Mrs Tiggy Winkle

This week marks 150 years since the famous children's story writer Beatrice Potter was born on 28th July 1886 in London. If you want to know more about her then click on this link.  She was a remarkable woman and not only  wrote but illustrated her books in a most amazing way.    She is famous all over the world.  Everyone must have heard  of The Tale of Peter Rabbit, about that naughty bunny who ran into Mr. Mcgregor's garden and of course The Tale of Mrs. Tiggy Winkle

I made this tatted hedgehog for someone I know in the village where I live who feeds and looks after hedgehogs when they come into his garden at night. And here is the pattern I made the small hedgehog.

The Royal Mint has made these 50p coins to commemorate the life of Beatrice Potter

How many of you grew up with the books of Beatrice Potter?

Slow progress

I am making very slow progress with this fandango square, but determined to tat a few more rounds before I consider it finished.   There are four different shades of blue thread used in the making of it and the effect looks quite good.

This afternoon I sold my electric cooker in preparation for the new kitchen, which will start to be fitted next week.  I advertised the cooker on a site called Facebay which operates on the same principles as Facebook but you can sell or give away items on it in your local area.   A few months ago I gave away my old sewing machine and today the same person bought the cooker and is prepared to buy my fridge and freezer when they become available over the next week or so.  

Fortunately I have a slow cooker and a microwave which will tide us over for the next fortnight.  Also a chiminea for outside cooking if its not raining.

Fandango Heart

For some reason it took three attempts to make this heart, the first one I miss-read the pattern, the second one I tried to be clever by adding the bead but put it on the wrong bit. Third time lucky and by then decided to use Martha's version.  You can find the fandango heart that Jane designed here.

This is a notice in a shop that really amused me, although it is very old and worn the sentiments seem to be very true these days when it comes to customer relationships!

Belated Birthday Present

I met up with a friend last night who had been to Italy on holiday and she gave me a present.  When I opened the packet I was so surprised to find a tatted bracelet.    Apparently she had discovered the bracelet in a shop together with other tatted items and of course knew exactly what craft it was!

There is no name of the person who tatted it only the name of the shop.  It would be fantastic to know who made this little bracelet as the tatting world is not that huge!

This morning I went to see a girl who is getting married in a months time to look at her wedding dress. The reason being she was worried it was too long and could I help to shorten it - yikes.   When we got there the dress had three layers of lace and it did fall over the underskirt but the task of shortening it was going to be too much and anyway it looked fine.   I took along the tatted white necklace I had made and have said that if she wants to wear it on the day, then she is very welcome.  I will not be offended if she doesn't, although it looked fantastic with the dress, should have taken a photograph.

Stress Levels

Can't believe that it is almost half way through the month and this is my first blog post of July.  My stress levels are really high at the moment as we are going to have a new kitchen fitted, only not exactly sure when!   The process so far has been long and arduous, confounded by the fact that so much other work needs to be done in the room, apart from the actual kitchen cabinets.   At this very moment a heating engineer is fitting a new boiler as it needs to be on a different wall.  A really good thing because where the other boiler was we spent 8 years hitting our heads on it!   But it has also meant that half the kitchen has been already stripped to accommodate the beast.

Amazingly I have managed to continue with the square fandango doily and decided to stick to the colour blue.

Whilst sorting out cupboards I found lots of interesting items, most have now been thrown away or given to charity shops.   This interesting shaped bottle I kept and put some fresh lavender in and filled with olive oil, eventually it will be either used for a dressing or to marinate meat.  In the meantime it looks so attractive.

Also don't be fooled about the sun light in this picture, because this Summer we are only getting a very fleeting glance of the sun.