Doing what you love with no rules.

My post today has been inspired by two blogs. Jude at Spirit Cloth writes about changing the world by doing what we love, and Sharon B wrote about an article in Bonefolder, in which women who create books discuss the multidisciplinary aspect to artistic book making. Sharon thought that maybe this was because it is an art without history and long standing rules. And she compared this to the women who love crazy quilting and art journaling, where there are no rules. Jude does the most amazing quilting, though that really doesn't do justice to her work, so the two blog entries seem to have come together in my mind. I am inspired by both these women who love fibre arts so much. And I appreciate that they both write blogs so I can keep up with their work. And both have pushed me to try new things - although I had already given up on a lot of rules.

I love embroidery, and working with children, and I forget the rules when teaching kids embroidery, since in the end, what matters is the kids being happy with what they have created. When I buy supplies for stitching, I usually forget the rules as well and just buy what appeals to me. When I do use a pattern, I usually change things to make what I want. Even in my profession, which I love, I've pushed beyond conventional practice a few times to do what I think needs doing, and have been able to advance professionally because of this. I am now learning to weave, so I have to follow some rules, but as I learn and read more figure out how weaving is supposed to work, I will be breaking the rules and creating what I want to see. And I know my posture, and the way I hold the guitar and my fingering and timing are all wrong, but I love playing classical guitar, and it turns out, my daughter love to hear me practice as she falls asleep. What a nice thing to find out on mother's day.

Speaking of mother's day, I finished the fringe on the shawl for my mother, my first woven piece.

Thanks for all the encouragement and support Mom. Sorry the present will be late.

Two great finishes!

My first woven article is done! I am pleased with how it turned out, but even more, I enjoyed the whole process thoroughly. I was so worried that after so many years of wanting to learn to weave, that I would be disappointed once I actually did it, but it is more fun than I anticipated. Just to watch the fabric grow each time I sat down to work was very gratifying. But it was also exciting to see the way the colours changed depending on what colour was in the next pic.

Here is the final hem stitch to my piece from a week and a half ago.

And here is the shawl blocked on the guest room floor. I still have to weave in a few ends, or at least trim the ends of the ends I wove in. I'll do that a little neater next time - although I won't have so many colour changes anyway. I also need to decide on the fringe. I alternate between a macrame like knotted trellis or adding some extra warp threads to fill out the fringe and make it short. Part of me thinks that a long, knotted fringe would fit with the modern sort of feel of the shawl, but then a short, full fringe would keep the focus on the weaving. Any thoughts?

Here is my other finish from last week. The Gilt Sylke Twist from Plimoth used to decorate a pre-made satin box. I'm keeping this because the spools of GST fit in perfectly.

It is quite interesting that Mary Corbet at Needle 'N Thread and
Carol Ann at Threads Across the Web also thought to do strawberries with the GST. There must be something about the gold bits that lend themselves to strawberries.

Finally, another garden photo - roses. Another bonus living in Virginia - roses in April. Mind you we have black spot by June, but what the heck.

Lots of Life, Some Needlework and a bit of Everything

There are lots of photos today. I should have spaced them out but today is my day to putter around and get things done around the house.

First, some weaving. This really isn't needlework, although it is part of my passion for fiber, so this is the everything part. This is what I was able to get done last Thursday. Most of the weft is mohair, except for some nubby yarn in the wooden shuttle that I'm using as an accent between various colours. The overdyed mohair in the red shuttle is just wending its way through the shawl. I was able to spend a few hours weaving on Saturday and made great progress. Many thanks to my DH for making sure I had the time to do it. The photos don't really do justice to the colours or texture so you'll have to trust me that it looks quite nice.
I contemplated counting things out and making a pattern to the stripes, but decided not to in the end. My husband thought it looked like waves, so I guess that is the pattern!

Now to the life. It is spring in Virginia and my garden is starting to bloom.

And the house finches nested behind the light on our front porch. These three fledged the next day, which isn't surprising given the amount of room they have.

Now some needlework. I'm doing something with the Gilt Sylke Twist from the Plymoth Jacket Project. I looked over my photos of the jacket motifs and decided to do some strawberries and a cornflower. I've done them in detached buttonhole because...
...they are going on the top of this satin box.
I found the box for $1 at Michael's. Of course when I decided that the box would be great for needlework projects and went back, there were none left. Stay tuned for the results.

New Life

Well, I knew this past week was going to be exciting, but even I was surprised at how exciting.

