The busy time of year..

It's getting to that time of year where I get really busy with pottery orders and such. Autumn is my favorite time of year and I already don't know how I am going to fit in all the things I want to do. I did finish my canning and my hot sauce making this past weekend.

Here are nine qorgeous tasty bottles of "Anal Firetruck".
I make the hot sauce my husband names the hot sauce and we'll just leave it at that!

We got lot's of yard work done, and even installed a gorgeous hardwood floor in our bathroom. With all this going on, I've noticed that I have let the house go....it's pretty much in shambles right now so I am trying to motivate myself to clean it up and get organized!

Yeah, right!

Instead of cleaning I decided to take a break and practice my direction following skills by doing someone's elses tatting pattern for a change. I chose one of Jane Eborall's fabulous patterns. Jane is a tatting genious!
Here's the link to Jane's Seahorse.

I didn't have beads that would fit on the size 20 thread, so I used picots instead. I made one mistake by reversing one of the split rings....can you see it? Otherwise I did well following her pattern until close to the end when I couldn't resist adding a short chain and following the pattern backwards to avoid another cut and tie.

This is such a cute pattern and I LOVE seahorses! Here is a real seahorse I found dead on a florida beach. I did research on how to preserve him and then I added him to my sea shell collection.

Did you know that the male seahorse actually becomes pregnant, that seahorses are monogamous and that they are used in Chinese medicine?
Lot's of interesting information about seahorses to be found here: Wikipedia.

It's a GREAT day!

I've got lot's to share today. I thought I would start by sharing a sneak peak of one of the patterns I will be including in my upcoming tatting book.
I have lot's of butterfly patterns. Each pattern I have laboured over and re-tatted many times until I am satisfied, to make them not only beautiful patterns, but simple to tat.

Now, the rest of this blog is non-tatting related stuff but I am in a sharing mood today! I am going to share a personal secret about myself..... I LOVE spicey food! I mean really HOT stuff, to a level that is beyond even most spicey food lovers.
Every year I grow my own habaneros with which I make my own hot salsa and hot sauce!

This year my habaneros look funny. Instead of orange they are a deep red. My suspicision is that they are actually Scotch Bonnets and were mislabled when I purchased the starter plants. Anyhow, not all is lost. They taste great and are scorching hot! I have spend most of the day canning salsa and making batches of hot sauce. My eyes are watering, I am sweating and I have been sneazing all afternoon. But I just tasted my hot sauce and it is the hottest and best tasting I have ever made. I am so excited. I will be bottling it up to share with my fellow hot sauce loving friends.

And finally the other thing that has me so excited today is that I finally made the Main Showcase of Etsy treasuries.

Mine is the Ocarina with a tulip. I am sorry if you have no idea what I am talking about. And even though it is probably a small thing to most people it is a really big deal to me. I just happened upon the front page of Etsy today and to my utter surprise saw one of my items showcased. No one told me about it....it's just by luck that I happened to even see it. Whoo hoo!
I really should be posting this in my Ceramics Blog, but I already posted in there today so I thought I just slip it in this post today.