Grandbaby's First Birthday and nearing Halloween!

It was grandbaby's first birthday on friday and his party on saturday. I can't believe that a whole year has gone by since we were eagerly awaiting news.

We drove up on thursday with his big bag of presents...mainly clothes..including a gorgeous winter coat with fur trimmed hood...for the weather he is expecting!

I got the brightest...baby appealing wrapping paper that I could find..in the hope that a baby would be tempted to look inside...how wrong can you be!

A sudden inspiration led me to make some of it into a huge birthday card...that must surely appeal to a baby...and a couple of hours later it was finished.



Lets have a closer look....



...part of the design mounted on holographic card.....more copies of the little people were glued on top to create a 3D decoupage effect. Googley eyes on them and on the tiny critters....lots of glitter...and some pompoms to make it a touchy feelie card. Some tatted flowers and butterflies sneaked in there too....can't have a card for him without tatting. If only you could see how it sparkled.

His mum was most impressed...and he......LOVED it!




His little fingers went straight for the green pompom and he tried his hardest to pull it off.....but it held fast!! until he managed to separate the bit it was glued on to from the next layer in the decoupage underneath!! Little blighter...never underestimate a baby!

The other parcels he had no time for, he brushed them aside on to the floor!! But he did like what was inside when his mum helped him. He even like his new t shirt especially the stripes.



His mum had knitted him a cat...can't help but like what mum makes for you.





His happiness was as usual overflowing. I have yet to see him in bad form.



He is walking round the furniture and crawling like a racing car!

His birthday outing was to here. He is a budding botanist and was as keen on the leaves as I was....



...I did tell him that these huge Oak Leaves were grandmas Rusty Red but he wasn't impressed!

Even the people were made of leaves...




Inside the Crannog they were preparing for their Halloween event...when a visiting witch would be telling stories. The decor was lovely.



The pumpkin lights were gorgeous.



His birthday party was great, he loved his hedgehog cake that his mum made....probably his first piece of sweet cake. His favourite finger foods include avocado and asparagas!



Now I am trying to get back to reality...before my Halloween treat at the weekend!!
I will show you what I have been tatting for Halloween....not a lot really!!

Mustn't overtax you yet tho.

Another Heart, Another Page!

A good while ago I started to tat a different heart.
It's the Fringe Element Heart designed by Jane Eborall. It was the arrangement of beads that attracted me to the pattern.

I tried it first in Floretta 20 in a mid pink variegated colour...since I seem to be in 'pink mode', with silver lined grey beads.



I didn't like this one bit!!......Some patterns are lovely with variegated thread, some not...and this didn't appeal to me at all. Maybe it was just this particular thread...not one of my favourites. Having said all this it actually doesn't look too bad anymore!!

I liked the effect of the beads, so used them again with Flora 20 in mid pink.




I like this a lot better as the thread doesn't detract from the design.

Next up is Flora 20 again in lavender with transparent rainbow grey beads....very pretty.




The next one is my all time favourite. Deep candy pink Flora 20 with silver lined crystal beads.



You can't imagine how much those beads sparkle! I made another one like it and sent it to Tatting Chic to cheer her up and apparently it did...she blogged about it on June 29th...was it really so long ago!!

Another.....totally different colour this time....coats 20 in lime green with silver lined deep blue beads.




This one is quite stunning too.


The heart takes about 3m on sh1 and about 3.5m on sh2 in size 20. It's quite a tricky little pattern, tho' it was no problem to me...once I had concentrated enough!
When I gave it to my tat ladies some of them found it very hard...one of the hardest patterns I had ever given them. It has lots of rings off split rings with the bringing up of beads as you keep returning to the split ring. But with a bit of practice it is well worth the effort.

Now for a slight change of tack......once I had cleared my desk unit for my scrapbooking space.....and actually had room to spread my things out....again!!....I was determined to finish my next scrapbook page that I started way back in early summer. It's all about the bonding that takes place in the first few weeks when you have a new baby...and a light went on in my head.....tatted hearts of course as part of the layout.

Three more hearts later and a huge amount of help from daughter and the page had taken shape...I just needed to finish it!!

Ta da!! here it is!


You can't imagine how proud I am of this achievement. I think that scrapbooking is the most difficult craft that I have ever attempted. If I could say that I planned this all by myself I would be even more proud. Yet it looks so simple when you get it right.

I sent an email to daughter to ask if it was ok to show this and her reply made my day,

"that's beautiful - I want to copy it now....."

....and she the scrapbook queen.....She inherited all the genes from me that never made it to the surface in my life. We made so many things together when she was a little girl....which all show now in who she is.

Let's have a closer look at the hearts..



...you can click on them to see then enlarged. The stitching is done with Coats Ophir my favourite metallic thread.

OK if you can stand to look at more hearts, I will show them to you individually.



Robin's egg blue Flora 20 with gold beads that really sparkle.
The white heart for the baby is really beautiful..i forget how beautiful white is....to me white has become raw HDT!!!



One final collage of my hearts and you can go!!



