A Fine Time of Year for Pointless Handwork

What is a person to do once the garden goes dormant for the season?  I don't know about you, but this is the time of year when I return to the more obscure handicrafts.  The really pointless ones.  Like tatting.

I don't remember why, many years ago, I was so intrigued by tatting.  In the dark ages before the internet, I had to haunt many yarn, handicrafts, and book shops in a search for instructional and patterns books.  I'm left-handed.  There is no such thing as a left-handed tatting instructional book, so I had to transpose right-handed instructions in my head.  My mother thought learning to tat was going to drive me right around the  bend.

I did eventually get the hang of it and worked my way through several designs for tatted snowflakes.   For about 350 days a year, this one and its cousins live in an envelope in the box of Christmas ornaments in the attic.   Every year I'm happy to see their lacy little faces, but I don't seem to have any burning desire to make any more.

Steadfast

When I was very young, lace was that decorative stuff one had on one's party clothes and sometimes on petticoats.  It was awfully pretty, even if it could be a little scratchy.

When I was very young, one of the very first flowers I was taught to name was Queen Anne's Lace.  Queen Anne was nobody I knew, so that part didn't matter, but I was enchanted that lace could be both a dress trimming and a flower.

I still am.  Opinions and enthusiasms formed early in life can be remarkably durable.  Which Queen Anne has the honor of the flower named after her is apparently open to debate.  It still doesn't matter to me.

Although considered a weed, I always allow a few plants of Queen Anne's Lace into my flower beds.  In this area we have a local mutation that has a distinct pink cast to the umbels, as the little "flowers" are more properly known.  Once fully open, the pink umbels fade to near white, but are still a slightly different white than the non-pink variety.