Hairpin lace and tatting

I started to play around with hairpin lace this past week. I have played before but never got anything but a few tiny strips done, but I never did anything with them. I still have one in my tatting supplies somewhere. I will have to dig that out at some point. I did this little piece last night. I have a couple other pieces on hairpin looms but I put those aside to play with this. I do love to play.

This piece has tatting added around the hairpin lace section. I am not really totally happy with how this is turning out. See the gap in the section of the hairpin. That gap is where the sides should be joined so that they look seamless. Well, it doesn't. I played around with the join longer then it took me to do the piece of hairpin lace and the tatting. I just couldn't seem to get something right, or maybe it was the hairpin lace piece not being just right. I think I will have to do a lot more playing before I get this one right.

As for the tatted section, yuck. Way too many mistakes. The double stitches are not all formed right. Granted this is cheap thread, just some of that kind you can buy at Wally World. So it is not the best for tatting with, but still I should have been able to do much better then this. Some of the chains have tiny gaps next to the rings, as I said all the double stitches are not as good as they should be, and the picots, oh the picots, such a mess in sizes. Then again, I have not picked up my shuttles for over a year. I have just been loom knitting and crocheting with yarn. On most of the looms I use a double strand of worsted weight yarn, so bouncing suddenly to tiny size 10 thread is quite a leap. I will do better with more practice.

Now about that loom knitting. Can you see pieces of hairpin lace or tatting as inserts into a loomed piece, or maybe both. Do a strip of hairpin lace, tat around it and attach it to a loomed section as an insert. Oh that would be way cool, but that's for the future. I first need to be able to do this correctly. I need a tutorial book. I need to first get to storage to check out what I may already have. Online sucks (sorry folks), for tutorials that take you very far with hairpin.

Weekend mess

This is the five year old grandson, Payton. Right behind him is one of my extras, Austin, and in the far back the two year old, Carter. Boys, boys, boys. Yep that's mostly what I have. Well, we have a girl, Austin's sister but she didn't make it into this picture, but that is just one girl. We need more girls to even out the numbers.

Well, this weekend didn't go at all as I planned it to be. I had plans to do some things in the database for work then since the weather was suppose to be nice for one more day, I would go out and give my car a good cleaning, then do some needed house work, mopping and such. This would leave me with Sunday all to my crafts. Ha, the best plans are not to make any plans at all. Every time I make plans they do not come to pass. Instead something comes up and that is more important then my own plans.

The kid's car broke down way north of here earlier in the week. This is a bummer, they just had a computer chip replaced along with a bunch of other work that ran them close to $1000, not at but close. So here is the car down again. They had it towed to a shop up north and left it to be checked out. First it was there was a blown fuse (in the engine compartment that they says has to do with the computer). Ok fuse replaced, but what caused it to blow. Well, they said needed a new fuel pump. Ha, over $200 for this little piece. Now it still doesn't run right, so more checking. Ah a computer chip has gone bad. Have to replace that. Ok is this the same computer chip or another? No one seems to know. So the car is finished and ready to go.

Now it is the weekend, Saturaday, and my daughter takes my son up to pick up the car. He pays them over $700 for this work. He has to run north a bit to pick up stuff he left from his last trip and then return south. He got a little ways down the road going north and guess what? The car starts doing the exact same thing it did when it broke down up there. So he is stranded again.

This is where my part comes in. The DIL has a friend that will take her up north to retrieve the son, and my daughter says she will watch the kids, but she is still returning from up north. Yea, grandma gets the kids. I am too old to be able to do the things I want and watch an active 2 year old at the same time. So nothing that I planned is done, but I had an excellent day with the kids.

The hubby trimmed a lot of trees, and took out a few. Birches came out in a couple of areas (such messy trees and other kinds are taking their place). Plus a couple of maples that are sick needed to go. The back and front yards look like a forest that had been hit with high winds, branches and logs everywhere. So yesterday was a cleaning day for that. It was a burn day so that's what he was doing, burning all those branches and logs. Now the younger son went out with the two boys to help haul limbs and branches over to the burn pile. The oldest of the two boys worked for a while but went back to play his uncles video games. The two year old worked for hours. What a handy little guy. Oh don't worry he was not allowed near the fire. He was given a set distance he could go and he obeys rules pretty well. He just carried the branches over to his uncle and gave them over to him for the pile. I was amazed at how much work this little guy did. We kept telling him he didn't have to but he was helping Papa and Uncle Micah and didn't want to stop. It was so cute watching him. He would pick up a little branch and tell us he had a big one. Well, I guess to someone his size it was big. He cleaned up an entire area all by himself, a large area.

Wouldn't it be great if this guy continued on with this kind of idea of helping. Of course, he is going to grow up and who knows what will happen in this area, but at least for now he loves doing what ever he can to help. Sometimes the helping is not really helping but he thinks it is and this time it was.

Today I am on to the things I needed to do yesterday with the added need of laundry at the same time.

My very first day here

Well, I got this blog thing started this morning but didn't get far. I was babysitting, just one grandson, but oh boy is he an active grandson. Two years old and wanting to see everything, do everything, eat everything, and needs grandma to do it all with him. I am exhausted, totally exhausted. Isn't he cute though.

My son was taking his oldest son home to mom. Trenton was here for winter break. I knew Carter wasn't going to be happy about it. So I took my portable DVD player with me. When dad and brother were getting ready to leave and Carter was full of tears, I pulled that DVD player out with a movie already in it for him, Shark's tale. He played that movie for hours. I now know it by heart. It helped though. As dad and brother were leaving out the door they were mostly forgotten. They got a quick wave and that was the end of that. Grandmas are the best, well that's my opinion.

I am feeling kind of bad though. Mom and dad ran out of pullups and picked up a different kind then he is use to. After three of these pullups he has a rash that is horrible. All the meds they have for baby rashes amount to nothing in the help section. I had my Johnson's First Aide Cream and used that on him. By the time I left he was 50% better but still has a long way to go. I left that tube and went to Wally World and picked up another tube. This little man screamed so hard and the tears. Oh I hate having to hurt a baby. I tried bath tub washing and everything else I could think of but that cleaning of his little bottom was so painful. Makes you want to have tears watching him squirm away from you.

I took a bunch of loom knitting with me. What was I thinking? Only one kid means no one to entertain so I am it. I managed to get one row done on a baby bunting that has been sitting for a while. Oh well, theres always another day down the line.

Then we had a little walk to the bus stop to pick up Carter's other brother, Payton. Payton is in kindergarden and has a couple of short days and a long day at school. Today was a long day. Payton's friend came over to play and the boys mostly stayed in the bedroom then. Oh I needed that break, but guess what? Payton tells his friend that grandma has the coolest movies (I always bring movies to watch). He expecially likes Volcano, it has lava you know and he gets so sad when the lava gets the fire truck. Then grandma also has Nemo, and a very big favorite, Monsters Inc. You know they have these movies but grandma has to bring hers. It must be a kid thing. LOL