I can take on some crazy projects...

but this is nuts! The twin girls in the picture are friends of ours and they were in a wedding last month. They got to be the flower girls. These dresses are a cream raw silk with hand embroidered black dots. Can you imagine sitting around and hand embroidering all those dots? The dresses are the cutest things and hopefully they will still fit come Christmas.


I hope everyone has a fun filled, stitchy weekend.

New project

The past weekend was the pilot class for Mayan Lightning. This is being blogged about with Diane Herrmann's permission and will be a half day class at NAN in early March. We got up early on Saturday morning and stitched on black and with rayon. You never do your best work in a classroom setting so I am excited to stitch on this under less stressful conditions. Don't you just love the colors? Diane finished hers in a black lacquered box lid.

This weekend was busy. After the class, we went to the Sox game. Our tickets were so good. We were next to the Detroit dugout about directly across from home plate and in the third row. It is a shame such good tickets were wasted on me. I could really careless about baseball. I consider baseball games a cover charge to drink so it would have been nice if they would have taken my BIL instead of me because he is a Sox fan. I own a Sox sweatshirt because it was part of a Halloween costume many years ago.

Yesterday we had 11 people over for dinner. DH made gumbo and red beans and rice. Today is his birthday so I bought him a rice cooker. I know you are not supposed to give appliances for birthday gifts. He has wanted one and I did not have a gift idea so this worked out perfectly. Tonight, seven of us are going to Girl and the Goat. This is Stephanie Izard's new restaurant. Stephanie won Top Chef a few years ago. It is one of the hottest restaurants in town right now. It took me a month to get reservations on a Monday night. You can get in easier with smaller parties.

Here is my update on Lucy. I got in a little more black basket weave and the yellow flower in Nobuko. The leaves are a stitch that I have yet to master. I need to pull out my stitching books and figure this out.

Finally, I thought I would leave you with a picture of the chocolate, pecan pie DH made for last nights dinner. It looks good but I don't eat many sweets so I did not have any. I might try a piece with lunch today.

Hopefully, I can get a something done this week and give another update later in the week. Happy stitching!

Safari is being completed like a man on parole,

I want to be everywhere at once on this project! You would think I would finish the Cheetah spots. I have two issues with these spots. First, the lines that show up like they were drawn with a black Sharpie in this picture, are barely visible when you see this project in person and my Ott light is shining down on it. I have been working the gray/ivory, woven sections so my Cheetah section does not stray. Second issues is the lighter brown in the Cheetah spots eats thread. I am forever starting a new thread on this section. I have also spent a little time with the basket weave around the cats head. This is just time consuming and I do not want to leave all this fun to the end. I really do not mind doing basket weave and it is a good task when I just don't have the power to think...

Sunday, I must not have had any brain power or was it the wine? because I worked more basket weave on Lucy during the football games. I really did not accomplish that much but I wanted to show something besides Safari.

Pre-registration for EGA National Seminar in Naples is open until September 20th. I did sign up for a few classes, now it is wait and see what I get. I was picky this year and I did not worry about the days because I will stay at the hotel some days and my parents condo on day's I don't have classes. My classes were picked more on teachers and techniques rather than the love of the projects this year.

This weekend is Mayan Lighting pilot class. It will be fun! Hopefully, I will be able to share this project. This will be taught at NAN in March. After class, I am meeting up with part of the family for a Sox Game. This is my first professional sports game this year.


We are busy planning trips. We are working on our visas for Brazil, we booked our tickets for Thanksgiving and Christmas in Naples, FL, and I am working on a trip to Europe in the spring. I am going with my mom and we are debating between a tour through Italy or a boat cruise on the Danube between Prague and Budapest. If you have done either of these trips, I would love to hear your thoughts.

Hope you are not getting to bored with Safari. I want to get as much done as possible before seminar. Hope your week is filled with stitching fun!

Two Sections Done

The long weekend was good for Safari. My goal was to finish the background around the giraffe spots and that was done on Sunday night so I set a new goal. Get the zebra stripes done and they were completed on Monday. I also put in one thread of gold basket weave around the cat guy. I did not stitch last night but I will be back at it tonight.

