Curds and Whey tatting

Here is a one-shuttle pattern. It can be found in Tatting with Visual Patterns by Mary Konior.

I find her patterns to be super simple with the use of two colors used in her charts....one represents the shuttle thread and the other represents the ball thread/2nd shuttle thread.

The thread I used, is size 20 Cordonnet Mercer Crochet.

Miss No Ears

....also known as Candy. What is she? She's an Oberhasli goat.

How did she get the name Miss No Ears? My mother took her in as a rescue. This little doe, around 4 or 5 months old, was attacked by dogs who chewed her ears off....and then some. It made her deaf.

For over a year, Miss No Ears has lived with my mom who had her bred some time back. She was supposed to have her kid(s) on May 12th. Well, it didn't work out that way. Miss No Ears went into labor 4 days ago. My mom is very experienced with all animals and knew this was not a good thing.

Mom checked on her every so often all through the night for two and a half days.....then she saw something. She wasn't sure WHAT it was as it looked like a dark, hairy spot coming out. That's not right, she thought, because the front legs are supposed to be first.

Miss No Ears had another hard contraction and 2 inches of that dark spot was sticking out. My mom touched it and it was the nose of the kid.........and it was cold. Shoot. It's dead.

Without the help of my mom, Miss No Ears would die.

Mom quickly grabbed the 2 inches, of the kid, with her fingertips and helped Miss No Ears by pulling with each contraction. Once it was out, my mom took it out of the barn and came back to take care of the momma.

News today is.....Miss No Ears is fine. She's eating and mingling with the other goats. Thank goodness for my mom's expert knowledge with animals.

Tatting practice

I'm only a beginner and have only tatted with one shuttle.
I decided to tackle [with the help of Here-Be-Tatters] a two shuttle pattern.
Well, I was happily tatting along wondering why the first ring was flopping around. I looked at the pattern again and decided to stop because I was supposed to join the last and first ring picots together. I'm still laughing at myself, but I DID IT!!!

I will start this again but will join the rings together...

This reminds me of my first quilt, I can see where I first started hand-stitching [uneven] to where I finished with nice, even little stitches.
This, piece of tatting, will go in my practice book.
By the way, the pattern is FREE and can be downloaded from here.

The finished Pumpkin colored doily

I began this journey with an earlier post. I won't lie....it was not an easy one to crochet. Mind you, I'm no beginner......but, man, was it WORTH it.
I really like the looks of it.

I am still hungry for crocheting....[Is it the same as craving chocolate?].....so I will keep crocheting until I can talk myself back into knitting.

An old quote....

Houses are like people......either they're your kind or they're not.

From a hat to a scarf....

Judy B was back to taking Chemo.....again. I met her at my Sister-In-Laws house with the other 3 wood carvers and learned that she would be going through the treatment for a second time.
I felt impelled to knit her some hats and asked if I could. She was elated!
At home, I got out my yarn catalogs and decided on the yarn called "Great Adirondack". [pictured is 1 of 3 hats]
I purchased 3 different colors and just loved the way the yarn felt as I knit love in each stitch.
I presented her the hats and her eyes just lit up! She was so happy someone made her some "new" hair.
Just before the last of her treatments, I got the brainstorm to "repurpose" the hats into a scarf. Judy B was good with that and gave me back the hat she wanted a scarf made from.
Here is the reincarnated hat....which is now a scarf.


Judy B has been "free" for 5 years now.