Everyone is on my nerves. And some stitching.

There. I've said it. My day started out badly and here it is, scarcely noon, and now everyone is on my very last nerve.

Husband, please open your eyes when you look for things. Don't get all fussy and frantic. What you're looking for is there, you've just overlooked it.

Son, please get your butt out of bed.

Friend, please don't tell me what someone else has said about a project I'm working on. I don't need to hear it.

Person who said this, if you don't know what's happening, try opening your effin' email. The info has been sitting in your Inbox for eight days. Or are you waiting for an invitation on a silver platter?

Coworker, when I tell you I need information from you, don't argue with me. Don't shoot the messenger. Please, just give me the information.

Sigh.

But let's talk about some of my recent stitching.  Please.  Otherwise I may kill people.  Hey, that reminds me, have any of you seen the bumper sticker that says, "I knit so I don't kill people."  Has anyone seen a similar cross stitch saying charted up?  Somebody has to have charted that...

First up, a new project!  Thanks to the kind Denise for the temporary design swap.

BBD's Rose Garden, HDF "BeWined"

Next up, an almost-finished project.  This has been an absolute joy to stitch.  I'm loving the fabric, loving the threads and loving the design. 

La D Da Tis the Gift, PTP fabric and GAST threads

And lastly, The Project that Never Ends.

5 years and counting....Maybe this year?

I have a really, really full weekend coming up, but some of it involves stitching and that's a good thing.  Otherwise, you know...that killing people situation.

To my friends in the US, have a fun and safe Fourth. 

I wish you all could have seen these in person

I wish I had had time to document each and every piece in the HDF exhibit. I wish I possessed mad camera skilz so that my pictures were more clear. Heck, I wish all of you had been there with me because part of the fun of seeing exhibits like this is sharing your excitement with other people.

I was really pleased to have the opportunity to get up close and personal with each piece of needlework.  No barriers, no ropes.  Some of the needlework was framed, and some of it was not.  Truthfully, I was just as happy to see the unframed work.  You could get your eyeballs right up there and examine each piece.  Well, except the smalls.  They were mostly in display cases.  And even though we were very, very tempted, we didn't actually touch anything.

First, I hope you can click on all of the photos to enlarge them.  It'll make a world of difference.

Well, I tried to photograph the pieces that jumped out at me for one reason or another.  First up is this Halloween piece and is that fabric amazing or what?  I typically don't like Halloween design, but this one was stunning.

Same here.  Not crazy about Halloween, but I had to love the fabric color, threads and beading on this piece. 

 

I've been wanting to stitch this BBD piece for several years now.  I may have to kit this up.!

Some needlepoint designs and kits for sale.

A wonderful Quaker and - lucky me!  This chart was part of the tag sale!  Do you need to even ask if I bought it?

A 9-11 quilt

Another one of the 9-11 Quilts

An amazing original piece by a fellow from Boston who has since passed away.  I met one of his friends at the show, and she told me that he would just start with a blank piece of fabric and design as he went.  I stood and looked a this piece for a long time.  There is a lot to see.

Look at the bottom alphabet and the way it appears to reflect off water.  Love it.

I NEED one of these for my family.

So many stunning Quakers.

Quaker Christmas in Red

Quaker Christmas in green

Of course, this drew my eye since I had recently stitched it. I love the floss colors and their variations.

A scissor and fob collection belonging to ONE person.  Yes, one person.

Love the black fob with the red flowers

So tiny.  Carol I....you would have liked this one.

More teeny tiny.  I wish I had something next to it to illustrate its scale.

About the size of a large postage stamp

There were several really nice displays of smalls, but they were in glass cases under windows and were very difficult to photograph.

I thought you might enjoy a little thread comparison:

Quaker Diamonds stitched with Valdani Threads.

Quaker Diamonds stitched with HDF

HDF

Valdani threads

My choice for Peoples Choice award. It was difficult to photograph also,because it was hanging in a window.  But take my word for it, it was fantastic.  And who can argue with 1,710 Queen stitches? 

And finally!  Best in Show - a Reversible Spanish Stitch piece

Tried to show you some of the detail up close.

Sometime soon I'll post some pictures of my latest needlework.  There's not much, but I'm getting in a few lengths of thread here and there.   I have lots of family things keeping me busy lately, so I'm glad to get even that much done. These pesky kids...

Hand Dyed Fibers Exhibit But I'll Start With the Shopping

Well gang, I hardly know where to start about this trip.  Maybe it's just something that I should dive right in to.

First of all, I'm a big fan of Vikki Clayton's Hand Dyed Fibers.  Her silk threads are seriously heavenly.  It's like this - when you're stitching, do you ever get the feeling like, Oh my goodness this is probably the nicest stitching I've ever done.  The colors just dance on the fabric and your stitches lay so beautifully that you can't believe it's coming from your hands.  Yeah.  That's how I feel when I stitch with these silks. 

Well, this year I was able to go to the HDF Needlework exhibit.  Bright and early Saturday morning, I met my friend Deb just off the PA turnpike and off we went to see over 300 pieces of needlework, all of those yummy silks on display and ready to buy, a "tag sale" - like a consignment shop for stitchers used or unwanted supplies - and a fabric dying station.  Ho boy!  I'll tell you, we were pretty darn excited.