To start with, my older daughter had some of her artwork in the school show last week, and this weekend she had 5 pieces in the big county show (which is held in conjunction with the science fair, which my husband attended as a judge.) Here is her gesture drawing - the first time she has had models for drawing people:

Then, on Thursday, I had my second weaving class. It seems like I have always wanted to learn how to weave (and eventually I want to weave tapestries.) I've finally got just the right timing to be able to take classes - and it looks like there is a chance I'll have a spot for a loom later this year. We'll see. Anyway, the class is down at the Visual Arts Center and the instructor is Cherri Hankins, who has a blog and web site with her lovely weaving. We've also had some great chats about teaching children fiber arts.

I forgot my camera the first class, but here is my progress through the second class. The first class we measured the warp and then put it on the loom and counted warp threads through the raddle, which I finished up before the second class started.

Then we rolled the warp on and pulled it through the heddles.
Finally, we started sleying the reed.
Lest you think I have it all memorized, I've been going back to Cherri's weaving group list where she tells us what we have done. It is actually good to go over it and look at the photos so I can remember the proper names and what I've been up to. You'll also notice that some threads are no longer in the heddles. Of course I was chatting as I was threading heddles and didn't check my counting carefully enough and had to pull out about half of my threading. Good lesson and good practice!
By the way, I'm making a mohair shawl and these are the colours:

Last weekend my daughters attended a baby shower for a horse at the place next to our riding stables. My older daughter drew the card (the owner is pretty sure the foal will be a paint).

Well, little did we know that in less than a week, we would be seeing a foal being born - this one at our riding stables. We arrived earlier than usual on Friday for a lesson and things were very quite since the owner and manager were out for lunch. There were just a few of us around. I was chatting with one of the other mothers (who also boards her horse there) and then she went off to finish cleaning stalls, when suddenly she shouted that Lily was having her baby! Nobody was sure when she was due because she wasn't intentionally bred - she was purchased without knowing she was pregnant.
Frantic phone calls were made and we all gathered quietly around the stall to make sure Lily was fine. There were two of us in the stall and the others, including my daughters, sat out in the aisle. I don't think it took more than 20 minutes for Lily to deliver. It was amazing and all done by the time the barn owner arrived. Here is the new filly, Darcie, at 24 hours old (of course I had no camera on Friday). Isn't she adorable. Yesterday evening she was running about with her mother. It is incredible how well a foal can move so soon after being born. The mare is an excellent mother and whenever Darcie ran too far away, Lily ran after her and brought her in line.

Whale of a time in Bermuda

We returned yesterday from a wonderful vacation in Bermuda. It was a fantastic experience. We rode horses on the beach, visited all sorts of beaches, toured houses, museums, the zoo and aquarium, even a perfumery. I am taking care of laundry, putting things away, and nursing a sinus headache that only Virginia can cause - Bermuda was relatively allergen free for me! So just a couple of photos of the trip. We took a back route through St. George's (a really lovely historic town) and I found the best place for me to live - Needle and Thread Alley!

Last time we went to Bermuda, the highlight of the trip was helmet diving in the reefs around Bermuda, which are justifiably famous. This time we couldn't helmet dive, although we did try to arrange it, but Easter was too early, so too far before the real tourist season for the dive boat to be ready. So instead we went on a whale watching tour. Despite a couple of members of the family getting sea sick (amazingly I wasn't too bad) it was an incredible experience. Here is one of my photos of one of the two young humpback whales that were swimming around our boat for a while. They kept going back and forth under the boat and checking us out. It was a glass bottom boat and when you looked down, you could see the whales clearly and several people, including my younger daughter, were able to see the whales looking up at them. She was thrilled!

Of course, this is a really poor photo, and wouldn't mean anything except for the fact the I took it and really saw the whales. If you want good whale footage, check out this video by Andrew Stevenson from YouTube:

Everything and a new blog

If I were really vain (which I hope I'm not) I might start by reassuring my adoring fans that I am quite well despite my absence from this blog. But instead I'll just apologize to my few blog friends and Sister Stitchers for being such a poor correspondent these past couple of months. It really is frustrating when the paid work gets in the way. On the plus side, I know more about searching for gene sequences than I did back in January!

I have managed to fit a few stitching projects in though. I especially like having something to work on as I watch TV, the sitting doesn't seem quite so pointless, although when the new Jane Austen films have been on Masterpiece Classic (the new name) I haven't bothered to stitch. I didn't like the new Persuasion, but I guess that will be another post.

Anyway, I've finished the stitching on the Catherine Jordan Topiary Sampler piece that was a chapter program in January, so I'm ready for the finishing class in May. This piece was designed to teach the use of overdyed threads and was very, very good. We'll be creating pin keeps in May.

