Happy Hallowe'en!

Wishing you loads of fun and no spooklies!

red suit

Nope, that's not me. That's my new swimsuit color and style though. I never would have thought that I'd have such anxieties about wearing red! I love red. But red swimsuit --that's scary!

Each week I do water aerobics at the YMCA. So, I'm not wearing this on a public beach, but in a small class amongst friendly people. Hmmmm, well, let me tell you walking last night from the locker room to the pool ladder was one of the longest walks of my life! Everyone noticed. (I guess in a class of deep blue suits, black suits, subdued floral patterns, red would stick out!)

Used to be, as a kid, I lived in a swimsuit in summer. Even in high school, when I was "chubby" it wasn't a cause for much anxiety. Since then I've always had a suit, in a suitable dark color and style, and felt okay about it. Not great, mind you--I don't think there are many women who are happy when it comes to trying on swimsuits and seeing themselves in one in all those mirrors. But okay.

I skipped that part. I ordered online! I had purchased this style suit before in suitable navy and slimming black and liked it a lot (Land's End). But, sadly, they no longer are making women's petite sizes in this style, so my only choice to replace my current suit (which is about to disintegrate) was go find another style/brand I liked or get red.

I never thought the color would make such a difference!

I don't really have a point to this, just sharing my meandering thoughts on my new red swimsuit (And I bought TWO!!---suits, even chlorine resistant ones, don't last long.)

the 3/50 project and recipe

One of the best bits of family gatherings is to share the foods you grew up with. Cousin D made the green beans that spell home for me. I've never made them myself--we don't use bacon at home and we never over cook veggies, but I can't resist them when we're home. Here's the recipe.
While we were in Indi, we visited a really great bead shop: Beads Amoré. I found some goodies (I hope to get a picture soon) and in my bag was a little notice for the 3/50 project aimed at saving brick and mortar stores. We strive to avoid box stores, buy local, and shop at local small businesses. I think their project is worthwhile and interesting. You can see their statistics about employment and how much money stays in a community on their webpage. The most striking one--the number of people it takes to start the trend = one--just me (or you!).

no stitching content

This was family reunion weekend for us, too (see World Embroideries for another family's gathering). We drove down to Indianapolis for the event. Below are four generations!We had a nice drive--it was the perfect weekend for fall color and Indiana's highways tend to be tree-lined. It was just wonderful!

We had a bit of a surprise to learn the ring road around Indi was closed at the north end. This is (was) the only way we knew around town! We soon learned other ways and once we were out of Friday night rush hour traffic, we were fine.On the way back we stopped at an interesting car show. There were a lot of unusual British cars, like this three-wheeled one, that the owner was allowing people to sit in and drive.Not a lot of stitching done but I did manage to work some in--I kept my knitting in my purse and did a row here and a row there (Christmas gift), I brought the long and short stitch sampler along and made a little progress on that and on the pears.

crewel again

I'm "designing" a crewel project for my EGA chapter. They asked for someone to teach such a class and when no one else volunteered, I said I'd do it. Then, we went looking at commercial kits and discovered they were too large and too expensive for this type of meeting-night project--if they were even crewel.

I learned that a whole lot of what is advertised as crewel isn't (like 75% not in some places on-line!). It's embroidery with floss. I have no idea why they don't just call it that. Crewel is done with crewel wool. If it's not done with crewel wool, at least in my definition, it's embroidery or surface embroidery or whatever, just not crewel. [rant over.]

So I decided to develop my own small project. I'm pretty sure I know what it will be (at this point it could change but for now I'm rather pleased with the idea I have) and I have adapted a design from one of my books to use, traced it to size, and am ready to go. As I was doing this I was also calculating fabric requirements, finishing supplies, and other materials to come up with a kit cost.

I won't be teaching until some time 2010, but I need a model by December! Yikes! (I won't show the whole project until it's made public in January, but I hope to share bits here as I work.)

So I got out my crewel case. I found tracing paper, fabrics, a couple of small books, two Judy Jeroy EGA group correspondence course books, and a pile of Appleton Crewel Wool Threads.

So I spent a couple of evenings this week playing with threads! I sorted through them and cataloged what I have on some lovely inventory pages by Needle Artworks, Inc. It may look like a lot of thread but I have just a fraction of the colors Appleton offers. It's still in a jumble in the case but at least now I know what's there.
My thread cards for Appleton came in handy to label threads missing their tags. This was a great investment. Besides I just love to open the box and see all the colors.And, in the process, I found another ufo. These were sample designs from one of the Judy Jeroy courses, to use to practice stitches. The reason this was set aside was that I wasn't thinking when I traced the designs. I should have planned better and spaced them out more so that I could use them for something when they were done. I'm not sure if I'll finish this one or not. Usually if I take the time to do practice pieces (I tend to just skip over that part and move on to the "real" piece), I make them up into something (nametag, ornament, boxtop).

