Trying To Kill Myself

    I know. I haven't posted for a while. But I have been trying to kill myself. First, though, I did some tatting today while I had the wife at the hospital for her checkup today. We use the Walmart grocery pickup, so in gratitude for the assistance from the girls (women) working there, (some are only 19 or 20. To an old fart like me they are girls.), I have been making earrings. Again. They just like them. These are yellow with black beads, as requested.

    As to the topic of the post, the wife likes to make suggestions when spring pops 'round. She suggested I repair our deck on the back of the house. So I bought lumber. Enough to redo the entire floor of the deck. Now the deck IS over 30 years old, so the wood is in really bad shape. Rough and rutted. I am almost 65 and have not worked construction for 25 years. I have to pry out the old boards with a big crowbar, then screw down the new ones. In between I cut and fit the boards around posts and the like. Each day in the weekend I do this, I replace about 12 boards and I am through. I physically cannot take it any more. I have thus come to the conclusion that getting old sucks. If you look at the pictures, though, I think you will agree it looks better.

I will do handrails later this summer. I still have about half the deck to go, so I am not going to be tatting a lot for a while. Too tired!

Pay Attention, Will you?

    Pay attention, will you? That is what I told myself this morning after I made a discovery. I had a small, but significant error. Can you spot it? I am just over 1/2 way around round 10. It's going pretty good, but I got distracted this morning and this is what happened.

    I cut back to the previous motif on the round. I cut out or dismembered 5 rings and a lot of the chains. After the last ring was cut, I pulled the core thread out of the chains so I would have something to work with. I sewed those ends in, passed the threads from the shuttles through the last ring and tatted over tails until I was satisfied it would not pull loose. Now continuing with the round. To see the error you will have to look for it, but at a glance, you won't see it. So, see! I'm not perfect.