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.

Vote for the Boyfriend

OK. So I don't post for a week and then I come to you all asking for a favor. Just please forgive the one-way nature of our blogging relationship this month and then once you've forgiven me, please consider my favor!

My daughter's boyfriend is in a blog contest and the prize for the top two vote-getters is the entry fee to a bike race this fall. (a nice chunk of change). There are ten bike racing blogs involved and Montana's blog is in third place by just a small margin.

So could you pop on over here and read his blog?  The kid writes a fun and entertaining blog and I think you'll enjoy it,  even if you don't know the first thing about mountain biking. Then click over here and vote for his blog in the Pisgah Mountain Bike Stage Race Contest. If you don't have a Facebook account (which means you can't vote), maybe leave the young man a comment to encourage him.

And besides, Montana posts pictures like this one below, while the fellow in second place whines that he faces an unfair fight in a Facebook voting contest because of the demographic of his potential voters (Really?  Facebook seems be all the new "thing" for middle aged people.  And older.  Cripes, my mother and all of her 70 and 80 something friends are on Facebook all the time!)  and then he posts pictures like this. (Are there small children looking over your shoulder?  Don't click on that.  I'm so not kidding.)

Cute.  And no penis references were involved.

Thanks gang.  Stitchy progress post tomorrow!

My Paucity of Posting

(aka - My adventures in alliteration.  Take that, English major daughter!)

Have you ever noticed how sometimes you have a million pictures and you can rattle on about everything and it all seems so bright and interesting and then...it just stops?  You've got nothing.  Or it all seems really, really negative?  I've hit one of those stoppages recently. 

I think it's because I've been moving kids for the past couple weeks.  For over a year now, when I have nightmares, they're almost always moving and packing nightmares, so I know how profoundly these moves effect me.  In my dreams, nothing is ever packed.  I'm always in a hurry and people are always mad at me.  Everything is everywhere and I keep opening doors to find entire rooms filled with things that need to be moved. That was almost the real-life scenario as I made the second trip to move my son yesterday. 

Luckily, the day ended with a couple hours of stitching among friends.  It stopped my hyperventilating and relaxed me as I listened to their stitchy chatter.  I even enjoyed the quiet moments. 

Thank goodness for friends, especially stitching friends!

Time sure flies

When you're having fun. Well, it was fun for me, anyway!  I thought that the high school years went by quickly, but college went by in the blink of an eye.

Graduation day at Allegheny started off drizzly, then became stormy, so we were moved inside.  And just before the recessional music started, the sun came out and many parents breathed a sigh of relief.  Imagine trying to fit all of these people in the campus center!  And this photo is just a small representation of the crowd on hand.  People were streaming everywhere, but one special graduate was finding his way to his family...

The two students I love most in the whole wide world.

One graduate with five very proud family members

My son and an angel

The Gator!

We're so proud!

That's my boy!

And now all that's left is the moving.  When I was driving away yesterday, I thought I'd be waving goodbye to Meadville for the last time....but no such luck.  How can one young man have so much stuff?  I've raised a pack rat.  I thought he'd get better about it when he was in college, but my son seems to have earned a degree in Hoard-ology. So it looks like I'll be back on the road again later this week.

It's finally time

Wow! It's really here! I wonder if they make blue and yellow hankies for the teary-eyed mothers in the crowd? Because if they do, I'm gonna need a case.

(Not my graduate....we'll have photos after the weekend)

Yes! Finished the retreat project!

I hope everyone had a great Mothers Day!  I had a wonderful weekend, starting with shopping at Trax Farms Friday night.  Trax is probably one of the happiest places on earth right now, with all of those flowers and all of that hope of Spring and nicer weather!  Not to mention a wine shop that carries the favorite wines I tried during our Erie weekend back in November.  And Trax was on my way to a stitch night...who wouldn't love that?

I didn't accomplish much at stitch night.  I was working on a new La D Da, but spent most of the evening trying to find a counting mistake.  Plus, show and tell was excellent Friday night, with our friend Nancy celebrating a new granddaughter AND finishing a beautiful religious design in her own color choices.

Nancy's project - I don't know the name, but I'm pretty sure it's a free design

Two of the girls had just returned from Celebrations in Nashua, where they took lots of classes and shopped and traded and had a fabulous time.  No wonder I couldn't count, let alone find a mistake, with fascinating talk like that bouncing around the room!

I spent Saturday cleaning.   Yuck.  But until I win the lottery and move into that self-cleaning house that I plan to invent, it's a necessary evil.  And evil it was, since I had been away so much in April that somehow a year's worth of dust and clutter accumulated in only 30 days.  I was also still unpacking.  Why is it that when I go away, it takes me forever to unpack my stuff and get it all back to its proper place?  In my mad cleaning, I found a suitcase with odds and ends still in it...from our trip to Sanibel, Florida.  Last January.  So that's where that stuff was...

But it was also our 28th wedding anniversary and that meant a nice meal out.  Good ol' Dave.  He's a keeper.

And then came Sunday, Mothers Day here in the US.  Both kids are still working their way through college final exams, so they couldn't come home and properly adore me, but they made me happy with phone calls and a beautiful blog post that made me cry.  I'm a very happy and proud mom, and sometimes I marvel at the luck that brought me such wonderful children.

