Picot Overkill

Giant picot overkill?

I love picots.  Big picots.  Giant picots!

But I think I finally overdid it with this tatted motif.  The huge picots detract from the design and it just looks a bit messy.

Lyn Morton would be horrified to see what I did to her beautiful pattern!  🙂

I made several mistakes, missed a couple of joins, and experienced two disasters while tatting it.  The “Tips and Tricks” in Mary Konior’s Visual Patterns book came to my rescue.  (If you are a new tatter, her “Tips and Tricks” alone are worth the price of the book.)

Using her instructions, I was able to open a ring easily and untat my mistakes as simply as untatting a chain.  And I used her weaver’s knot to rescue a broken thread that only had about 1/3″ tail remaining.

So it was a learning experience on several levels…. one of which is be careful when you change the length of the chains in the center because it definitely impacts how the rest of the pattern fits together!

Tatting Pattern Source

I found the source of the flower bookmark pattern in my last post!

Rexie, (here’s her website) very graciously wrote me with answers to my questions.  The pattern is from the book Tatting Treats Three.  I found it online several places, but since I love Handy Hands Tatting, here is a link to it at that site.

I am ordering the book tonight.  It will be so good to be able to tat it legally!

If you missed my last post, here is the photo of the bookmark that Rexie tatted:

Bookmark tatted by Rexie. The pattern is from the book Tatting Treats Three.

Thank you, Rexie!

 

P.S.:  I just ordered the book, along with some other stuff I HAD to have!  🙂

New Tatting Pattern Books

Awesome tatting pattern books!

These two AWESOME tatting pattern books arrived today.

I wasn’t too impressed with the cover of Mary Konior’s book, but when I opened it up, I couldn’t believe what a treasure it turned out to be.  The patterns are elegant, and as modern as tomorrow.

Tatting Artistry in Thread by Helma Siepmann has stunning flowers, blossoms, leaves, deciduous trees, evergreen trees….  the photos are gorgeous.  I have been dreaming of all the beautiful things I can create with them!

So they will definitely go with me on the trip to Florida.

 

R. Shaefer Heard COE Campground

Aliner high on a steep bluff

Aliner high on a steep bank

It is 99 degrees at 5:50 p.m. in town.  I think it must be cooler where we are.  We are in the shade and there is a nice breeze off the lake.

It is scary backing just the truck down the steep driveway to our site.  It was hair-raising backing the Aliner in.  But I got it done, even managing to miss the tree at edge of the drive after several — no, make that MANY– tries!

Aliner at R. Shaefer Heard Army Corps of Engineers campground

Our site

The campground is gorgeous.  There are all kinds of sites.  There are some that have smooth, grassy lawns gently sloping right down to the lake.  We drove by that section earlier and there were kids splashing in the water.

My only complaint about the campground is that something died in the nearby woods, and we get a whiff of it now and then.

We haven’t done any hiking since we got here.  When we are active, the heat really gets to us.  If we take it easy, it’s not bad.  It helps being a Florida native and adapted to hot weather.  But we do take a nice air conditioned siesta in the afternoons.

Sunset over West Point Lake

Sunset over West Point Lake

Last night’s sunset over the lake was gorgeous.  A breathtaking palette of mauves and oranges.

I brought my new mushroom book by Michael Kuo and have been studying it.   It is an excellent guide — a great addition to my library.  I am praying for rain so that mushrooms will sprout up while we are here.  It’s never too hot for me to hunt them!

We may get thunderstorms tomorrow.  In fact, it sprinkled lightly

Another sunset shot

Another shot of that gorgeous sunset!

earlier, and we are getting occasional flashes of lightning and distant thunder now.

It’s a pretty steep path to get from our site down to the water.  But there are trees to hold onto.  It has been too hot for us to want to fish, then deal with cleaning them, but we will probably do that before we leave — especially if it cools down a bit.

We are loving being here.  It is so peaceful, so beautiful, and it feels so safe.  We normally don’t like to return to the same campground as there are so many others to explore.  But this one is special to us.

Rocks at the edge of West Point Lake

Rocks at the edge of the lake in front of our site

And the fact that Ron’s senior pass makes the sites 50% off makes it irresistible!

The Aliner at sunset

Ron relaxing by the Aliner at sunset

Rainy Monday

Today was the day for doing laundry and running into town for supplies.

We had heard that West Point had 4′ high sidewalks due to the floods they endured before the dam was built.  But we were rather underwhelmed by the town.  We saw some 2′ high sidewalks, but no 4′ ones.

We couldn’t find a restaurant that looked good in West Point, so we drove into LaGrange.  Didn’t find much there, either, so we stopped into a chain Chinese Peking restaurant, not expecting much.  We were surprised.

The staff was Chinese… in fact, they barely spoke English.  The service was superb, and the food, although the same dishes the chain serves everywhere else, was exquisitely prepared.   We really enjoyed our dinner.

campground ducks

Campground geese

I took the photo of the geese in the water yesterday, and the ones of them walking down the road today before the rain started.  That’s my only photo for today.

Tonight it’s raining.  Ron is curled up with a book and I am surfing.  Am thinking of bringing out the Scrabble game, but I don’t know if we could stand the excitement!  😀

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