Red, White and Blueberry

I have been working on Americana just a bit, but there's hardly enough to show. And for whatever reason--the difficult times? The approaching 4th holiday? Memories of carefree summers (my current summer is anything but) on Cape Cod?--I've been looking for another one or two patriotic designs to work on. I've looked online, in the LNS, and nothing. Thanks to Sue, who I met for the first time IRL Saturday, I went home with several patriotic projects. Sue and I each took the day off from our studies on Saturday and met to go over the Rappahannock to Sandra Sullivan's Homespun Elegance "1st Saturday Gathering" at her shop/design center/fascinating objects, crafts folk art warehouse. We saw so many samplers. I have some of Sandra's samplers already, but seeing them stitched up made me appreciate them so much more, and some of them had red, white and blue patriotic themes, like this one:

I enjoyed the gathering, and I'm in awe of Sandra-the-artist/designer as well as Sandra-the-businesswoman. Her designs are gentle, precise and historical, photographed nicely on soothing earthtone backgrounds, and in person, they really pop; I wanted to come home with a stack of them. Well, actually, I sort of did come home with a stack. I won this little guy (44 st. x 30 st.) and several other charts as a door prize!

From there, we went on to Everything Cross Stitch in Fredericksburg, where we enjoyed a pleasant search for fabric and fibers and looked at more charts and laughed with Celeste, the wonderful owner of the shop (and another savvy businesswoman) about how none of us will stitch people with faces on our designs.
Sue and I had time just for a quick refreshment on a sidewalk bench before we flew back over the Rappahannock; terrible lightening and thunder and buckets of rain chased us home. I had such a great day with a wonderful fellow blogger, and we agreed we'd do it again, and next time we'll bring our stitching or check out another shop. Psst--Sue--did you hear Celeste mention the great big needlework shop in Baltimore? I've never been to that one....
I went to the garden center today to buy blueberry bushes. These grow as a hedge in our climate and supposedly produce 10 pounds per bush. We'll see. It's producing now, even in its little plastic pot.

"I'm quite sure you meant to name this post 'Pink, White and Blueberry.'"