Speaking of the chapter, I've set up a blog and web site for the chapter. Google Docs doesn't support easy URLs, hence the blog to go with the web site. Take a look and let me know what I should add to the web site, aside from photos, which I need to get permissions for before I add them. I've also been in charge of getting a chapter square for the region banner, which will be at the 50th anniversary EGA national meeting this fall. We used our chapter logo, which was already charted for our nametags, and then Catherine Jordan (as well as an exceptional national teacher, she is also a member of my chapter) designed the bargello border for the square. It was stitched by various members and the lace cuff is a crocheted lace sample done by my great-grandmother. The overdyed ribbon is from Catherine, and I used floss colours to match the ribbon for the palette.

On the knitting front, I've been testing various lace patterns with the silk yarn I purchased for my own project, and so far nothing has been quite right. I'll keep trying, but with the daffodils out and the birds singing, my knitting season is almost over, so it may have to keep until fall. In the meantime, I'm taking a weaving class in April!

What I did

First of all, I must thank Jane, from Nuido - a student's journey, for her 'Make My Day' award nomination. Not only is it rewarding to know that somebody is enjoying my blog, but I found new blogs to enjoy from her list. I'm still thinking about my list, but as always, as I think, the people whose blogs I read are already posting their lists, and so it is hard to think of somebody new to add to the lists. In my comment to Jane I wondered what a six degrees of separation list would look like for the needlework blog community. I suspect it is more like 3 or 4 degrees of separation, given the lists I've seen.

The other comment on my last post was from Elisabeth at Sew In Love who wondered what I had done back in January when I wrote my last long, meandering post. Well, I didn't do much stitching but I did select colours and find a pattern and start stitching on a band round robin I'm doing. I've posted it on the Stitching Sisters blog where we share our progress but here it is as well. I've been using "Color Play:Easy Steps to Imaginative Color in Quilts" by Joen Wolfrom to help when I am stuck with colour choice. The colour combinations are based on the Ives colour wheel and there are lots of photos of flowers and such to illustrate the concepts. For me, the colour pallates ring true, so I reley on this book.

I had already decided on a beach theme because Jenny's beautiful band had such lovely sea colours. You can read her description of this band in her Stitching Sisters post. But the reds I found that fit the colour scheme didn't quite lend themselves to beach or sea items. Luckily, back in November I taught an Assisi work class and had searched the internet for charts and remembered a seahorse chart. I used the dark aqua instead of black for the outline and after a few nights of stitching while watching mystery DVDs I finished the first motif. I won't say that I didn't have to frog a few times, but I've learned that a good mystery is not conducive to keeping count. I'll have to save my free form stitching for those nights.

I searched for sea shell charts and couldn't find what I wanted to go with this, so I charted my own sea shell to go above and below the seahorses. I finished up last night so here is how the sampler looks so far. Jenny has asked for bands in a verticle orientation because she is making a purse at the end. I have to send this off to Mandy in England next, but I'm keeping it until next week because I mentioned the band round robin to some of my EGA chapter members and they asked to see it. Jenny's hardander work is so amazing that I want them to take a look.


As I've mentioned before, I start to feel like knitting come November, so that is another thing I've been finishing off. The problem is, the yarn store is next to the wide shoe store so I can't help myself. And when I see all the amazing yarns, I just have to get them. I limited myself to scarf amounts though, rather than sweater, since it was just before Christmas and I had to consider the budget. I don't know if I'll be able to restrain myself when I go to get spring shoes though. Anyway, I've done three scarves so far, which has been good practice for the final silk scarf I will do for myself.

I almost don't want to give this scarf away, but it is for my SIL who just had a birthday so I can't keep it without getting something else for her. It is made from polyamide, which sounds awful but it really is neat. The yarn is from Colinette yarns in Wales - Lasso in Monet colourway. I tried about three different knitting patterns before deciding on this simple lace pattern. The others I tried showed too much of the light blue and the colourway didn't work. We had Catherine Jordan teaching a class at my last EGA chapter meeting and she taught us various ways to work with overdyed threads. This scarf really brought that home. You can't use varigated or overdyed yarns and threads for everything!


This morning I finally got around to blocking. When I see these two (the smaller scarf if the pale aqua silk mentioned in a previous post) stretched out on the floor I wonder if maybe I made them too long. I judged the length by putting them on me, but I'm taller than the recipients of these and I like to wear my scarf wrapped around my neck with both ends hanging in front.
I also finished this silk and cotton scarf. I really like the picot edge knitted on this pattern so I used it for the aqua silk as well. I didn't on the blue scarf and I'm sort of wishing I had, but there is no more yarn so it will have to do. I'll make sure I think of it for the next scarf.