Posted in Books on June 30, 2007 | No Comments »
I found a wonderful, old edition printed in 1939 of Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton today. I read this a number of years ago and look forward to reading it again soon. Over this past winter, I read The Age of Innocence and The Buccaneers by Ms. Wharton. She is a favorite author of mine.I [...]
Posted in Summer Knitting on June 29, 2007 | No Comments »
I found the most amazing thing today at the Library Book Sale in my hometown. It is a three ring binder packed from end to end with knitting patterns each in its own plastic sheet protector. I could not believe it when I picked it up. There are patterns for shawls, scarves, socks, mittens and [...]
Posted in Summer Knitting on June 28, 2007 | No Comments »
Summer can be interesting with kids now that they are off from school. I like to have them start craft projects to work on here and there to help keep them occupied. We took a trip to our library and picked out some books on making puppets with easy-to-follow diagrams. Yesterday we started on the [...]
Posted in Summer Knitting on June 26, 2007 | No Comments »
I work on designing daily. Recently, I switched to a new cross stitch computer program and today’s task was to begin putting in a design that was in a previous, older program. It is a bit tedious just plugging in squares of color and counting to make sure I have it just right. So, for [...]
Posted in Books on June 23, 2007 | 2 Comments »
Every year in my hometown a group called the Friends of the Falmouth Library puts on a book sale on the library lawn. The book sale has row after row of tables sprawled on the green grass under the magnificent trees and great white tents. It is like a great treasure hunt to find books [...]
Posted in Needlework sampler on June 21, 2007 | 3 Comments »
I had the opportunity yesterday to visit the Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth, MA. It is the home of a selection of some very beautiful, historic samplers and Pilgrim artifacts. I included a link to their website (click on the title above) because they have an online tour of the samplers and a brief history [...]
Posted in cross stitch designs on June 20, 2007 | No Comments »
Some of the best ideas come from just having fun. With young kids that’s easy because imaginations run rampant and sillyness takes hold. A while back I bought some finger puppets in a local childrens bookstore. They are mini field mice from the Folkmanis Company http://www.folkmanis.com/ and they offer other wonderful little critters like rabbits, [...]
Posted in Design Process on June 18, 2007 | No Comments »
Now the task is to pull it all together and get started. I have my project idea, reference materials, and a tentative selection of fabric and flosses to use. At this point I do a rough sketch, followed by some more rough sketches and perhaps even more rough sketches. After all, I can throw away [...]
Posted in Design Process on June 13, 2007 | No Comments »
There are so many beautiful colors to choose from when selecting fibers and flosses for your needlework. I suppose I have favorite brands and companies that I have become accustomed to using when designing. It is because I look for certain qualities in the products and I want to use those qualities for maximum effect [...]
Posted in Design Process on June 10, 2007 | No Comments »
The next step in my design process is to look at my creative options. There are fabrics to select, flosses and fibers to choose, accessories to consider and specialty stitches. The first I will discuss is my selection of fabric for a particular cross stitch design. There are so many to choose from. Why does [...]
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