Wednesday, April 15, 2009

April ? Surely not!!

I honestly don't know where this year's gone to, now I can imagine how Rip Van Winkle felt, I've lost 1/3 of a year! It has been very busy at our place between family and building works, but really Easter can't have gone by already??
We spent a very pleasant 4 day weekend with family visiting on the Sunday for a meal. It was only take-away pizza I'm afraid, but don't they say it's not what you eat but the company you keep? Well in that case, we dined like kings, VBG. The 2 grandchildren of course brought their own tucker and had us all besotted for hours. My mother. who turns 80 soon, was delighted to see her kids, grandkids and great-grandkids all together, and really that was all I needed too.

There hasn't been a LOT of stitching happening around here, I've been making groups of themed ATCs to swap online at my group, and I've included a photo here of the last group received just today. There's a face-to-face retreat happening in Adelaide, South Australia this month but those not able to attend decided once again to swap Cheer Me Up cards. I made a dozen cards and sent those in to be swapped out for another dozen.



Aren't they all wonderful and cheerful? My own cards were in different colourways of the same print and embellished with my latest toy, a Bejeweller. It puts little Swaroski crystals onto nearly anything with a heated tool, such fun to plan where to use it. I'll photograph the one I kept and post that soon.

Some other stitching was the class sample for the YTFG club where I'm the Leader. I made a canvaswork wristcuff based on a design shown by another Club Leader Del White at our recent Annual Leaders' Meeting. Our Club is a little smaller this year with a few members busy now with High School and sporting committments, but 4 young ladies really enjoyed making there own version of this design 2 weeks ago.



The following day I took a workshop with Margaret Stephens on Reticella style needle lace at our NSW Lace Day. Here's my sample today:



The bottom rectangle shows 4 sided stitch border, the middle rectangle shows corded satin stitch inside 4 sided stitch and counting started for withdrawn thread blocks. The top rectangle shows some needle weaving begun and 2 filling stitches worked. Not much progress for a 2 day workshop I know, but I'm a slow stitcher!! Apologies for the crooked scan, linen is hard to scan sometimes! Hopefully some more progress soon.