Vacation Goodies

These are the 2 patterns I bought in Victoria, BC, at the Button & Needlework Boutique. You can visit this shop at www.buttonedup.com to see how nice it is and even order online.
The first pattern is by Sue Coleman of the Stitching Studio and is a darling pattern of a seal and her pup with a NW Indian design in the background. This piece was worked up and displayed as a model in the shop. It is so cute & couldn't resist it!
The other is a booklet containing 3 charted NW Indian designs. These would stitch up beautifully. Maybe I'll try to put them all in one long piece? If I live long enough!

Tomorrow we drive to Las Vegas. I hope I have remembered all the stitching things I will need there this winter! If not, the LNS is a good one!

Vacation & BMW

We are back in Reno, vacation is over. It was very beautiful everywhere we went, but I am glad to be home. Lots to do in the next couple of days and then we will be driving to Las Vegas where I will stay all winter.

I have a lot of things coming up to tell you about, but for now let's finish up the "needlepoint for DH". This piece I adapted from a coffee mug we bought. We have a BMW K1200 motorcycle so DH likes me to do motorcycle things. This one I liked too because it is so very stylized. It is stitched all in floss on 18-count and is all Basketweave except for the backstitching in the background.

Vacation & Waterskier

Here we are in Hope, British Columbia. We left Victoria around noon. Victoria was lovely and I even found a charming little needlework shop. Mostly knitting & cross stitch, I bought a couple of patterns. I can't show them to you till I get home because I don't have a scanner. We took ferries to and from Victoria which was really cool! Tomorrow we head to Banff, but I think we will take 2 days to get there. Internet connections have been unreliable, so I may not be able to post again till we get home.

My husband says I should show you the pieces I have made for him. So here is the Waterskier. I started with an ad in Waterski magazine for the waterskier himself, and also referred to some photos of DH. I used some rayon ribbon for the water which worked well but was hard to handle. I don't remember what thread I used for the spray!

Vacation & Blackwork Dancer

Just a quick note to let you know I won't be posting for another week or so. We are on vacation, driving up the Coast. We are in Oregon now, heading to Washington tomorrow. Then to Vancouver and East through the Canadian Rockies to Lake Louise & Banff. Then back to Reno for a couple of days and then to Las Vegas for the winter.

In the meantime, here is my Blackwork Dancer. She is adapted from a circus poster of an acrobat. Turned her upside down and she became a dancer. I did this about 20 years ago. At that time there were no circular blackwork patterns so I had to invent them. I had a good time with it and she won a ribbon in a needlework exhibit in San Diego.

Exploded Diamonds, Progress #3

Here is a progress report on Exploded Diamonds. I have been working on it this week and it is now 2/3 done! I'm thinking of changing the name to Exploding Diamonds, any comments or suggestions? I probably won't get back to it for awhile as we are going on vacation, leaving Fri. I will try to post a few times while we are gone. We are driving up the coast to Vancouver and then across Canada to Banff.

Mindy Music

First, I want to thank all of you who commented on my previous post. Your kind words and encouragement is sooooo appreciated!

Now, back to the Music Room! I stitched this Mindy design a couple of years ago for my husband for Christmas. I am not usually a painted canvas person, but I couldn't resist this one with a musical theme. My husband plays guitar, saxophone and is learning piano and I play piano. I used only floss, pearl cotton & Krenik braid for threads, but used a huge variety of stitches which is not always easy on a Mindy canvas! Stitches used: Basketweave, Brick, Criss Cross Hungarian, Diagonal Mosaic, Mosaic, Nobuko, Oblong Cross variations, Rhodes, Rice, Scotch, Slanted Gobelin, Triangle variation, and a couple of others I don't remember what they are!

Needlepoint Now Sep/Oct Issue

The new issue of Needlepoint Now has been mailed. I have received mine, if you haven't received yours it should arrive soon.

In case there are any of you out there who were waiting for the last installment of my Bargello series, it isn't there and it won't be. The editor of Needlepoint Now decided that it is "too hard of a concept to print only" and did not run it. She feels it needs to be a class, not just written instruction. I do not agree, but it is her magazine.

I hope that sometime in the next year or two I will be able to put together even more Bargello techniques, including the missing chapter, into an online class. I will keep you posted here.

Art Deco Dancers

Art Deco Dancers is a design I adapted from a decal. I think the decals are put out by a company that makes shoes for ballroom dancers and we have one on each of our cars. I got the decals at a store in San Diego. I added the Art Deco border design which I adapted from a design in an Art Deco coloring book. The dancers are stitched completely in a black metallic (I think I used a thread called Moonlight which is no longer made). There is some silver metallic in the border. All the rest is DMC floss. This piece and the previous one, Goeckel's Dancers, hang in our Music Room in Reno, along with a couple of other music & dance related pieces that I will be showing you in the next few days.

Goeckel's Dancers

Since my husband and I are ballroom dancers, I am always on the lookout for dancers to stitch. There are very few interesting commercial designs so I have done a couple of my own. I stitched this piece several years ago. It is adapted from a Goeckel print. It was fun to figure out! I did not want to use a lot of decorative stitches as I thought it would take away from the design, so it is all Basketweave except for the brightly colored rectangles and the Backstitched lines of the background. It is mostly floss but I did use 3 different metallics (Kreinik).

Evening Bag

I stitched this evening bag a year or two ago and just love it. It is one of those where you zip off the flap, stitch the painted needlepoint design, sew the lining flap on, zip it back on and go! It came with the tassel. I stitched it entirely in metallics and added the turquoise colored beads. For the life of me I can't remember what company makes these. I got it at my LNS in Reno and there are a lot of really pretty designs. There is another one in the store now that I'm kinda lusting after!

Added Tues: Yes, it is from Sophia Designs. Thank you, Front Range Stitches!

SOTM Section 8

I just realized "Section 8", boy is that appropriate! I finished this section of the Stitch of the Month around noon today. I had a lot of problems with it, all of my own making! I think it looks nice now, but whew! Shortly after beginning the right side (the left side was easy), I discovered I had made a bad counting error when I did Section 6, which then resulted in Section 7 being wrong. After some deliberation, I decided the only sensible thing to do was to re-design this part. So, I redrew and recharted the curves so they fit the "wrong" sections. Boy of boy! When I stitched Section 6, I thought about not doing the two pieces to the right of the center band until I had something else in to count from. That would have been a really good idea! Oh well, it is finished now and looks OK. Deep breath, back to my Masters project.

Dolphin Daze

I'm back to work on my MNA piece and getting more & more frustrated by it! I am also working on this month's SOTM so will have a pic of that later this week. In the meantime, this is a piece I stitched 20 years ago, or so, and I still love it. I drew the dolphin one night as I was watching a TV show about dolphins and somewhere along the way I thought it would be fun to put him on a background of changing patterns. Most of the patterns came from books, but I put them together in such a way that they sort of blend together, plus I messed with the shading. The dolphin is stitched in wool and all the rest is floss.