I wonder if I could use the rest of the back of the fabric for something else--linen twill is expensive and I hate to waste a piece. I'll have to look at it this weekend and see.

Slow progress

I've made a little progress on the Camellia needlepoint since first posting it here. It's been slow going and the last time I worked, I ripped more than I stitched. I worked on the gold flowers on the left-hand side. The thread (the DMC gold on a spool) kept wearing and breaking. Then I realized the gold I had outlined the first camellia with was the wrong gold so I took it out and redid it, and the second camellia's outline, with the correct thread. I've also done a few of the many leaves. Next step--more leaves.
I'm also still slowly working on the Long and Short Stitch sampler from Needle&Thread. This isn't a matter of ripping, just a matter of time and energy.
So, of course, I began a new project. I've had the kit for these pears for a while now. Last week I needed a easy "sit in the doctor's office" project so I pulled this out. So far I've traced the pattern pieces and embroidery designs onto the fabric and I'm in the process of basting the pretty fabric to a muslin backing (the needed mindless project). The embroidery itself should be pretty mindless, too, and then I can put it together with the newly repaired sewing machine. I have absolutely no idea what I'll do with them when they're done, but they'll be fun to do and good to have out of my stash pile.

Indiana State Day Success!

Last Saturday's Indiana State Day, hosted by our chapter, Needle Artisans of Northwest Indiana was a big success. Sue and Mel Rock! I got the pleasure of basking in reflected glory--I had very little part in all of it. I did have great fun on the day. I got reacquainted with loads of friends!

As part of the process, our chapter produced a really nice cookbook. I didn't think it was a great idea at first, but it seems to be turning out to be very good. Chapter members baked goodies from the book for breakfast and dessert and a lot of cookbooks sold based on the taste-testing done at the event. (Above, selling cookbooks.) The displays were amazing. I took this shot of our display table before we had to condense it way down so that all of the things our visitors brought could be displayed, too. We began with, I think, four eight-foot tables and ended up with at least six plus a huge round. It was awesome! The variety was really great to see and everyone spent a lot of time browsing. It also instigated conversations as people discussed how this or that might have been done, what this or that was meant to be, and who did that? I want to do it, too.
Here's our designer/teacher taking a bit of a break (I think it was just after lunch). She designed the amulet bag, the box top and wrote the instructions. She also provided a lot of advice as we tested the project and instructions.
My gift was this cool spookly scissors fob (that's a cats head at the bottom)--everyone got one! (sorry, I don't remember who made them to thank them here.) The organizers thought of everything--from amazing, huge door-prize baskets for everyone (yep, each person who took the class got a lovely door prize!), a wonderful boutique by House of Stitches, lovely centerpieces (if you had a spider at the end of your scissors fob, you got to take one home--they were flowers and variety threads).

Each stitcher got a large decorated bag with the supplies to make both the box top (what we worked on Saturday) and the amulet bag. The perle cotton balls were held in a charming card and ribbon holder so they wouldn't roll away and escape. There were M&Ms for energy, a cool round folded orts "box," and booklets, threads and loads of other fun goodies. I'm on the left with the other class angels who went around to try and help stitchers who got stuck with some aspect of the project. All of us had stitched the amulet bag and box top (I think we're all wearing our amulets--each one is different). It also meant we got to go around and visit all our friends. I was very happy to see a good friend that I'd been missing lately.

If you had the chance and missed it, you missed a really good one. (Only about half of our chapter members participated--just think what we could have done if everyone had joined in!)

Okay, then, to top it all off, instead of going home I drove a bit and had dinner with more stitching friends! I met a group from Wisconsin, let by Terry, for a nice dinner and a bit of show-n-tell. They'd come down to Geneva/St.Charles shop and had visited needlework, knitting, bead and gift shops during the day on Saturday. It was nice to meet everyone, some I'd met before and some new friends. (my jaw ached on the way home--I talked waaayyyy too much and smiled an awful lot, too!)

Sunday we drove back up that way, this time with hubby, to do some shopping of our own and to visit my sister. It was a really fun weekend and I feel full up with happiness.