Women's Little Christmas

Here in Ireland the last day of Christmas, January 6th is known as Women's Little Christmas. Christmas is nearly over, all the food has been cooked, the work done and the family satisfied. Today is the day for women to abandon their families and the chores and go out and enjoy themselves!

I haven't lifted a tatting shuttle for nearly three weeks but I haven't been idle either, more about that later in this post.

Just time left for me to show you one of the things I made for Christmas. Couldn't show you before as it was part of a Secret Santa gift and others were also going to friends and family. I made 8 in total, a labour of love. It was one of those things that looked so stunning that everybody had to have one...well almost everybody!



Here are all the things that I sent to my Secret Santa Carol Laweki



I must show you the tatted items that I received from various friends. It's an absolute delight to have pieces of other peoples tatting, never underestimate how much a tatter values these things.


From Mary Donohue my Secret Santa came this beautiful icicle, my first icicle. the pattern I think is from Workbasket.




She also sent the most gorgeous earrings on shepherds hooks just as I like. I don't remember where i have seen this pattern.



Here are all the things she sent me The photo doesn't do them justice, especially her special housewife.



From Jane Eborall came her special 2007 Suncatcher and Christmas tree brooch.





You actually have to own something from Jane to be able to appreciate the sheer life and vibrancy of her colours.

From Sally Kerson (Jane's sister) came a suncatcher of her own design and some spare sequins so that I can have a go myself, and a very eccentric gecko pen to add to the collection (which got bigger over Christmas but that's another story).



I received nine handmade cards this year, the quality gets better and better. I would like to show them to you but none had tatting on and I must not make this post too long.

Gina the Tatting Goddess has asked us to think of three things we want to be our priority this year so here goes:-

1. To put some tatting up on my website. I have had this site for some 7 years or so and have never had the ability to design for it and to be able to update it regularly.
2. To tat 25 more animals for my challenge, this is going to be hard timewise, animal wise I can easily find another 25.
3. To finish my TAT Artisan programme, this will be even harder.

Well I am very, very please to announce that I completed my first wannado on New Year's Day and got my tatting website up and running. It is still in the 'beta' stage of trying to iron out little glitches and getting it to run faster. I would appreciate any the crits and advice. Some things will be better in the next version...like a downloadable pdf pattern, other things are too hard to fix, such as the slide show is manual.

There is not a lot on it yet, just my pattern and photos of all the animals on this blog, which seen all together amaze me!
I am already working on my next photo album which will be of Christmas tatting.

I want there to be lots of Tats-kool and also some Tat-skool so I hope you will enjoy it.
You can get straight to my site by clicking here or on the link on the left of this blog.