Calming down a bit

Well, I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. Two work milestones have been passed today and the conference tomorrow is either ready to go or it's too late to do anything about it. The day was full of last minute changes and upsets. Generally the worse it gets the calmer I get (at least until I get home).

This flower is from our garden. I don't know what it is but they're really pretty and generally last quite a while. When I see them I know it's summer!

Before we left on our little trip last week, I made this bottle-cap pincushion. At my niece's graduation I grabbed the cap from her water bottle at lunch. I gave her a little finger pincushion from a plastic pull tab made with some lovely random dyed fabric from my stash, but I think I'll make her a bottle-cap one too, from her graduation bottle cap. I wonder what her college colors are.

I found this charming photograph on our trip. I fell in love with the serious little schoolgirl with her book and shy smile. I can see a lot of projects with this one.

During our trip we visited the senior art show (I couldn't find any images online at the Lawrence University website). It was a lovely show. One of my niece's friends had an impressive video in the show, along with some very nicely bound books of watercolors.

What really impressed me is that one of the artists chose embroidery as her medium. It was embroidery as a way to make marks and lines, rather than embroidery as lovely technique, if that makes sense. She knew what she was doing but that wasn't the point. And it really inspired me so my TIF this month has changed again.

Not much. The artist used pencil contour drawings on the fabric as part of the image. I've been feeling that my embroidery design for this month is too spotty and not a coherent design. I decided to not stitch the penciled design I transferred and to stitch those designs in other parts of the fabric. I think it will fill the space more cohesively and echo the designs and also to link things together better.

My original transfers are pretty clear. My new ones are much less so and those are what I'll be stitching, so the designs won't be exact. But, then, I won't feel as compelled to "stay on the lines" as I would have with a drawn image to work with.

I began a bit last night. I got out Rita's silks. I'll get a picture up soon of her basket. Rita was very well organized. (I'm not so much.) I used some buttonhole silk and also some thinner thread. The buttonhole silk definitely has a mind of it's own. I can see why the Japanese emphasize keeping the silk threads in tension at all times. It's barely a start but it's something.