Minor Disaster and a New Friend.

It was supposed to be a relaxing Saturday morning. No company, no commitments, my husband brought in coffee at 9 am and printed out a crossword puzzle for us to solve together once I woke up. Then the call from downstairs - DD the older " Daddy, the fish tank is leaking"

He races down, as do I, and then we send up DD the younger for towels and go to the garage for buckets. We fill the largest bucket with water but the fish and shrimps hide in the rocks so we need more buckets for live rock so we can capture the animals. After about 30 minutes and most of the towels in the house, we finally have the leaky tank out on the deck and various containers of things around the living room/kitchen. The wool Karastan carpets are rolled up and luckily only slightly damp, but the wood floor is wet with salty water. But no more water pouring out of anywhere.

Some readers may remember this tank we set up just over a year ago. Or maybe the TAST piece that it inspired. My husband and I both loved seeing all the beautiful fish in the coral reef movies and we both love the sea, and we thought this would be our little bit of the ocean. But I'm sorry to say that after a year, the honeymoon was over. We had gobs of green hair algae everywhere, most fish we had tried in the tank died, and after reading more and more about salt-water fish, I had become troubled ethically by having a salt-water tank since the rock and fish are mainly from the wild.

So as we sit amidst chaos, we ponder the future of our tank. Do we get a new one or give the whole thing up? I called the fish shop we frequented and they would take the fish and shrimp and coral and even the live rock back. So we decided to give it up. It was a hard decision because we had become attached to the animals, especially the banded coral shrimp, Jose. He was fascinating because he had 2 sets of small clear claws that he used to sift through the algae for bits of food. By the way, the description on the page I linked to for a photo says they are peaceful, but Jose was not. Every new thing we put in the tank, including anemones, was poked at least once by Jose.

Once the living remnants of our abandoned hobby were safely delivered, we were left with a mess to clean up. I have never done so much floor cleaning and vacuuming in one day. I do not recommend this as a reason to clean the house, even if it does look quite nice down there now! Our final job will be a donation to the Jacques Cousteau Society in memory of our tank. I think saving the coral reefs is more important than having a poor substitute in one's house.

On a happier note, when I finally had a chance to sit down at the computer tonight, I had a lovely message from Anne in France, both here on my blog and on my Stitchin Fingers page. Of course the first thing I did was check out her web site and I found that she has a lovely 3-D garden (jardin) in her 2007 Broderies section in her Galeries section (my Canadian French from 20 years ago is just enough to allow me to get through a site in French as long as there are photos!) Be sure to take a look.

Well, I have some baby bibs to get ready for this week for a friends first grandchildren who are due at the end of June. They know it will be twins so I get to make two bibs. Then I'm back on to the CQ horse pillow. So time to stitch.

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!

Weaving Colours

Just like background colour can change the look and feel of an embroidery piece, so the warp and weft colours can completely change the look of a woven piece. Here are some photos of the finished products of last night's weaving class. This first one is one of my placemats. The thin white lines are the guide for cutting them apart (yes I'm nervous, but I've been given instructions). As I mentioned yesterday, I love the way the variegated green looks as warp and weft with plainweave. But notice how the green barely comes out with the pattern band.
Joy kindly allowed me to photograph her piece which uses the same green variegated warp. She used black and white novelty yarns and ribbon to create this length which will be cut up to make pillows. In some places you can barely tell it is the same yarn I am using.
I had some warp left at the end of my weaving so I tried some purple yarns. I've seen this purple and green colourway in a few things, including some orchids, so I thought it was worth a try. Most of the stripes are plainweave, but I did do a couple of bird's eye pattern strips as well. It was great fun seeing how the colours work together and good practice to get the feel of odd yarns.
Cherri suggested that I be sure to add an extra yard whenever I measure my warp so I have experiment room and I heartily agree. It is fun. Here is the final, uncut, piece. Almost 5 yards long. It really didn't take too long, and as a novice, it was amazing to see how much came off the cloth beam. As I was weaving, I really didn't get a sense of how long it was!

Weaving placemats - My second project

My enthusiasm for weaving has not diminished, in fact I keep coming up with new ideas for things I want to try. Between a trip to our local wool shop to drool over the various yarns I might try, to the book from my university library with all the patterns and ideas, I think I could get seriously involved in this.

So, here is what I've been doing this month, but forgetting to post. My warp is a green variegated thread (not sure which fibers since not everything is labelled). It is rougher than my last warp so was a bit picky to set up - and I made a major mistake but with help from Cherri I recovered and I now feel I really understand how to set things up. Not that I think I know everything, I don't think I'll ever know everything about weaving or needlework (or anything else for that matter).
The warp was measured to allow room for experiment, and the harnesses threaded for bird's eye patterns, so I started with a tan weft doing several patterns, but as you can see, they really didn't show up with the colour I used.
Then I tried white, which did show up much better, so I tested a couple of patterns and then chose what I would do. Cherri showed me a technique that puts a plainweave set in the base colour between the pattern set, which looked really nice (no photo) but it did make me realize that a whole placemat of the pattern with white would look washed out.
So I'm weaving plainweave ends and middles with the warp yarn, and three rows of pattern in white at each side of the placemat. I love the random plaid patterns that emerge with the plainweave.
What is really neat, and I'll try to get some photos tonight, is that one of the other students, Joy, used the same warp, but she is using novelty yarns, mainly in black, for her weft, to make pillows. It is a good lesson in how changes in colour can really change the woven look. And the eyelash yarn adds so much to the piece.

Tonight is my last night at the Arts Center for this session, and there are no month long summer sessions because of the children's summer camp. I'll be finishing my placemats tonight, but I won't be stopping my weaving. I plan on moving to one of Cherri's studios to continue learning more. In the meantime, I have a holiday weekend approaching and I must get to work on the President's Challenge for my EGA chapter. I'm making a CQ pillow for DD the younger who wants her favourite horse in the middle. DD the older drew the horse and I've been trying to stitch him. Even with a couple of photo in hand, and many years of watching DD the younger ride the horse, I still don't seem to have it quite right, although she likes him.
DD the older drew the same horse as a carousel horse for a poster contest for the county fair. You can see I'm a bit off! She also included the barn donkey pulling a cart, and the barn pig, and some of the other horses, including the foal we saw being born. She thought a smaller carousel horse would be nice. Mind you the horses are jumping around the fair grounds like a Mary Poppins movie, which is why you can't see the carousel.

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.

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.