Let me call you Sweetheart

January sure seemed to FLY by in a hurry! Did it seem that way to you?

My work in accounting is so tied to the calendar - what with payrolls, month-end financial statements, quarterly tax returns, and all the rest. I spend the whole of January with one foot in the previous year and one in the new and by the time I come up for air the month is generally almost over.

I'm glad there are no big family milestones in January.

With most deadlines met and cleared away, I look up, realize it is February, and start thinking of Valentines (or maybe I'm just thinking of Valentine M&Ms!).

Last September at the quilt show, I bought a ball of vintage crochet cotton - the Clark's shown above on the left. I've been carrying it around for over a month intending to try it out and finally I have. I intended to make another button-tatted heart but in digging through the pattern drawer (and finally finding the button pattern - yeah!), I came across quite a few more heart patterns and this one named SweetHeart called to me instead.

I loved how the variegated thread colors worked up with this pattern. A quick internet search didn't yield me much information on O.N.T. so I asked my all-things-vintage expert, Kay, who tells me it stood for Our New Thread.

The thread, above right, is a Valdani overdyed pearl cotton [color M43]. I love the deep reds in it, too, but don't always enjoy tatting with pearl cotton. Perhaps I'll save it to use in embroidery as I intended when I bought it.

Who am I kidding? I bought it just because it was beautiful.

Speaking of quilts, Jan at Bemused is back from the Tokyo International Quilt Festival where she saw some amazingly gorgeous quilts. Her Flickr set is here.