Finally a rose garden

When we moved into this house 4 years ago, I decided on this spot for roses, since it has the most sun. It is at the end of the driveway and in front of the fence we put in to enclose the back yard for the dog. As you can see, not a pretty site - and I learned early on that roses in Virginia always get black spot!

But I'm nothing if not an optimist, so after buying 4 new rosebushes in the last week, I decided it was high time to put in an actual garden. With help from my husband we decided on a basic plan then went off to a large home improvement chain store to get border and soil. And after several hours of work, I have my garden. We have yet to decide on an appropriate medium for the pathway area, but since it took 4 years to get to this point, a few more weeks of thinking are nothing. We are contemplating light gray gravel to go with the driveway, since oyster shells are rather difficult to come by.

I also did some cleanup and planting on our woodland path. A large dead tree came down during a storm in the fall so I had to do a bit or rearranging.
Now it looks a bit more like a path. You'll have to take my work for it that I also planted almost a dozen plants in here as well. The lighting is not conducive to a clear photo at the time of day I finished my work.

This is how the dog helped. Actually, she was usually lying down, but managed to stand up and check on my progress a couple of times.
This is our pond on the deck. A raccoon or cat recently ate one of our goldfish, which is quite sad since they actually survived over winter and had grown to be quite large. The pond was originally going to go in ground, but then we discovered that it would be impossible to make a hole that big in the clay!

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.

Trip to England

Just came back from a wonderful 8 days in London, England. Sunny every day and in the 70s, so it was great for all the walking we did. I was able to tour through two gardens. The knot garden at the Museum of Garden History - which I was able to get as a kit for cross stitch and of course I started it on the plane - see above. I also toured the gardens at Kew, which didn't involve any embroidery but I love the gardens.
The other embroidery stop was the Victoria & Albert Museum. The textile area was closed on the day we went, but I found lots of textiles in other parts of the museum to drool over, including the Martha Edlin casket and some stumpwork mirror frames.
Of course we saw all sorts of castles and houses and museums and the Globe Theater and even went to a classical choral concert at St. Martin's in the Fields church. All in all an excellent trip.

Old WIP returns to the light

Although I am really enjoying my new job, I must admit that I am exhausted. I am used to getting up and puttering around the house for a while, picking up. doing a load of laundry, etc. then getting down to work at the computer. I was very lucky that a new job presented itself just as the at home computer job finished, but I have to get up earlier and get out of the house before everyone else. I still want to do needlework in the evenings, but I'm too tired to create anything, so I looked through my WIP kits and such and found an Irish stitch pocketbook that I had started a few years ago. It seemed perfect, but then I remembered why I stopped working on it - I couldn't count the threads. Well, since then I have been fitted with bifocals and I have a magnifier, so it turned out fine, except the first rows of stitching had to compensate for my old miscounts!!! But it is fine now and stitching up much quicker with the extra magnification. I have done another pocketbook, also an Examplarery design by Joanne Harvey, The Henry Row Pocketbook Kit.
I have one garden photo to show off, my first ever Lenten Rose. I have been trying to grow these without success for 10 years in NY and now here in VA for 2 years. When I first planted this one, the lovely man who does the mulch covered it up and I had to rescue it. It have finally recovered and this spring I have 1 flower - yes ONE. But I am still excited. I don't think I'll ever have a drift of Hellebore's like I see in English garden photos, but I got one to bloom.


By the way, if you like to be inspired by old botanical prints, try going to A Modern Herbal, an online version of a book by Mrs. M. Grieve, first published in 1931.

ORCHIDS

I LOVE orchids! Ever since I saw the pansies in posy holders made by Marsha Papay-Gomola at EGA National I have been thinking about making a 3-D stumpwork orchid. Well, one of the Stitching Post members did one that is wonderful. I hope this link works:
http://new.photos.yahoo.com/celeste_stitch/photo/294928804206158194/0

Celeste mentions that she has a couple of orchids in bloom at home that she will try next. Not wanting to wait for mine to bloom (I have three sending up buds right now) I went to the Lewis Ginter Botanic Garden in Richmond, VA and had my fill of orchids at the conservatory. Here is a selection of photos - my husband took them while I just stood and stared! Imagine dozens of orchids like these in a tropical waterfall setting - pictures can't do it justice.




I am working on a daffodil for my spring bouquet right now but as soon as I figure out how to do these colours, I think I'll try an orchid.

TAST4 Cretan stitch

As well as taking the TAST challenge to expand my stitch repertoire and create a stitch book, I also wanted to experiment with colour and threads, or in this case ribbon. I am trying to over my reluctance to use good supplies (like real silk thread) for practice stitching. There is some Hungarian Jewish guilt there telling me I can't use the expensive stuff unless I'm doing something important. So today, I broke out some silk ribbon and tried stitching. I had used some silk ribbon in my Chawton Cottage picture, but only as straight stitches. I can't believe how much fun it was to work with ribbon! I'm sure there are some places where you would want to coax the ribbon to fold in a specific way, but for today I let the ribbon do what it wanted with each stitch. According to my Kooler book, the vertical Cretan is called quill stitch and I found the leaf in the old standby, Reader's Digest Complete Guide to Needlework, as a closed Cretan. I will be sure to try more with ribbon in the future!


For those hoping for spring I thought you would enjoy my few crocus flowers. I planted mixed crocus bulbs a couple of years ago and the yellow always bloom first. Then white, then purple and purple striped come out last. I don't know if it is because of the cheap Home Depot bulbs I planted (some flowers are quantity not quality for me) or whether this is a common observation. It was the same pattern when I lived on Long Island as well. Whatever the case, I am grateful to have flowers in the garden now that the camellia have stopped blooming.