Last night we did not have cable or Internet so we were on the terrace. Here is the sun setting with our city twist. Thursday night is movies in the park night. They are showing Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Lets see how long my friends last in the park with having to hide their wine. I bet they are on our terrace within an hour...

Happy Stitching!

Stitching Toy

I finished my giraffe spots on Safari. The color in the picture looks a little bright but it is Fish Pepper by Vicki Clayton and is really a muted color. I am setting a goal for the weekend to finish this section. The background on this section should be fairly quick but a lot of laying threads.

Now onto my new toy! My new System 4 Travel stand was delivered on Wednesday. There is always a big debate between which is better, the System 4 or the Lowery. I bought the Lowery first because the base did not have as big of foot print as the System 4. Prior to the Lowery I had the Gazelle and I was tired of all the feet. The Lowery base is not as stable as the System 4 and you do need to put some weight on it so your work does not tilt over. The System 4 is all feet and teachers are not all sold on this stand because they trip over the feet. For my stitching chairs, I basically have to work from the side because one has an ottoman and the other is a chaise lounge. Personally, I don't see much difference in the stands other than the feet so buy what fits under your stitching chair. The Lowery base is flat so it might work better if you have a chair such as a Lazy Boy with lots of mechanics underneath.

You may be questioning why I need two stands. I don't, but I wanted the travel stand. My company gave me a service award so I had extra money to spend on something fun. Plus, I can take my travel stand to my pilot class in a couple of weeks, ANG National Seminar in October, and it can go to Florida on our holiday trips. I will get my mom to accessorize my stand for Christmas.

One more thing about the stands is get on line and price these things. I really wanted to support my LNS but her quote was close to $100 dollars more than the place I found on line. Now I am all about supporting local shops but not at price difference.

Finally, I wanted to tell you about my new/old book. This book is free on archive.org
I printed the book out and took it the UPS store and had the wire binding added for about $5.00. It is a great basic embroidery book. It is in black and white but you can see the pictures and they have very nice line drawings of stitches. I never really learned embroidery and occasionally I need to use some of the stitches.

Hope everyone has a nice holiday weekend and hope Earl does not mess up any plans. Happy Stitching! Check back next week to see if I accomplished my goal.

French Knots and Basket Weave

Now that I have your attention with my riveting title. I have made some progress on Lucy this week which is amazing since we have been pretty busy. I got all the way around the outside in the ever so exciting basket weave. This is mainly done for finishing purposes. I finished the pink Scotch stitch and more black tent stitch around the pink and blue squares. The white canvas you see around Lucy is also all black so you can see why I am working on some of the more boring stuff first.

I have made quite a few French knots since I last posted my bee scissor case. I have been working on the blue backgrounds in the bands and massive amounts of ivory.

The past weekend was busy. On Saturday, I went to the North Shore to visit my LNS to pick up a few threads for Scott Lee that had to be ordered, then it was off to Costco. I am on the board of a homeless shelter and we volunteered to make sack lunches for the guests. Well my husband is not a slap a piece of meat between two slices of bread type of guy. We worked on the menu, planned healthy snacks, thought about distribution, and started cooking on Saturday. On Saturday he roasted nuts, glazed them in some concoction he came up with and bagged them. On Sunday, he made 14.5 dozen chocolate chip cookies. Then we made turkey wraps, with bacon, greens, cabbage, red peppers, and cheese. We served this with little containers of Ranch dressing, a piece of fruit and water with packets of lemon aid or tea. These 40 lunches took most of Sunday to complete and deliver to the Shelter for Monday's lunch. I had one of the lunches on Monday and it was good. The cabbage really added a good crunch.

Last weekend was also the Taste of Greece which was a block from our condo. We walked that a couple of times then went to the new park and played with the dogs in the dog park. The dog park is a hoot! We are not home enough to have a dog but I really enjoy playing with other people's dogs.

Today is an exciting Wednesday. I am working from home because I am getting a stitching package which I will tell you about later and the good cleaning people are coming.

They scrub the floors on their hands and knees and they are washing windows!! I don't think the windows have been washed since I had my stitching group in last fall. (I really should not admit this in public:))

That's about it for today. I will post my new stitching toy later this week... Happy Stitching!