I haven't tried this pattern in a finer thread as I thought it was in scale with the size 11 beads.

All your comments will be read...again and again ...so please keep leaving them. It's just a couple of clicks away and it means a lot.

Told you I was hooked!!

Yup, scrapbooking has captured my imagination.

After my last post I had several lovely comments (please keep 'em coming chaps...or I might stop blogging!!) saying that I could use tatting as embellishments.

When I came home from the course it was like something had exploded inside my head, tatting could adorn my scrapbook pages..it has a purpose!!...but not only that...scrapbooking could maybe be a way to show off the tatting itself!

I immediately thought of my Coral Reef thread and the photographic story behind it culminating in my Coral Reef doiley.mmmm but will I ever do it. So much better than having it languishing in a plastic sheet. Terrible I know but I just don't use doileys.

It's very lucky for tatting that I can incorporate it in scrapbooking or the death knell might have sounded for it.

I find that I can only do one craft to the best of my ability at one time and this has resulted in the end of so many crafts that I always intend to go back to!

Scrapbooking is much harder than it looks unless you are a naturally brilliant person...which I am not.

This next page.. based on a layout that I learned at the class has taken me two weeks to finish and resulted in a huge addition to my stash.

First you have to choose the background page..it is amazing when you try a photograph out on different backgrounds, each one picking out a particular colour in the photo.

The true demented scrapbookers have a page colour and embellishments in mind and go out and buy an outfit for the baby to coordinate with that colour!!

Crafting always tends to make me panic buy...as in beads and threads....as if another chance to buy will never come along...so that I will have a selection to choose from.

The you have to decide on a layout to display the photo and for the placement of supplementary decorative sheets. Then there are the embellishments and the title and the journalling so that you will remember ( and others to come) what that photo was all about.

So wait no more here is my 3rd page done on my own (mostly)!



It's a pity that you can't see the sparkle on the letters and the flowers and the diamante in the middle of the tatting embellishment on the flowers..Yup just a tiny bit of tatting this time.
I had to go and buy new letter stamps as scrapbooking needs large bold letters.
The background paper has a tiny stripe that you can't see.

I am blown away at how beautiful this page looks, good enough to frame, and how I will remember that day when grandbaby was just 4 days old.

Christening!

The little prince's christening went wonderfully.

It was held in the University Chapel which is very adaptable for events having padded stools rather than chairs. They can be arranged facing the front or in a circle or whatever. So it was easy to feed him near the back and change him into the gown, which fitted him a treat.
So he became the 4th generation to wear the Christening gown.





He took everything in his stride as he usually does..wondering what on earth all these people were doing to him...the bit I liked most was when all the congregation were invited to come up and make a cross on his forehead and say welcome to him.

There was lovely music too, his other grandparents has written a song for him..'Welcome to the world'.

I had to do a reading..not my scene..but this one was lovely..

from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran


And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, "Speak to us of children."

And he said, "Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you, and though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness. For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Oh! so old!

I have been so busy lately, I haven't had time for much blogging.

BUT I promised myself that I would show you this before it was too late.

My grandson is being Christened on Saturday and I have been preparing...no not tatting.. I tatted the bootees before he was born, you can go and have a look at them here. he may wear them if they fit him or they may become part of my Christening heirloom.
Oh heck lets show them here too, you can see lots more photos and helpful hints on making them back in my blog posts on babies.



I also made her a Wedding hankie and the instructions as to how to make it into a bonnet but i don't think she was too keen to risk damaging her hankie.




Mt father was born in 1906 and I have the gown in which he was Christened. Pretty cool you say! yes VERY COOL.....It has been suggested that I make an underskirt and embroider on it the names and dates of all who have been Christened in it.
Isn't that a wonderful idea.....just need the time and some really nice fine cotton material...and the inclination to do it. My best mate said that she would do the embroidery on her machine.

Trying to work out actually who had been Christened in it...well my dad was the eldest of three boys so I guess that's 3 for that generation, could be more and I will never know now.

I was the last of my generation to be Christened in it preceeded by my three brothers, the first two of whom died as babies...I will never know how my parents got over that loss..things which would have been easy to cure today. Well I wouldn't have been here if they had lived.

My two children were both Christened in it, the last being some 33 years ago and now it goes into a 4th generation.

I asked the ones who know these things at my lace guild if they thought that it had been new in 1906....and they thought yes. Some of the lace is machine made but the embroidery is made by hand.

You want to see some photos???? of course you do.



This shows the detail of the bodice...all hand embroidered. the fine cotton is beginning to pull away from the braid...so I decided that I would line the top to reinforce it and help tp take some pressure off the material. I found a fine handerkerchief belonging appropriately to my dad and used that.

The stitching was so neat on the inside that I photographed it before I covered it up.



At some time in the past the bodice has been shortened (you can see on the photo above) but I will keep it that way.



The skirt is done with panels of lace set between panels of pintucking, ending with tow deep frills of lace.



I liked the patchwork quilt as a background but maybe this will give you more idea of size if I lay it out on the bed.



