Value of backstitch and a finished horse

I have a few memories of embroidering as a child, but I really don't remember much of what I did until I started doing reproduction samplers about 25 years ago. When you stitch samplers, back stitch is usually for letters but usually there isn't much. Occasionally I'd do some cross-stitch pictures as gifts and there the value of back-stitch really shows. I've been working on a couple of baby-bibs and as you can see from this photo, a blob of brown is transformed into a bear with some back-stitch.

I've finally finished the horse for the center of a CQ pillow that needs to be done next Tuesday night for my EGA meeting where we need to present our president's challenge CQ items. The front half of this horse seemed to take forever. I never felt like I was getting anywhere. All the gray, gray and more gray! But then suddenly, it was done. I'm quite pleased with the result as is DD the older who did the initial drawing, and DD the younger who asked that the horse look like her favourite from the barn - she will be getting the pillow. I have a CQ landscape sort of idea and I will be painting the fabric around the horse - hopefully without staining the horse! But you never know with me and paint. Maybe I'll stick with the watercolour pencils?
Here are the two newest members of our family, Chocolate and Dude. You can't really see it in this photo, but Dude has a forehead cowlick which gives him this funny little bit of hair sticking forward. They can both climb out of the pen they get to play in, so they must be watched constantly
The girls did the photo session and had trouble keeping the boys in line. I find this photo very funny.

Loving what you do and Perimenopause?

It is interesting how threads from various ideas come together eventually, at least they often do for me. As I was thinking about doing what I love and rules in art, I was also reading about perimenopause. Stay with me here because they do come together in the end.

Since I am a woman in her forties (okay late 40s if I'm being truthful) and a medical librarian, I have been looking for a good book on menopause/perimenopause. The years before menopause, when we get the familiar signs that it is coming, are called perimenopause - for those who haven't heard the term. I look at most non-fiction books from a librarian's perspective. What are the writer's credentials and experience? are there footnotes to current peer-reviewed research? Is it a reputable publisher? etc. I looked through the shelves at my public library and took out some likely candidates to read through. One has especially been good - The Wisdom of Menopause, by Christiane Northrup. It started right off with her describing her feelings of irritability with everyone around her, which is what I've been feeling quite a bit lately. It was wonderful to know I was not alone in feeling this way, and reassuring to know it was my hormones in a wildly fluctuating state.

Dr. Northrup writes that the change in hormones changes the wiring in our brains. All the hormones for nurturing that we need for child-rearing are no longer affecting our brains the same way, so we can now focus on new things. As she writes (on page 19)
" Our hormones are giving us an opportunity to see, once and for all, what we need to change in order to live honestly, fully, and healthfully in the second half of our lives."

Doesn't that sound like a great opportunity.

She ends chapter 1 with :
"Take advantage of the clarity of vision that is the gift of menopause, and use that gift to let the second half of your life be truly your own."

The reason this comes back to loving what you do is because during the last year or so, even as I've been getting irritable, I've found myself more productive than ever at work, and more willing to try new things with my stitching, and now I'm weaving! Never mind the riding lessons. Luckily my husband is very encouraging and even offered to go to Vermont so I could take a class at Eaton Hill Textile Works - where they are weaving the silk lining for the jacket at Plimoth Plantation. (alas, the summer classes are only for dying, not weaving, but then again.....)

So now I'm looking at perimenopause as a time to take a good look at what I want to accomplish with the next half of my life. I want to fill the time with activities I love and people I love, and as little cleaning as possible.

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.

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:

Mystery in Cookie Land

These were done at a cookie decorating party for the neighbourhood children. Luckily, most of the mothers had a sense of humour or had read about the killer snowmen in the Calvin and Hobbes cartoons. Either way, here is the story the girls created.

It was a lovely day in Cookie Land.

But what is this, a MURDER! She's been shot!

Call the Detective Chief Inspector. He'll investigate.

Oh NO! Two more murders.

The Chief Inspector needs help. Ask Miss Marple, even though she is busy knitting, she has an idea.

And for good measure, ask Hercule Poirot for help too!

With their help, the murderer is apprehended! Hooray!

Now all is safe in Cookie Land again.

Except of course for the ones I ate.

Happy Holidays everyone.

Holiday Wrapping Hint

I've learned that you should not wrap presents with glittery paper in the same place you fold laundry and triage the ironing.
I happily wrapped up presents on the bed using some new glitter snowflake paper from Hallmark. What I didn't realize, until it was too late, was that the glitter was everywhere. My husband came in and told me that he could not wear the pants that were on the bed because they were too glittery. I refused to wash them again, so I told him he could head off the strange thoughts by just telling everyone what I did. I did use one of those sticky lint rollers to get some of the glitter off as I ironed - although I wondered if the heat might make the glitter permanant. Oh well. Feel free to learn from my mistake.
Today I cleaned off the island in the garage/craft room so we can now wrap presents there. At least the glitter incident got me to clean up the garage before my MIL arrives.

Happy Holidays - Winter Solstice maybe?

Part of the reason I started blogging was to learn about social software to keep me in touch with what the students at the university use. Well today I saw a very funny Christmas song video on Mason-Dixon Knitting and decided it was worth learning how to embed a YouTube video to share it with more people. I admit that I do really love acappella music, being a Nylons fan from way back in Canada when I was a teenager. And the embedding was easy once I actually read the instructions!

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.

Learning to ride at 45

My daughters have been riding horses for just over 4 years now and for the last two they have been particularly active helping get younger riders get ready for lessons, helping around the barn, and most recently, we have been feeding all the horses two evenings a week. Of course they are too young to get there alone or be at the barn alone, so I agreed to stay with them. At first I just sat and read, but it took them a long time and they argued about who was doing what. So I stepped in to delegate and took over the job of putting the grain in the buckets; the girls move horses in and out, and give water and hay. It has been a wonderful experience for all three of us and I have come to enjoy the horses very much. They all have such wonderful personalities, all very different. Well, I finally decided that it was time I learned as well. At first I didn't say anything and kept putting it off, but then I actually mentioned it, so I had to follow through. Today I had my third lesson (the photos below are from my first lesson a couple of weeks ago). I have discovered that getting off is much harder than getting on. Steering isn't too bad, but it is counter intuitive that the opposite leg from your turn is the one you need to squeeze with. And, I must admit that it is much, much harder than it looks. You have to think about body posture, and legs and heels and toes and hands and reins and then on top of it all you have to look where you are going! And when you trot, you have to bounce at the right time! But I have a fantastic instructor who is very patient with children and adults and I'm having a blast. And there are only a couple of muscles that are complaining at the end of the day.


I don't know how long or how far I'll go with this, but I'm pleased that I pushed myself to get out and do something active, it has been good to know I can do it, and I'm very happy I found the time. I highly recommend trying something new to everyone!