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.

First Anniversary Musings

I realized recently that my first anniversary as a blogger came and went without me noticing. As well as blogging myself, I have been reading more blogs this year, as I discovered the wonderful online community of textile lovers. I have a bit of time to reflect on this past year and I thought I'd share my thoughts on how it has gone.



My original reason for starting a blog was to participate in the Take a Stitch Tuesday Challenge set up by Sharon B. I can't tell you how much I am humbled by her energy, expertise and artistic talent. While I haven't finished all the weeks (I've reached 47 although I haven't blogged it yet), I have been pushed into many new things by the challenge and I will be eternally grateful to Sharon for setting it up.


Once I started participating in Sharon's challenge, I realized that there were many, many textile blogs out there. I can't tell you how many hours I've spent looking at all the wonderful things everyone out there is doing. I've added many inspired ideas to my visual journal thanks to my blog surfing.


At that point, I was working a couple of consulting jobs from home, but in March, I was able to start working more outside the home. Many years ago I 'retired' from full time work as a library director to stay home with my children. While I was able to fit in part-time work back in NY, when we moved there weren't enough hours between my morning drop-off and afternoon pick-up times. With the change in grades I have a good stretch of time to get out now. It was great to get back into a library and work at a busy reference desk. I forgot how much I love a university atmosphere. Of course, it means less time for stitching and blogging but I usually do feel more energized and creative after a good day at work.



I have summers off for childcare, so I was able to catch up and try new things then. I wrote an article about the tapestry project I worked on with my daughter's art club (see the Dec. NeedleArts magazine). My biggest inspiration was going up to Plimoth Planation in MA to work on the reproduction jacket project. That has totally changed the direction I want to go with my embroidery.


I started back at the university again in September where I'm doing some things that I find professionally exciting (I know, you are wondering what is exciting about being a librarian, but really, it is fun) I was also asked to be on the EGA National Youth Program Committee and edit the Crayons to Threads column for NeedleArts. That was a great honour (plus I still do the chapter newsletter). And the Sampler Round Robin I am in seems to be moving again. At least I have finished one and have another to do, so that is good.


My blogging has been sporadic. I constantly question why I'm doing it and why anyone would care. But I am so inspired by others, maybe somebody will find what I do interesting as well. And since not many people blog stumpwork, I feel I need to keep going with that, just to encourage more people.


All in all, I am pleased with what I have accomplished in the last year. Especially since I have also been working at the barn one or two evenings a week for much of the year. I even took riding lessons for a while. Mind you, I can't be to complacent right now because the tree is only half decorated and there are still presents to buy.

I am looking forward to 2008. There are going to be some new work challenges, some column editing, and lots and lots of stitching. And I hope to do some work with the high school art guild in the coming year as well. I don't know if I'll participate in any more challenges though. I think I want to challenge myself to create the work that I've been planning since I first saw the 3-D embroidered gardens book. I'll keep you posted on that. I also want to explore some other ideas. Today Sharon b wrote about a new blog that has captured my interest, Red Thread Studio. Elaine Lipson writes about Slow Cloth, New Cloth and Art Cloth. I love doing hand sewing, so the idea of slow cloth really appeals to me. (One of my favourite places is the milliner's shop in Colonial Williamsburg) Elaine's third post mentions one of my favourite books Elizabeth Wayland Barber's Women's Work, The First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth and Society in Early Times. There is a vague notion in my mind that somehow the ideas in Barber's book should combine with those in Mother Nature: Maternal Instincts and How They Shape the Human Species by Sarah Hrdy to form an interesting take on why women feel and act as they do. I'm not sure what yet, but one day it will hit me.

I'm sure I've gone on long enough now, but I've at least interspersed my meanderings with some photos of current projects, and to end it all, some silk that I will be using to knit myself a lace scarf. If nothing else, over the last year I've learned that I can make something really special for myself, not just everyone else.

Band RR second round

I am so excited to be a part of a Sampler Band Round Robin. I've never done any sort of RR (unless you count the names on the membership band for our EGA chapter) so I have been looking forward to starting with this group. This piece was started by ktj of Katie's New Place.

Usually I take quite a while to decide on things for non-kit projects. I went through multiple ideas for the two President's challenges I've done for my EGA chapter, so I expected the band sampler RR would be similar. But somehow it wasn't. There were multiple inspirations that all lead to this band. When it arrived we had just started planning a trip to England for the spring, and I was checking the growth of my outdoor bulbs every day, and I was working on a bookmark of London motifs for my daughter (in the post below). At the same time I've been reading a book on symbolism in art and I wanted to include some special things to give the band meaning. The British and garden themes led me to patterns from another bookmark I had finished that had medieval garden motifs. I did some modification of the motifs and used many of my new colour variation DMC flosses to create what I hope is a lovely spring garden that comes after the wintry first band of this sampler. There are bees/honey for sweetness and water for tranquility. I realize the pictorial aspects of band samplers are usually at the bottom, but think of this as a minor update.