Fair Results and Rainforest, Framed

Hey Blog Buddies,

Thanks so much for all your kind comments about my pyramid!  (I will miss it when it's gone.)  To answer the question "Why 39?":  I am making one for each of the 27 people who will be attending my embroidery guild's workshop in September.  The rest will be sold at my quilt guild's boutique in November.  (Do I belong to too many guilds?)  And I will keep one, or maybe two, for myself.

Yesterday I got my stuff back from the Lake County Fair!

Front Row:  Uptown Stitcher by Libby Sturdy,

NOEL by Erica Michael, Soar by Brenda Gervais

Back Row:  CT13 by Alessandra Adelaide

No Sweeps or Champion ribbons,

but I'm quite happy with how I did.

And today, I went to pick up Rainforest Revisited at the framers.

This is Sue at The Great Frame-Up in

Orland Park, IL.

She does all my framing.

I love how it looks--you can tell I'm not a fan of ornate!

This one will go up next to Rainforest Crunch.

Now that I have two that can hang in the space I've picked,

I can take down all the small Christmas

pictures that have been up since last year!

That's it for now.

Hope you get time to do something fun today.

Thanks for visiting!

Soar Sampler: Back from the Framer's at Last

Good evening dear Blog Friends,

It's been quite a wait:  from May 14th until yesterday, but I finally have my Soar Sampler back from the framer's, and just in time for Independence Day, too.

The piece started out at a frame shop which was doing

a fundraiser for our Guild,

but by reason of a series of events

which included a lack of communication,

I asked for the piece back after four weeks.

I then took it to my regular frame shop.

There was a slight delay there, too, but no lack of communication.

I was beginning to think the piece was cursed.

What you can't see too well in the photos is that the frame has

 little red flecks the color of the fence.

I guess the eagle family wanted to check out the property

before they took their permanent place on the wall.

(DH was following me around, asking, "What are you doing?

Have you lost your mind??)

Brenda of With Thy Needle and Thread is going to showcase

all the finished and framed samplers on her blog on July 4th.

Click here to go there.

If you are celebrating the 4th of July, have a happy and safe holiday.  And here's hoping the finishes to your projects are uneventful.  Thanks for visiting!



Soar

Good Afternoon Dear Blog Readers,

I finished the Soar sampler today--woo hoo!  I really liked the look of the black ground, but am so happy that I won't be stitching on it after today.

After I finished the piece, I quickly took some snaps and whisked it away to the framers.  One of our local frame shops is doing a promotion this week with our Guild: with a coupon they will give you 10 percent off and also donate 10 percent of the sale to our Guild.  I was the fourth person today who walked in with a coupon, so hopefully our Guild will be earning lots of money.

I was a little nervous about my choice of floss for the adult eagles since the color needed to be dark and (did I mention?) the background is black, but I think they show up well enough.

My first horse turned out a bit skinnier than the horse on the chart (I miscounted).  So I had to make the second horse look the same.  I hope you won't tell anyone.  The triangles on the border represent the 13 original colonies according to Brenda Gervais, the designer of the piece.

The little building is the granary which is near the nest of the real eagles in Decorah, Iowa, which this sampler commemorates.  You wouldn't believe how many times I went over the alphabet (but maybe you would), making sure I had stitched all the letters since they are scattered all over the piece.

The crown represents the majesty of the eagle, symbol of the USA.  Don't you just love the oversized leaves on the tree?

And this is just weird.  My camera was trying to tell me that I didn't have enough light for this angle, but I didn't want to listen so I switched to manual!  I couldn't take photos outside today because it's been drizzling all day--and it's about 30 degrees colder than it was 2 days ago.

That's it for this installment.  I hope it's warm and sunny where you are.  If not, it's a good day to stay home and {fill in the blank}.   As for me, I'll be cutting fabric for a quilt-as-you-go class which I'm taking tomorrow.  More on that in a couple of days.  Thanks for visiting!

Making Progress

Good Afternoon, Gentle Blog Readers

This will be a quick little post today to show you the progress I've made on the Soar SAL.