We had just one minor glitch.  We stopped for a coffee break when we were about halfway there and guess who lost her car keys?  And do I ever carry a spare?  No.  Poor Deb.  Gracious Deb.  I was panicking, but Deb remained cool, calm and collected.  If the shoe had been on the other foot, I would have been flipping out at the idiot who lost the keys and was wasting valuable time that could have been spent in Silk Heaven.  But lucky for me, I have patient friends and eventually I found them wedged between the cup holder and my seat.  So all's well that ends well and my blood pressure eventually returned to normal.

OK, so...I wish I taken some pictures of the outside of this very interesting factory, but I was drawn inside by some strange silken magnetic field.  As it turns out, LadyDoc from Tilting at Windmills has some nice outdoor photos.  Go here.  And here.  In fact, peruse her whole album.  We have some of the same photos, but not all.

Oh, the silks! 

The floss

And the silk ribbon

And I know this doesn't look like much, but you could stuff fill a bag with these leftover bits and pieces and seconds for practically pennies.

There were also a handful of Make It - Take It booths, but the highlight was the fabric dying station - completely awesome.  You could bring your own linens, threads and trim and Vikki had a big table set up where you could go to town.  I have a tub full of white and ivory linen and evenweave at home, so I brought a bunch and let me tell you - it was a blast.  You could buy white lace and fabric trims there at a whopping 25-40 cents a yard and dye it yourself. If I had been smart, I would have come with particular projects in mind and dyed fabrics and trims to match.  But I wasn't that forward thinking.  So we just had a good time dying whatever color moved us. Here's Deb gettin' crazy.

I created a kind of boring tan and a very lemony yellow and dyed some trim, too.

In my next post, I'll show you some of the stunning needlework that had been entered in the exhibit. Gorgeous stuff.

Oh, but I should also tell you that the show is still going on. I think it's open until July 4. It's absolutely worth the trip - we didn't regret any of our 4 hours there and 4 hours back. So GO.

Stitch Night

Our last group get together was fun in many ways but a little bit sad at the same time, too.  You see, the shop that introduced us to each other closed its doors last week.

The little shop's story isn't unique.  I know that many of you have lost your shops over the years.  Heck, our region used to support at least six cross stitch shops.  You could find a shop if you lived north, south, east or west of Pittsburgh. Even my little nearby town of about 14,000 citizens boasted a craft shop with a modest selection of stitching merchandise.  Now only one shop remains in the entire region.

There are any number of reasons why a shop may close, and this little shop had its own share of challenges.  But I think we have a tendency to get pessimistic about our craft when we see a shop close.  We worry that our art is dying.  Well, I'm not so sure about that.

I think it's less about the art and more about the changes and shifts in the retail world.  Many of our little shop's struggles weren't unique to the needlework industry.  Small businesses everywhere, particularly independent retail businesses, are struggling.  (In this space I've deleted a long rant about everything plaguing independent retail businesses in today's economy.  You really don't want me to go there.)  So I'm not surprised that our shop closed.  But that doesn't mean that the owner wasn't successful, because I think there are many definitions of success.

You see, in a perfect world, someone would open a shop, run it until he or she was ready to retire and then sell it at a profit.  In the current retail environment, it's just not happening.  So in today's business climate, if you can work at something that you love for several years and manage your business despite not having control over many things, then you are certainly a success.  And if you can introduce other people to your passion and bring people from many walks of life together to celebrate this passion, then you are not only successful, but you are endeared to them forever.

We wish our little shop owner the best of luck in whatever she does in the future.

What a finish!

First of all, thank you everyone for your very nice comments yesterday. You really know how to make a slacker feel good!

Even basking in the warmth of your comments, I still know that there are talented people out there who are actually completing projects. I don't happen to be one of them (at least for right now), so I'll reintroduce you to Nancy. Remember last month when I showed you Nancy's finished stitching? Well, last week she brought it to us in its final form - beautifully framed. Here's the proud stitcher!

I thought I had the whole thing in my camera window, but somehow I cut off one side of it.  You get the idea, though.  Mat colors are purple and what I'd call eggplant.

This was a free design, but you'll need to sign up for the designer's newsletter to get it.  The newsletter sign up link is in the left sidebar of the webpage.  The design offers both red and blue alternatives, but Nancy went with her own beautiful color choices.

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This is completely unrelated, but do any of you get the Victoria's Secret bathing suit catalogs?  Why-oh-why do I receive these things?  I can be feeling all Fit and Fifty (three) and content, then it's like the universe has decided that I'm too happy so it has to drop one of these little gems in my mailbox. 

And WHAT is with the "I'm taking my pants off now" pose in most of these photos?  Each model has her thumbs tucked into her bottoms like she can hardly keep her lady parts hidden any more.  Enough with the "Let's Pretend I'm Taking These Off For You, Big Boy" Pose.

Oh wait...let me take off these bothersome bottoms.  We models don't like to wear pants.  Or bottoms.  They're so yesterday.

