First March

First today I have Cindy's mermaid which has now arrived very gracefully into the TIAS blog. She says:

105. "Good Morning Jane,

I was waiting for a sunny day to try to work away the thread ends. Unfortunately this became the longest dreary period Texas has known in a long, long time… I have had to turn on the lights during the day, just about every day! So, today I decided to try it with my daylight lamp. I think the result is not completely awful. I clearly could learn a bit more about finishing techniques in tatting. My little mermaid received a hairdo in the same color as her body. My selection of thread is not huge yet, and it seemed as good a color as any. But the hair tie is a piece of seaweed…. LOL I used Lizbeth size 20, color 127, Butterfly Breeze. The hair tie is Perle Iris size 8, color 5062, a variegated green, of which I literally had just that little piece left over. I live in the Dallas area, in Texas, USA. Thank you for giving us the best reason to look forward to the new year. :D I loved playing the game, even if the last couple of days I got hopelessly behind. The rest of life had apparently no respect for my desire to tat…"

Next in today is a batch of mermaids from Katie!!! Here's what she says along with her husband's rhyme too!!

106. "Hi, Jane,

here are five of my six sweet mermaids--one swam away at the sight of the others' hairdos! Never been good at "styling" hair! Also, may redo these as I like to applique' tatting figures to quilts or my jeans jacket. Floating hair might be a bit much. Actually, I gave the wayward swimmer to a friend from Tri-tatters who thought her daughter would LOVE one! Her job is to be hair stylist for that mermaid, hehe!

Your TIAS projects have all been marvelous as have been the responses of tatters around the world! In your honor, my poetic husband wrote a limerick for this perhaps final occasion:

Adieu, TIAS. Thanks to Jane,

I have tatted a rooster, a plane,

a fat hippo, a goat,

a mermaid, a sail boat,

a rabbit... The joy will remain. 

Well, Jane, that's seven of the ten! 

big, big tatty hugs, 

Katie Verna in NC USA (near Raleigh)"

Oh, Katie I love all the different hairstyles.  The blue one on the bottom left has a particularly interesting hairstyle.  Please tell your husband that I think he must be a descendent of one of our local men - William Shakespeare!!!!