Crewel Friday

Hmmm, well, I haven't done much at all this past week. My only stitching has been to make (yet another) chemo cap for a friend. I gave it to her yesterday before getting a picture (it's blue like the last one).

Last weekend was more about continuing the clean up from the avalanche. I ironed the clothes that has been waiting, sorted through some of the old pamphlets and magazines, and did some cooking and cleaning that needed doing. I also brought work home to do and I did that.

Work is in the pre-vacation frenzy stage (complicated by annual budget deadlines). It's interesting here--students are frazzled to, studying for end-of-quarter exams. Lots of grim faces.

Inspired a bit by spring, I tried my hand a a couple of other pocket designs. I kept thinking about all of the leaves in crewel, especially those with turned-over ends. So I thought, what if I made a pocket in a leafy shape? And what if it had a turn-over at the top? These are really rough sketches. The one at the top has an embroidered turnover. Below, the leaf turnover is actually a flap on the pocket. I think I like that better (I can choose to embroider it or not!).I think I like my abstract design for the sampler stitches, but I wanted to check out some more traditional patterns. This is adapted from something I saw in my books. Strawberries and some other odd berry shaped thing and small leaves.

I keep coming back to the mounds--I like those mounds and I think I'm going to focus my paper on them.

I didn't read much this week, either, just an hour or so with Edwards's Crewel Embroidery in England. It's a very readable book, perfect for early Saturday morning.

Yesterday was a break--we had a girls' day. A quiet one. My sister's a peach to keep hosting us. Yesterday's "occasion" was our sister-in-law's birthday from February. My sister made shortbread, we ate it hot out of the oven. For lunch we went to a new place in St. Charles, IL, called the Rx Cafe. It's an American tapas place and we had a great selection of little bites. They're on sale Thursdays, so we took advantage. Then we visited a local yarn shop that recently moved from Geneva, IL to St. Charles, IL (just up the road a piece), Wool & Company. Mostly we talked, and talked and talked, shared our projects, asked for advice. It was wonderful.