A Work in Progress!

 …my blog pictures, that is!  Having learned that my free Picasa space was virtually used up and I couldn’t put any more pictures in my blog unless I (pick one)

·         Deleted pictures from the albums to free up some space (n-o-o-o-o-o-o!!)

·         Paid Picasa for more space (eeeeeeeeeeeeek!)

·         Wrote blog posts that were devoid of pictures (unthinkable!)

Jane Eborall to the rescue!  Jane kindly explained how to re-size the pictures already in the Picasa album so as to free up needed space.  She also posted her very easy instructions on her blog, in this post.  That has now become one of my hobbies – re-sizing pictures.  I don’t devote much time to it, as I don’t have much time for it, so it will be an ongoing venture.  I find that, since I wake up the sun every morning, it’s early enough to perform certain necessary tasks to get me ready for another day at work (read the funnies – on three different sites; read Dear Abby on yet another different site; check my email; check out friends’ blogs; have a look at Facebook; and play a game of Spider or Freecell), I can squeeze in re-sizing some pictures.  I've dropped it to nearly half of what it was, and I’m only about 1/3 of the way through all the pictures!

It’s been a rough fall – we’re through the software conversion, but there is still plenty of work to keep us very busy; I’m still getting 50-70 hours per week.  I’m hoping that after the end of the year, it will have leveled out to where we’re all keeping normal hours and having evenings and weekends for ourselves and families.  Then I can (hopefully!) get back on track with my tatting.

Lately, I have been able to:

It took some squeezing, but this is a lot of it!

(1)     Tidy up my big thread box (little thread boxes…just don’t ask).  No loose thread, no abandoned starts, no pieces with errors – just neatly arranged with a nice pair of scissors handy for when I wind a shuttle or bobbin.  The scissors are a Big Lots find - $2 and they’re a name brand (Fiskars), so I have high hopes of them staying nice and sharp!

Merry Wreath in progress.  How do you like
my new Sequoia Pop-A-Bobbin shuttle?

(2)    Work on ornaments for our yearly Ornament Exchange at the December PTG meeting.  Usually by now I have several done, in case we have one or more visitors who didn’t know about the exchange but would like to play (there are several of us who do this – not just me).  This is the first one, and it’s not finished yet.  It will be – it’s a grey, drizzly day here in sunny (?) South Carolina, so I’ll definitely be tatting this afternoon.

(3)    Think about patterns for submission for PTG Tat Days 2013, as I hope to teach again this year.  In a normal Fall, I’d have two or three finished and test-tatted already, but this has not been a normal Fall…at all.

Well, back to work on the first Merry Wreath.  My goal is to tat a couple of these, plus a snowflake, and maybe an angel.  That’s my hope, anyway!!