But you're here for the stitching, right?  And my Mothers Day goal was to finish my project from the Hearts Desire Stitch Camp.  And yes I did!

Front of fob

Pincushion - That's the Nun stitch around the edges and it's affixed to WDW felt

Both pieces together, showing back of fob

The pincushion project had a cord attached to it to secure a pair of scissors, but I decided to omit it.  My original idea had been to add a magnet to the cushion for that purpose, but the felt was bit too thick for that.  It reduced the pull of the magnet too much.  So it's just a pincushion now.

I have an exciting week ahead, with John graduating from Allegheny College and all of the fun surrounding that.  I was cleaning his room Saturday (really just making it non-health-threatening because my mother and sister will be sleeping in there), and I was dusting his Matchbox car collection and the whole college graduation thing really hit me.  It's like Gretchen Rubin says..."The days are long, but the years are short."  I'm sure I'll have lots of those thoughts as this week goes by...

Touristy things and a wrap up

Being tourists, we did some touristy things in Ireland.  We really only had five days to play with, since Tuesday was spent getting out of the airport and picking up the rental car and figuring out how to get to the hotel.  It would've been easier and less time consuming if we hadn't been roaming around lost and disconcerted about driving on the wrong side of the road and freaking out every time we came to a roundabout.

We had many colorful conversations in the car that day, but I'll leave those up to your imagination.  And it was all worth it, which you'll understand when I show you the hotel photos.

Anyways, we were totally self-guided on this trip, which had its positives and negatives.  The "wandering around lost" part?  Kinda negative.  The doing what we wanted, when we wanted?  That was pretty good.  And we saw some things that may not have been on a typical tour. 

Like the Irish Museum of Modern Art, which had a former life as a military hospital.

IMMA

Inside the IMMA in some kind of chapel room.  Not exactly modern art, but you know how I'm drawn to anything with stained glass.  Like a moth to a flame...

And there were tours that we thought we had to take, but in retrospect, we could have passed on them. For instance, the Guinness factory tour.  Total rip-off.  The come-on is this:  At the end of your very self-guided experience through what was a media show rather than a factory tour, you go up to The Gravity Bar and get a "free" pint of Guinness.  So basically you've just paid 12 Euros to walk through a slide show, see some memorabilia, visit the gift shop, and have a Guinness.  Pubs are far more entertaining and now I know we should have just gone to a pub and bought our own beers.

But I did get a cute picture of this fellow.

Guinness is good for you.  I didn't need any lunch after this pint...

We really enjoyed our tour of Dublin Castle.  It was one of the few guided tours and our guide was very, very good.

Dublin Castle

Excavation under Dublin Castle.  While renovating part of the building for office use, they found evidence of an early Viking fortress.  Really fascinating.

We visited some monastic ruins in Glendalough.  It was quite an adventure getting there.  We traveled up over the mountains, encountering narrow roads, rain, tour buses and very brave bikers.  But it was so beautiful.

And soon we arrived at the monastery, and learned about Celtic monastic life and how important it was to the health and welfare and growth of the region. Monks fascinate me.

Cathedral at Glendalough

Bell tower and graves with Celtic High Crosses

There's that cute man again.

And the next day, although the town of Kilkenny was our real destination, we visited some churches and Kilkenny Castle.  Although I don't have a good photo of the Kilkenny Castle grounds (dark and rainy day), they were also very beautiful.

Inside St. Mary's Church

The Black Abbey.  Sadly, it was closed by the time we arrived.

Kilkenny Castle

We stayed at the Ritz Carlton Powerscourt hotel, which was right next to the Powerscourt Gardens and...oh, is this just a coincidence?...right across from one of the nicest golf courses in Ireland.  So one day, Dave went off to play golf.  And he didn't even have to beg all that much.  Just a little.  And it all worked out, because this is where he left me:

In the garden behind the hotel, in the sun, with my book.  If you could enlarge the photo, you'd see a huge smile on my face.

When reading became too strenuous for me, I went inside to take a nap here, in the world's best bed.  Seriously.  It was the best bed I've ever, ever slept in.  A king-sized feather bed with snowy white sheets and blankets that were so soft and silky, I thought I was floating.  I loved getting into this bed at night and I didn't want to get out if it in the morning. 

And look here!  If nature called, I could go into the bathroom and watch TV.  On a TV that was somehow, some way built into the mirror.  Don't laugh.  One night I took a bath and watched TV at the same time.  Pretty amazing stuff.

And one last thing about the hotel, and I know that many of you will appreciate this. The valet kit in the dressing room had the usual stuff. Laundry bag, shoe sponge, etc. And a sewing kit. But  - pre-threaded needles!  You know I took that home with me!

So that was it - our trip in a nutshell.  Or more like three nutshells.  Except to tell you that for those 5 days, everyone I encountered called me "madame".  "Yes, madame?"  "Thank you madame."  "What will madame be having tonight?"  So we arrived in Pittsburgh and we were walking through the exits where a security guard was sitting.  I walked right by him, and looked at him and smiled, to which he responded, "Hey babe.  Have a nice night."

"Madame" on Monday morning.  "Babe" on Monday night.  My life is good.