Crewel Friday

It's back again. I sent off lesson two yesterday with the pockets and band sampler and the rough draft of my paper (mostly notes).

I traced the final design onto the twill fabric and am ready to get stitchn'!

I'm off this weekend for the Japanese embroidery class.  Too much fun!

new book

Between my meetings and the rain this weekend, most of the things we'd thought to do on our mini holiday didn't happen.  We did visit Half Price Books, where I found this book.  It's by Amy Barickman of Indygo Junction and I've been looking at it for a while.  I really like it--it's in that early-Twentieth-Century design style that I've been indulging in lately. 

The book and Amy's website led me to the Cornell University Home Economics Archive, with a treasure trove of books to explore.

Later this week I'll be off to the Japanese Embroidery class. I can't wait!

Indianapolis

This is pretty much it for fiber content this week.  I've been mostly working on a guild mystery project I can't show yet.  This sweet flower was a kit in the Molly Makes magazine I bought a couple of months ago.  It's cute and I have absolutely no idea what to do with it.

This weekend I attended the Embroiderer's Guild of America Great Lakes Region board meetings--two of them, the executive and the general. I don't vote which means I don't have much to do so I knitted.  The meetings were in Indianapolis so hubby went with and we stayed with our niece and her husband. It was great (the visit, not necessarily the meetings). I really enjoyed getting to know them better. The cool gate above is the entry to their sublet condo.

This rose is one of the last. I don't have any more pictures because it rained all weekend. It's still raining, for that matter.  I saw the most amazing rainbows during my commute to work yesterday. One was a big, bright full arc.  Amazing!

Knitting

No crewel to show this week. I'm starting to write my paper. I'm still in the "what goes where" sorting stage, trying to figure out what I want to say and what I have to say. Gathering my illustrations and organizing them in the document. I'll send it to the instructor once I have some bones in place. The fleshing out will, hopefully, come later.  I should have kept better track of where I read what.

I've been knitting on the leaf shawl and have three repeats done now. Four to go.  I noticed that my tension loosened considerably after I had completed the first repeat. Oh, well.  I have written the pattern in a notebook so I can flip pages as I go along so starting and stopping is painless.

I've made progress, too, on the chemo cap. It's very soft and will be nice.  It's my doctor's office project these days. More of that to come in the next weeks, so more progress on the cap.  Since it's just knit (and knit and knit) it's easy to put down and pick up. 

Early Christmas

Aurelia Eglantine is hosting her first blog giveaway and it's a generous and colorful assortment of goodies that will make your holidays shine.

I think I made the picture a link but, just in case, I also put the same link on her name.

Well worth entering!  It ends October 12th.

Old fabrics

We were going in to look at a dresser. Hubby had spotted it and the handles on mine keep coming apart, so he brought me to the antiques shop to look at it.  The dresser was already gone and instead I came home with this embroidered pillow top.  The grapes need to be stitched. I have two shades of purple flat silk that I hope I can softly twist to look similar to the thread used for the rest of the piece.

And in the mail yesterday I received a package from friends in England. It was full of wonderful fabrics collected by a really lovely woman who recently passed away. I wish I had gotten to know her better--we just met this spring and it was not enough at all.  I already have some plans for some of the bits.  They are of all types, eras, styles. Some of the pieces are quite small and others over a yard.  It's a treasure!

This is not an antique nor a textile, but I am really enjoying this replica of an early Twentieth Century map of London. It was created to encourage people to use the Tube to see the wonders of London and it's full of quirky places to visit and also some very interesting characters.  Every time I look at it, I see something new.

I've always liked maps and have used them as a basis for some collages. The last few years I've been seeing some map-based art quilts and I'm intrigued.  Then I realized that my hexagon quilt with fabrics I bought in London (most recently pictured here--I need to get back to it) is a map quilt of sorts.

With a Cunning Needle

Kudos to Winterthur for making me feel really great.  A while back Tricia Wilson Nguyen announced that the Plimouth Jacket would be exhibited at Winterthur in the exhibit "With a Cunning Needle." She offered a needlework project as a fundraiser. I decided I didn't want to stitch this one, but did like the idea of the exhibit so I clicked the link Tricia wisely provided and donated some money to the project (not much, but what I could).  The lovely catalog below is, I think, the third item I've received from the museum, in thanks for my donation. I was amazed to receive this exhibit catalog.

This is one of  the inside spreads of the catalog. It's wonderful.

And at the end is a list of donors with my name.  Wow!

No heavy duty solicitations, no cards saying "you gave $10 last time so we'd like you to give $20 this time." If I had any loose change, you can bet it would be going to Winterthur. They've got it right. (and if I can figure a way to get east to this exhibit, I will)