As you can see, it's coming along.  Brenda says that this Friday will be the last time she will post photos of everyone's SAL on her blog, and I don't see this being done by then.  There are large leaves, small buds, a flag and flagpole, another horse, the roof and windows of the grainery, two rabbits, the year, 21 more letters of the alphabet and everyone's eyes, in addition to the small part of the river that remain unstitched.  (I haven't been obsessing about this very much, have I?)  This week will be a busy one, with trips or meetings or errands every day.  I'll give it a shot, but it will take a miracle for this to be finished by Thursday at 9:00 p.m. CDT - the SAL deadline!  I hope you're not getting the idea that I'm competitive, or anything like that....    (smile)

I leave you with this photo of the brave little apple tree in our side yard:

I had to take a photo of it.  I was so excited to see that it actually bloomed this year.  It's got one or two dead limbs--several have already been removed.  We're lucky if it blooms every third or fourth year.  But it's such a trooper that I would hate to get rid of it.  You go, Tree!

As always, thanks for visiting, and may all your trees bloom.

Stitching for Autism

Good Afternoon Dear Blog Readers,

The embroidery guild that I belong to does quite a few community outreach projects, and yesterday they hosted a workshop to benefit autism.  Everyone participating purchased a canvaswork kit that had a chart, fibers, canvas, needles, everything you would need except stretcher bars.  100% of the workshop fee is being donated to Autism Speaks.

The colors (orange, gold, green and blue) are the official colors of "Walk Now for Autism Speaks," the major fundraiser for Autism Speaks.

The stitches on the piece are symbolic of various aspects of autism.  For instance, in this sqare, the sheaf stitch represents children with autism.  The metallic fibers wrapped around the sheaf represent arms hugging or trying to hug a child with autism.  The satin stich arrows represent the intense focus an autistic child sometimes has on one particular subject.

The workshop was 6 hours long, so why, you may be wondering, did I finish only this small square?  (OK, it's not quite finished, there's a tent stitch background--all the canvas will be covered.)  For one thing, I'm a slow stitcher, I had to frog several times, and then there was a lot of conversation, lunch, more conversation, treats... you get the picture.  It was a very fun day stitching with a great group of gals.  So now I have yet another WIP, and this is one that is just going to have to "take a number"!

In other news from WIP-land, I have made a little bit of progress on my Soar SAL.

We now have mom and dad looking after the eaglets (and a good thing, too, I was tired of their incessant demands for fresh fish and squirrel), and it appears that they may actually be in a tree and not a birdbath after all.  The black ground is really a challenge, but it's not impossible to find the correct hole, just really difficult sometimes.  But I will persevere on this one because it's a SAL.

Last but not least, I visited my LNS this past week to get some overdyed floss to subsitute for several of the DMC colors on the above project, and I seem to have come home with a little extra stash:

"Red Hot Peppers" is a Laura J. Perin design for canvaswork and it looks like it will be great fun to stitch.  "Broom Hilda" is a cute little witch design worked on 28-count linen over 1, made into a whisk broom band.  Everyone needs one of those, don't they?  Brenda Gervais (she of the Soar Sampler) is the designer.

That's it for now.  Hope you are all having a really great start to your May.



Three Sparrows in a Birdbath

Good Afternoon Dear Blog Readers,

Have any of you been watching the Decorah eagles?  I'm sure some of you have.  For those who don't know what I'm talking about, there is an eagle's nest in northeast Iowa that has a camera photographing the comings and goings of an eagle family, 24/7.  There is a dad, mom and three eaglets, and it's my new favorite "reality" program.  If you haven't seen it yet, you should really go check it out here.  It's very addicting and educational, too.

Brenda Gervais of With Thy Needle and Thread has designed a cool sampler to commemorate this year's eagle family.  The piece is called "Soar," and she is having a SAL on her blog for those currently stitching it.

Here is what I've done so far, and yes, to me it looks like 3 sparrows in a birdbath (for now).  The "sparrows" are, of course, the eaglets.  And I used the recommended linen, 30-ct Onyx from WDW.  An Ott-lite, magnifier, and white lap cloth are indispensible tools for this project.  And it's still hard to see the holes!  But I really liked the black, so I thought "What the heck!"

Here is what the sampler will look like when it's finished.  Brenda is donating $5 from the sale of each chart to the Raptor Resource Project, the organization behind the nest cam.  She has raised over $1,000 so far.  She has said that she will retire the chart when the eaglets fledge (around July 4th, how fitting!), so if you like the chart, hurry on over to her blog right here.

That's it for today, folks.  Hope you are able to soar along in whatever you're doing right now.