But even better still is to show you some photos of it in action.

First my daughter in 1972....



them my son in 1975 it's last outing.





Isn't that just stunning.

After the repairs I soaked it in Steradent....used for whitening false teeth, as the lace guild say that is the best way to whiten old lace with out harsh detergents. Ironed gently and wrapped in acid free tissue paper will it get an outing on Saturday or not.

Is it bad to risk damaging an anique or should it continue to do what it was designed to do. Will it fit him, and how/where would we dress him as it has never had to face the thought of being strapped into a baby car seat..an impossible feat I think.

Post Christmas blues..and reds..and greens..

Christmas is officially over in my house, all the family left on sunday after a hectic fun filled two weeks. Yesterday was 12th night..celebrated here as 'Women's little Christmas' when all the exhausted women go out and have a hooley!!

So now today the decorations are taken down.

My Irish Bear Thomas Brown..pronounced Thom-aaaw-s was very unhappy about having to give up his finery.



He sat next to the silver tree watching it all the time, now that has gone too, packed up into the roof space.

The tatting tree count goes as follows

Icicles....................................................1
Fishes(Ichthus'ssss so looked Christmasy to me!)....4
Candy canes.........................................6
Angels..............................................8
Baubles ...........................................10
Snowflakes in bangles..............................12
2 colour snowflakes................................14
Rainbow Bright snowflakes..........................28
Traditional white snowflakes.......................59

Making a grand total of 142 tatted pieces. gosh and there is a pile of snowflakes that didn't make it to the tree.




Ok so you want to know how the baby is doing!

He wasn't overly impressed by all the Christmas stuff but he is such a good natured happy baby that he took it all in his stride.



I didn't get a good photo of him in his Reindeer suit or his Santa baby outfit...but he did look so cute when he put his denims and hoody on, trying to be as trendy as his uncle.



At 9 weeks old he can't do much more than flay his arms around, but his favorite pleasure is to lie on his playmat looking up into his mirror and chortling away at the strange laughing baby that he sees.



The weather stayed dry the whole time but was pretty cold with that nasty east wind, but we did manage to get out with him...and he slept through it all.

Grandbaby!

Exciting, exciting news!!!!

Remember my leprechaun Fionn.....he who is sitting at the top of my blog.....well he has decided to change his name....to Fergal!!

The reason is that my daughter has just produced my first grandbaby...a beautiful little boy and she named him Fionn..'would you believe it' said my leprechaun who thought he had such a cool name.....but well he just doesn't want to have the same name as grandbaby.....much too confusing.

Baby Fionn...pronounced Fyon as in yonder....was born on October 23rd weighing in at a healthy 8lb 5oz.

Fionn Mac Cumhaill (Fyon Mc Cool) was a mythological Celtic warrior, a giant of a man, leader of the Fianna. There are many stories about Fionn, but my favorite one is how as a boy Fionn caught the salmon of knowledge. You can find the story here.

Grandbaby Fionn is beautiful...yes I know all grandbabies are but.....he really is beautiful.

Here he is 3 days old,so magnificently swaddled by his daddy.



4 days old with grandma practising nappy changing.



5 days old when he didn't want to go to sleep but to chat to grandma and grandpa who were in charge!



His mum so hoped that he would be born before halloween ( he was 4 days early!) so that he could wear the lovely outfits he had been given!



He was just 7 days old and didn't approve to much of the bib or the matching scary hat! but he loved the socks.

He had his first try out of his froggy play mat and he matched it so well.



Just to show you how tiny he actually is, this is Fionn with his girlfriend Madie who is 3 months old! See his pumpkin hat!



Well that was Fionn's first week that we got to share. Not had much time for blogging and going back to see him again tomorrow, he will soon be a month old, how time flies.

I guess I better add a tiny bit of tatting to this post...here is the card that i made for his Birthday.....it's more of that holographic card that looks so different from different angles.

Fatherly Cooperation!

It's Fathers Day today in Ireland and our daughter made him a card.
We had never seen this photograph before tho' remember the occasion well.

This was taken on her wedding day almost two years ago.

My friend had made a bobbin lace horseshoe for her for good luck, but her luck was running out when she suddenly discovered that she no longer had it. She was standing on the Japanese bridge at the hotel having photographs taken when the horseshoe parted company from it's ribbon and slipped unnoticed between the wooden slats of the bridge and into the large lily pod beneath.

Someone spotted it and ran for something to fish it out with...the hotel provided a snooker cue but before the grooms brother had his chance the fathers took over!

They joined forces and while her dad just managed to reach it, his dad hung on to him for dear life.

What a fab' photo captured just at the moment of possession.

She wrote on the card

'To dad, Cos with you by my side my luck will never run out...'

Lets hope her luck lasts for a long, long time.

Maybe now is the time to tell you that we are hoping they will make us grandparents in October, fingers are tightly crossed. First grandchild for both sets of parents.

I have seen the first scan......looks a bit like a baby gecko to me!!!
But then baby geckos are gorgeous!