Photos on an April Evening

After publishing my latest post, I heard from an old friend who wondered if I'd ever taken photos of a few pieces I'd given to her many years ago.  Needless to say,  I was thrilled to be able to add the photos she sent along to my albums.  In those days, I was doing mostly needlepoint - here are some of them:

This is an eyeglass case stitched with Paternayan Persian yarn  - I'd made several of them in those days, and use my own now for sunglass holders.  The case itself was pre-made - thankfully I didn't have to insert the zipper myself! 

Eyeglass case

Union Jack pincushion

 My friend is British, and we had many happy times together when we lived in the same small town, and later during longer holiday visits, watching films and comparing British literature selections that we'd read and loved.   Appropriately enough, this needlepoint pincushion still has a place on her living-room bookcase. 

Butterfly bell pull

This bell-pull was a favourite of mine (and hers too, I know now) - done with basketweave stitch using Paternayan Persian wools.  My friend said that her grand-daughter uses it as a height measurement all the time, noticing which butterfly she's now "up to" ("Grandma, I'm up to the blue one now!")  - I was delighted to hear that this piece was still being displayed and enjoyed thirty years after I'd stitched it.










Now back to some counted cross-stich projects that I've finished up just recently.

This pincushion, from Cherished Stitches' Feathered Friends series, incorporates the thought:  "Be you to others kind and true, As you would have others be to you."  It's resting on a background of a chenille shawl woven by one of my sisters - aren't the colours gorgeous!   

Cherished Stitched Feathered Friends (September)

Little House Needleworks Snow White

 This was an easy quick stitch that I'll either frame or make up into a pillow.  The fabric is a Silkweaver evenweave (Blueberry Lugana) that I was given several years ago, and the threads are a combination of DMC and Kreinik blending filament (hard to see this one in my photo - the bunny has some of this glittery accent added). 

TeaTime Sampler - Threads Through Time

Another little quick stitch, using DMC on linen,  adapted from a Nancy Sturgeon Threads through Time pattern (originally designed for a high-count silk gauze).  This will fit into a small frame that I'll use as an accent on my tea-table occasionally.  I may stitch it again soon in another combination of colours, perhaps aqua with green.   











And finally, Monasterium's Four Seasons Quaker is finished and off the stitching frame!  The colours are very different than the ones portrayed on the pattern cover .  For my own version, I thought about what represented the seasons on the prairies for me and chose these four.  The very subtle, barely-there soft green of early spring, the paler  yellows of the ripening wheat and barley, the terra-cotta of our autumn hillsides, and the cool blues of our long frosty winters.   If anything, the colours are even  softer than this image would suggest.  The silk threads are a combination of Gloriana and Belle Soie , on a Legacy Linen Puritan Grey ground.

And that's all the photos for now - I'm currently pinning and mounting several other pieces for framing, and continuing to stitch on one or two larger projects. 

Have a blessed Holy Week, with the anticipation of a wonderful Easter Sunday.

February Potpourri

My attempts to write the Perfect Blog Post After Not Posting For Ages have been futile, so I'll just jump back in, natter on a bit, and show some photos of a few things I'm playing around with :)


 Since the summer, I've been taking care of a few family matters, travelling for a short holiday, and visiting family a couple of thousand miles away for an extended trip.   I've stitched a few pieces - finished some smaller ones and kept going on the larger projects.  Some of these have been simpler designs that I could work on without a magnifier and in less light than I'm accustomed to.  And while I was away, I was able to photograph several pieces I'd given as gifts years ago - here's one of them, a needlepoint bell pull:

 And another, a little Christmas ornament that the recipient displays year-round - the yearning for "Peace" knows no season - 

With one of our extended family currently living in Sweden, I've explored more deeply my interest in Scandinavia and the Nordic regions that dates back from high school years when I had a pen-friend in Norway.   Anne Barbro from Bergen sent me a pewter brooch - don't you love the scene? 

Vintage Norwegian pewter brooch

 
 Here's a little ornament (not yet finished off) with Scandinavian motifs - I stitched a couple of these while flying.

Ornament from "Scandinavian Stitches"

 I've also been reading and cooking from several Scandinavian cookbooks - Beatrice Ojakangas, of course, and also books by Andreas Vierstad,  Trina Hahnemann  and Camilla Plum, as well as one of my favorites, the Northern-themed Roast Figs Sugar Snow, by Diana Henry.   As much as I love the root vegetables and many of the flavours featured in dishes from that region,  I do draw the line at lutefisk:  at one time we lived in an area that had strong Norwegian roots, but the annual lutefisk supper was an experience we denied ourselves ....   One advantage of that area was that such cooking implements as krumkake and rosette irons were as easily available at the local hardware store as a toaster or kettle - I still make both treats occasionally with the kitchen tools bought there all those years ago.  

