Colour me Purple!

The best news this week was to learn that I have won a set of Aerlit shuttles when they come out in Autumn (fall). I did this by choosing a name for the purple set which you will see here on Jane's blog.

My cabin bag which I took on four aeroplanes this month is also very purple and on it I attached the little tatted dangle.  A couple of days ago two people rang my door bell and handed me the dangle you see attached to it and said "we believe this must be yours". They had been walking past my home and found it lying in the gutter.  Well I was so surprised, firstly seeing it in their hands and secondly realising that I had actually lost it.  What had happened is that when getting out of the taxi from the local coach station after my holiday, it must have come off.  Now I could have lost it at any time during my travels but it didn't detach itself until reaching home. Incidently the dangle had been lying in the gutter for over a week and was only recognised by one of the ladies because she herself tats!

The Indonesian lady you see in the picture was one of the people who was eager to take a photograph of my youngest son, he is 32 years old so not exactly a little boy!  So I decided that I would take a photograph of her, well it was only fair!  In the background, although you can hardly see it, is the volcanic mountain Merapil which last erupted in 2010.   Lifes were lost and there is still visable signs of the devastation it caused.

The mountain sits along the Pacific Ring of Fire, a series of fault lines that stretches from the Pacific coasts of the Americas through Japan and into Southeast Asia.  Everywhere is grey volcanic ash which gets into you sandals and coats your feet. Although I should have brought some home with me because it is obviously works well as a foot scrub.

Just a sneak preview of what I am working on at the moment, I admit it doesn't look much but hopefully the finished piece of work will be a bit more impressive!

The moon and a view

I don't want to bore you with all my holiday photos but you may be interested in one or two every now and then!   First though a little box that I decorated with tatting and took to Singapore as a gift.

A night time shot of a building that now dominates the Singapore skyline, in fact it was the one building I recognised as we flew out of Singapore on our journey home.

The Marina Bay Sands Resort which was opened exactly two years ago, the photograph was taken the day after a full moon. We took the lift to the viewing point, the pool was only for the residents. This is one view of Singapore taken from the top. Quite breathtaking

In the evening there is also a light and music display from the towers, very impressive. My youngest son suggested that the next time we visited Singapore we stayed in the hotel. Looking at the price of rooms, I don't think so!

Meeting another tatter

It was quite a challenge meeting Val whilst we were in Singapore, due mainly to an over possessive family! It  was even more of a challenge to meet up with Ellen (Singtatter) mainly because she was away for most of the time that I was in Asia, but I did manage to catch up with her before returning home.  We met outside the MTR very near to where my son lives, we had a very quick chat and went on our separate ways.    It was long enough to hand over the shuttles Ellen had bought, this is the first time that I have done a personal delivery service!   Here is a picture of us.

Ellen kindly handed to me her latest sunflower paperclip design which she has not published yet.  My youngest son was taken with this (he never usually comments on my tatting!) and said he wouldn't mind having such a paperclip in his office.  Since then I have downloaded some of Ellen's patterns and now I am on the look out for slightly larger paper clips as the ones I have (in abundance) are too small.

Ellen also included this flower and again my son commented on it,

 as you can see it is so pretty.

Although of course it is a rose, it did remind me of this orchid which we saw in Singapore's orchid garden

Thank you Ellen and it was great to meet another tatter.

Singapore and more..........

We arrived back home from Singapore late Saturday evening exhausted after a fantastic holiday, which included six days in Java, Indonesia where my eldest son (who lives in Singapore) got engaged to his girlfriend whilst at the top of the Borobudur Temple, very romantic. He also planned the itinerary for the holiday which was filled with so many interesting things to do and see - and we had to stick to it!  Not only did 'Im in the garage' travel out with me, so did my other son.  Strangely though my youngest son seemed to attract the more mature ladies, who either wanted to speak to him, but generally felt the need to take his photograph, no idea why he attracted so much attention, but we all found it quite amusing.


Of course it went without saying that whilst we were there I had to meet up with at least one tatter, this caused a serious problem with the itinerary and somehow the men could not understand the need for a tatters get-together.   In the end though I escaped whilst they went off to watch the science fiction film Prometheus, certainly not my scene.    So I was able to meet up with Val of Val's Simple Passions. 

She took me to some great eating places.

Shopped for beads, books and thread and texted Jane in England and made her extremely jealous that she could not be with us!

And did some sight seeing. Here is Val standing next to an old post box, still a very familiar sight in the UK. However, this particular one is situated in a building which is now a hotel but used to be the main post office in Singapore.

We saw some night life, and can you see who is wearing my hat featured in my lost blog post?!

Sadly all good things have to come to an end and Val kindly took me back to my hotel where she was able to meet 'Im in the garage', who took this photo

Thank you so much Val for a really great afternoon and evening, hopefully we can meet up again when I'm next in Singapore.

I also met another tatter, but more of that in my next post.

Jubilee

I purchased a hat for my holidays to protect me from the sun, this is what it originally looked like. 

Then I took off the string around it and tatted a piece of braid and it now looks like this.

A close up of the braid, unfortunately the original string was glued around the hat and has left a mark, rather like a slug has been around it! However, this does not show up unless you get very close. The pattern is beaded braid from Tatting with Visual Patterns by Mary Konior.

This weekend there will be much celebration in the United Kingdom as the Queen celebrates her Diamond Jubilee, 60 yrs since since becoming Queen.   The weather though is not predicted to be very good on Sunday when the main celebrations are taking place with a river pageant on the Thames in London and street parties up and down the country.
There are union jacks everywhere, but I was given this chocolate which says it all!

And I think most of you will agree!