But wait, here's my favorite pose. 

Really now.  A sign in the models' dressing room should read:  "All Bikini Models must wash their hands before leaving work."  We can only hope that none of them have night jobs as food service workers. Otherwise, it would go like this:   "Would you like your fries with or without pubic hair?"

My apologies to Nancy for lumping her beautiful and reverent cross-stitch into a post with these ummmm...questionable ads for swimwear.  But I'll bet Jesus would be shaking his head, too.

Why does she keep showing us that same picture?

Over and over again?  I know you're wondering that.  Is it because I'm averaging a whopping total of about 10 stitches every week?  I'll tell you, if not for stitching get-togethers, I wonder if I'd have even gotten this far. 

It's not really a loss of enthusiasm.  It's more about being pulled in some different directions and then being too tired when I finally sit down to stitch.

It might also be because I became so dern literary recently.

I've finished three books in the past two weeks.  One was for book club, called The Raising.  A bit too "twilightish" for my tastes.  Also read Ann Patchett's Bel Canto, and it was a wonderful book.  Sometimes I get near the end of a book and then I start to skim.  I want to know how it ends, but it's more about just finishing it than reading to the end.  With Bel Canto, when I came near the end, I only wanted to read on if I knew I could be totally alert and uninterrupted for it.  So yes - it was that good.

And the third book was Tina Fey's Bossypants - a quick and easy book, but completely enjoyable. You probably have to be a Tina Fey fan to like the book as much as I did, though. 

Otherwise, it's been kind of a normal week here at our lake house.  My neighbors are enjoyable, as always.  I have Mr. Rock Thief to my left.  He has an amazing labyrinth of rocks stacked in his yard and he has stolen each and every one of them from the lake dam.  (One of these days I'll take pictures for you.  It could be the next wonder of the world).  And to my right, let me introduce Mr. and Mrs. Crazy Pants With Their Chorus of Barking Dogs and Screaming Children.  So here I sit, right in the middle. And now that the weather is nice, just hanging out on my porch can be a real adventure. 

Maybe the porch adventures will be really funny this year and I can write about those and then you won't notice that I'm hardly stitching.  Otherwise, I'm going to need to pick up my needle more than once or twice a week if I want to keep you coming back here!

Thanks and We Have a Winner!

Thanks to each and every one of you who voted for The Boyfriend so he could win the prize of having his race entry fee paid to the Pisgah Mountain Bike Stage Race.  Well, you did it.  You vaulted this happy fellow's blog into the top two.  He'll be forever grateful to all of my stitching, blogging friends.  And the competing blogs can't make the wimpy excuse that a Facebook voting competition unfairly skews votes towards younger people, because although my blogging friends may not be ancient, clearly - or at least I think - I don't have many twenty-something readers here.  This guy and my daughter may be the only two.

Happy Dance

Oh, and by the way, in his last blog post?  That's my kitchen.  And over his left shoulder?  That's my stitching on the wall.  So there you have it...another stitching connection to a mountain biking blog.

So...today I promised to finally show you some stitching.  Friends, I've been extra super lazy about stitching lately.  The past few weeks have had so much upheaval, both at work and at home.  I seem only to be able to stitch when things are more calm.  I wish I could be like some of you who use their needlecraft skills to create calm.  I need the outer calm first, before I can sit down with my needle.  I'm getting there though.  First I had to deal with this:  The Lovesac that my wonderful son brought home from college last week.

 
It was "deflated" and packed in a case when we left Meadville.  But evidently we didn't do a very good job of it, because it escaped its special case while it was riding home in my van.  Believe it or not, it fit into a bag about the size of a largish gym bag.  But I knew when I heard that hissing sound that there was going to be trouble...And I watched this insane thing expanding in my rear view mirror during the entire drive home.  Oh no, it didn't expand all at once.  Very, very slowly.  Like in a bad horror movie.

I was done in when I got home that night, so we left it in the van.  Dumb, because then we had to move the silly thing into the house after it had fully expanded.  Four adults hauled this thing out of the van, in the dining room door, and onto the dining room table, where it sat for almost a week before we tackled its deflation again.  And between the four of us, (and a Shop Vac) we stored it correctly this time and now it's happily living in its suitcase in my son's bedroom.

But I keep getting side tracked!  Stitching!  I'm working on another La D Da.  I wish I could capture the loveliness of this PTP linen, named Chime.  It's such a gorgeous yellow and it cheers me up just to look at it. 

And I took out my Older and Better piece, by Eileen Bennett. I'm ready to start the larger alphabet letters, (they'll be on either side of the basket) but I need to pick up some DMC 939.  How is it that I'm out of such a basic color?  Navy blue! 

I have so many wonderful projects in my head. A local group is having a UFO challenge, and I've unearthed this:

Hello, it's me.  I've lived in a box for three years.  Please free me from my prison.

And then there is the Stitch Bitch challenge, where we start from Workbasket's Pink Flower, create our own souvenir sampler of a place we love or have visited recently.  I'm totally in, because the last challenge was so much fun. Go check it out.  You still have lots of time.