In other stitching, I finished a Victoria Sampler piece, Blackberry Alphabet - one of those that was easy to stitch while I was away from home.  It  will find a place in our family room where I've hung several more "rustic" pieces, some that I can change out depending on the season, using the same frame.  I'll post photos of it when it's properly mounted.   I continue to stitch a simple Quaker-motif piece that I'd set aside for several months, as well as the much more complex "10", our 10th Anniversary guild sampler designed by Amy Mitten, and also Drawn Thread's Violet Sampler - no pictures yet of those.   I've also been spending a little time finishing off some of my other pieces - here's the front and back of the Drawn Thread "First Snow" ornament:

Reverse side of First Snow

Front side of First Snow

My other major project for the year is a Scottish sampler, Janet Burnet 1830, from The Scarlet Letter.

Janet Burnet 1830 (Scarlet Letter website)

 Each month I'm re-reading the monthly chapter in The Garden Cottage Diaries, Fiona Houston's account of her "year in the eighteenth century" - she lived in an 18th century Scottish cottage, growing a garden there and  living most of her life  during the year as closely as she could to the way a woman might in that era.  

She's an historian herself and has carefully researched the time period.  Her experiences were a little different to other similar projects, as she actually lived day to day right in the cottage itself, cooking and sleeping there, and restricting her diet to what was available in her gardens and from local suppliers as near to historic products as possible.   The historical period of the book sets the backdrop leading into the time period of Janet Burnet's sampler, so I'm enjoying that glimpse into another life - yet one more reason to love historic samplers.

Instead of a snow scene, one that many of you have become very familiar with over the past few months, I'll leave you with a photo from our July holiday this past year. 

Prairie Skies

Now back to a few more hours watching the Winter Olympics and stitching during the commentary and commercials .....

What IS Dominion Day, anyway?

Here on this very hot Western Canadian afternoon, I'm thinking about a few Dominion Day memories (for those much younger, Dominion Day was the original name for the holiday we now know as Canada Day!).   For those who want more information on that name-change, here's an article about it.

 Just to keep this stitching-related first,  here's a photo of the piece of needlework I've hung in every place we've lived - the Provincial Flowers of Canada: 

Provincial Flowers of Canada

This was my first larger stitching project, ordered  from Chatelaine Magazine where it was offered as a kit in 1967 in honour of Canada's Centennial of Confederation.  Although it was just a stamped embroidery design, it was printed on a good-quality linen, and there were lots of different stitches, including stem, satin, buttonhole, straight, lazy daisy, chain, amongst others - oh, and of course, dozens of French knots!    I cringe now at how I executed some of them, but I did finish it in a reasonable time and my mother had it framed for me.   I've visited most of the Canadian provinces, with the exception of Newfoundland/Labrador and Yukon and points north and have seen most of these flowers growing in the wild. 

We've celebrated July 1 over the years with the usual picnics and BBQs at home and with friends,  but also in a hospital clinic in Manitoba during a cross-country trip, waiting for a doctor to check out a toddler with a fierce ear-ache; watching fireworks at Henderson Lake in Lethbridge and at Waterton Lakes National Park; cooking and serving burgers at a Stampede booth in a northern Saskatchewan town, with chuckwagons thundering past on the other side of the booth's back wall; canoeing on a quiet river in the Saskatchewan wilderness; riding back to a friend's ranch house in the southern Alberta foothills after a visit to a century-old homestead hidden back in the shadow of the Rockies; being the dinner for swarms of blackflies and mosquitoes while we were out on the lake fishing for pike, pickerel and trout  -  and so  many more memories than I can write just now.

Happy Canada Day, Dominion Day, Memorial Day, etc.  to my fellow Canadians, and wishes for a good summer to others  - O Canada, eh? 

Just a brief current events note .....

(This was to have been a stitching update, but at the moment I've delayed that for a couple more days.)    Thanks for all who've checked on us during the current flood situation here in Calgary - we're fine, "high and dry", though we did have an "interesting" trip home from Waterton Park yesterday, torrential rain in places, and  re-routing because of flooding.    Thankfully, we arrived home safely and the guys at home said that the sump pump was working well and no other problems evident.   The city's coping well with a changing situation, and troops are on the way from an Edmonton military base  to help out in some of the rural communities that need extra assistance and specialized equipment.   I won't try to post pictures as I don't have any of my own - there are lots of photos and videos online if people google "Calgary flood 2013" or something similar!  Maybe I'll be able to do lots of stitching in the next day or so :)  

Twiggs and Birds and Flowers that Bloom in the Spring ...

