in my hands. For those non-tatters, Mary Konior was a gifted, prolific, and very creative tatter.

Mary seems to have had a wry wit too - in this book, she quotes Ben Johnson when he says. "Next to mere idleness I think knotting [tatting] is to be reckoning in the scale of insignificance; though I once attempted to learn knotting. Dempster's sister attempted to teach me it, but I made no progress." To which Mary remarks dryly, "Presumably he couldn't manage 'the Transfer'" (what we refer to as 'the flip'). Heh.

I was also interested to see that she teaches tatting in the same way I do - by teaching a chain first, using two colors of thread. I teach by taking 2 colors of largish thread (size 10 or bigger), knotting the ends together, and starting on chains. That way it is very easy to see 'the flip'.

I have to say, the book is in utterly pristine condition. This is the hardest to find and most expensive of Mary's books. Martha, you are very trusting and O so generous. Thank you! It will be hard to pass along....

In other news, I've been very busy this week with Curly. Though he's doing so much better, he's having to answer for some very bad deeds that he was arrested for a year ago. He's got a worthless court appointed attorney who won't communicate with him, and is not even looking at the charges properly. Ugh. Curly has a court date this Wednesday, and I'm getting another attorney to represent him for this one occasion only. I hope we can get things settled at that point.

But it's spring here! We've had warm days and lots of blossoms. There are banks of Bradford pears blooming everywhere.

Like in my neighborhood. Several of my neighbors have lost Bradford pears in the past year, due to the trees splitting. I like to see these trees, but I won't have one in my yard.

I do love forsythia. Growing up, we had a hedge of it. It's so cheerful.

I don't know what this shrub is, but it's pretty. It's nice with the yellow-tipped hedge behind it.

These pretty flowers are in front of an assisted living home near my home.

And lastly, for those who need a Vader fix...

He has a new bed in front of the fireplace. And he likes it.

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.

What I've been up to.

I've been finishing up some tatting patterns. Sorry - can't show you much.

OK - you can see this. I know, it's a huge clue.

Now that I've finished this group of patterns, it's on to other pressing matters. Like doing the taxes. Mercy, it's depressing. I've got no real excuse for not having done them sooner.

Wait - does this count? I am sadly addicted.

We have just gotten Moe signed up for karate. He's taking classes 4-5 afternoons a week and he really likes it. He can walk to the dojo after school. We love this dojo - Curly used to take classes here, and was on their travel team when he was in elementary school. Moe has been harrassed by other kids in school lately, so the karate helps his self esteem. Plus it's good exercise. He's come home worn plumb out!

Larry is still working at the grocery, but now he's in school too, in paramedic training. Larry is certified as an EMT-I but is having trouble finding work since he has no experience. Paramedics are more in demand. On the days he has to work and has class, he's worn out. We don't see much of Larry. Mostly if he's here, he's asleep.

Curly has had some very, very serious issues lately. Very, very bad. There has been a period where he was, well, let's just say he was elsewhere. Curly has been off his bi-polar meds for 8 months, and it shows. He has betrayed our trust and it will be a long time before he can participate in family life again. He's back to living in the tent in the back yard. I'm hoping he can find some work to keep him busy. Please keep him in your prayers...

In spite of all of the Curly drama, spring continues full force here. It was in the upper 80's this weekend and really gorgeous. I lurve spring!

"What?"

Vader doesn't care what season it is.