Meeting the TSA

I'm flying tomorrow! Call me crazy, but I always enjoy airports. I haven't flown in several years though, and while I've flown since I learned to tat, I haven't flown since my tatting bug got so bad that I can't imagine a trip without a shuttle. I've been poring over the guidelines for clearing security and deciding what I'm willing to risk. Here are the things I've decided to bring.Wish me luck! And if you have any tips on clearing security with small metal objects of the tatting trade, please let me know.

He is Risen!

Hope you all are having a wonderful Easter Sunday. I thought a tatted cross suited today, since the main reason for today involves a cross. In fact, that is why crosses became something to wear or hang in your homes. Have you ever thought about what it must have been like to do this in the early years? A cross was the instrument of grisly executions -- it would be something like an American wearing an little model electric chair on a chain around his neck. When you think about it, that really is what the cross means. It tells of a horrible death, full of greater pain than we can imagine --physical, emotional, and spiritual. But the cross is also empty, and that tells of a greater glory than we can imagine. As the angels said to the women at the tomb, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, He is Risen!" And in His resurrection from the dead, we too are raised. We are sown perishable and raised imperishable, and since that great pivot of history, every Sunday is Resurrection Sunday. Christmas may be the most widely celebrated Christian holiday, but surely Easter is the most glorious.

Blast from the Past

Just now I opened up one of the decorative boxes sitting on my bookshelf and I found this little doily. I hadn't even thought of it for several years, and I made it even longer ago. I must have been about 14 or 15. It's from the very early stages of my tatting, when I had four humongous balls of size 10 crochet cotton in hunter green, navy blue, maroon, and white. I never tatted with any other thread. In fact, I STILL have four humongous balls of size 10 crochet cotton, because, people, those things LAST. They're each about half depleted right now. Of course, now I also (almost always) tat with other threads.

This doily was my first Celtic tatting. I remember it being a huge deal that I needed four shuttles for it. That was back when my only shuttles were the metal Susan Bates shuttles that my grandmother bought for me at JoAnns. The JoAnns in my town wasn't big enough to carry them. I was a little intimidated by the idea of Celtic tatting, but I loved the design enough to attempt it. That seems so long ago now, but with this little bit of the past in my hands, I still love the design, and I would still do it again. I know you all understand the feeling. We tatting addicts must stick together.