The combination of a new computer and a new prescription for my glasses has finally led to better results in my stitching and photo transfer, so I'm glad to be back here again :)  

"The flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la,
Are hidden by blankets of snow ....." 

Don't the lyrics go something like that?  Anyway, the pieces I've finished recently have both birds and flowers, so at least spring's around here somewhere,  though delayed outdoors.  I'll spare you photos of tonight's snow ......


First of all, I've finished both of the Twigg Miniatures from the Scarlet Letter. 


Sarah Twigg (Twigg Miniatures,
Scarlet Letter)

 "LT", completed earlier in the winter, is a little (5x5) sampler stitched over 2.  "Sarah Twigg", the other of the pair, is the same size, but stitched almost entirely over 1 linen thread.  I'd never tackled a whole piece over 1, and even with my improved eyeglasses, I'm not sure I'd be eager to do another one anytime soon, but there's tremendous satisfaction in having completed this one.  Although I had to do my share of "reverse stitching" with Sarah, especially early on, the rhythm improved and the pleasure returned.  There was one small part that I left off my version of the sampler - some additional lazy daisy stitches called for in the pattern didn't, I felt, add to the design so I exercised my right to eliminate them :)



LT (Twigg Miniatures, Scarlet Letter)

The Soie d'Alger used for these is a beautiful thread, having both sheen and depth. 

These were both stitched on one piece of fabric, with sufficient space left in between to make for easier separation and framing. 

Twigg Miniatures
(Scarlet Letter)

As a participant in Nicola's Scarlet Letter Year, I'm pleased to have finished these two that I've had for several years - although I do have another Scarlet Letter sampler pattern in my files (passed along to me by a Guild friend), I'm not sure that it's one I want to do at the moment  (a huge amount of over 1, for one thing ....).    These Twigg Miniatures were very simple samplers compared to some of the extremely detailed ones at that site - go have a look there to see some outstanding stitching!


In an entirely different style, Victoria Sampler's Sunflower House (one of Cathy Jean's designs) is finished now too - it has special meaning for a family member and I'll be framing it myself soon.   A bonus in that pattern was using a silk thread from Dinky Dyes for the first time - the bright yellow, Banksia, has a gorgeous depth of colour and glided smoothly through the fabric.  And the fabric is a 28 Cashel Dirty Linen, a comfortable size to stitch as a break from the more exacting Scarlet Letter pieces.   Stitching all of those glowing yellow-gold flowers was a real delight, bringing brilliance and brightness to overcast snowy days in March and April.

Sunflower House
(Victoria Sampler - Cathy Jean)

 Several pieces I've stitched in the past year or two remain unframed or unfinished up until now (stitching is done, but they're not yet fully completed, whether framed, made into a banner/quilt/pillow or other item).   Watch for an occasional "Finished Friday" coming up soon - at least that's the plan .......

One small project I'm in the midst of is a small pincushion-sized design from Cherished Stitches - the Feathered Friends peacock.  In our Guild last year we had a presentation about the associations and meaning of peacocks in samplers and art - did you know that some medieval paintings of the Nativity feature a peacock on the roof of the stable?  The peacock was symbolic of the Resurrection in that tradition at the time, and has been used extensively in many different artistic contexts.  

 Here's my progress so far on this little gift - I've set it aside for the moment until I have clarification of one part of the pattern.   There's a short motto that I've just begun, and more of the design and date need to be added - the colours are perhaps not quite as intense as the photo would suggest.

Feathered Friends - September .... Peacock
Cherished Stitches



Other works-in-progress at the moment include Amy Mitten's Ten, Drawn Thread's Violet Sampler, Gracewood Stitches Christ is Risen, and two or three small ornaments. 

One other stitching-related event I'm excited about is the arrival of a houseguest here in a few weeks - she's a textile enthusiast and designer, but using spindle and loom, natural fibres, and even beads,  rather than the needle, linens and silks that I use.   She's promised to bring along her latest creation, a gorgeous large shawl made entirely of handspun fibres.    The backdrop in my final photo here, our  Spring/Easter centrepiece, shows part of one of her woven fabrics. 

Till next time .....

Halfway through February already?

The days since December have flown past, full of celebration, snow, cold, appointments, meetings, marmalade-making, more snow, baking, writing, cold, visiting, everyday life - and of course stitching :)  

Cloister Garden

First of all, here's my Drawn Thread's Cloister Garden framed - the cut-out at the top was a surprise from my framer, and I love the way it adds to the design. 


It's now part of my sampler wall, although I may change its location as I add more to this wall throughout the coming year.  

Twigg Miniatures - "LT"

I've been participating in Nicola's Scarlet Letter challenge - so far, I've finished the small "over 2" sampler in The Twigg Miniatures.   The Sarah Twigg sampler (entirely "over 1") remains - I've  made a start, but it will be a while before I see a finish with it.  Here's the first one, known as "LT" - LT may perhaps have been Sarah's Twigg's younger sister.  

In October, I posted a photo of the first of the Tristan Brooks Christmas Sampler Trio that I'd finished, Goodwill to Men.  I've now completed the stitching in the second one, Peace on Earth - these are deceptively simple, but I found the eyelets and the queen stitches a real challenge.    Each time I work through this type of section, though, I learn more about how to improve my execution of the stitches, and gain a new appreciation for the sampler-stitching skills of the young girls of centuries past! 

Tristan Brooks Christmas Sampler Trio - Peace on Earth

Blackbird Designs' vintage-style "Tis the Season" was lovely to stitch and I look forward to having it on the wall for next Christmas.  I chose the wording in French, and changed one of the colours so that the words and snow would be more distinct on the muted hand-dyed linen.  Cardinals don't live in this part of the country, but as I grew up with them in our yard in Ontario, I like to remember them, especially at Christmas.  They still come regularly to visit my mother when she's outside on her patio there. 

Blackbird Designs Tis the Season

Currently I'm working on three pieces - a simple Victoria Sampler design, the second Twigg Miniature, and an Easter design from  Gracewood Stitches.  I'll add images of these when I have a little more to show.  

Besides stitching,  I'll be baking cookies and squares early in the week (for a funeral lunch) and more marmalade mid-week (the Seville Oranges are only in season for a short time)  -  hopefully the kitchen duties won't stretch into the evenings and I'll be able to see more progress in all of the handwork projects.  

Till later ...... 

Advent days, stitching pleasures

Victoria Sampler's "Fleece Navidad"

As the December days darken towards the winter solstice, and as our Advent preparations lead us towards the great festival of Christmas, I'm still stitching here.   My camera is currently out of commission, but I decided I'd post anyway, using some previous photos that you might not have seen before.  

Victoria Sampler's Fleece Navidad is one I stitched several years ago - it's now hanging on the wall of friends who have a flock of sheep.  I love the design, and there's still enough thread left for me to stitch one for myself too :)  

This Nativity sampler was the first cross-stitch piece that I worked on linen, 32 count if I recall correctly.  The design was from one of the Spirit of Christmas books - I still hadn't discovered the wealth of samplers, both historical reproductions and modern interpretations,  available (in those pre-internet days LOL), but I still like the sampler itself, although I might have had it framed a little differently.  

  

Lights of Advent - JCS

Every year I still love to stitch ornaments for some special people - this small ornament (about 3 1/2 inches square) is for a church friend and features an Advent wreath, one of the ways that this "time of quiet waiting"  helps us to focus on the spiritual truths of the Advent and Christmas seasons.  

When the camera is operational again, I'll take photos of more ornaments, including one that I've stitched for my Sampler Guild exchange this year - working on small pieces like these is also a great way to learn new techniques, practice different stitches, and try out finishing methods (always my greatest challenge!).

"L.T" - Twigg Miniatures

"Sarah Twigg" - Twigg Miniatures

As far as future stitching plans, I'm participating in  Nicola's Scarlet Letter Year group.  Nicola, a stitcher from Cornwall who does some beautiful work and has a lovely blog   (http://stitchingbyacornishseashore.blogspot.ca/)invited people to help her celebrate her 50th birthday by stitching any of the samplers from the Scarlet Letter company. I've had the Twigg Miniatures in my stash for quite some time now, so I was able to answer Yes to the invitation in the early days of the challenge, and we're amazed that the group has grown to over 125 now.  The above photos from the Scarlet Letter website are the pieces I'm doing - they're very small but as one of them is done entirely "over 1", it should keep me out of trouble ;)   I'll try to add a link to the separate group in my sidebar shortly, but till then, here's the address -  http://scarletletteryear.blogspot.ca/

Best wishes for a blessed Advent and a happy Christmas - until the next time .....