Mad for Glads

Work progresses on Leslie's Neighborhood RR:

See if you can guess who the designer of the house is. A hint: she uses JUST her first name.

In the meantime, I've started collecting house charts on my visits to the LNS. Here's one from Kit and Bix (Bix and Kit?) that I picked up. I like the cute farm house and the yard and trees. It may find its way into someone's RR square.

And here's a little gift that showed up on the side of my house. As I've said before, this is the first spring/summer that we've lived in this house, and although I'm eager to landscape and garden, we've waited a bit to see what the previous owners planted. Here's a nice suprise: gladiolus!

Have a wonderful week!

A Little Progress on Long Dog

I didn't do as much stitching as I'd have liked on Long Dog, but it's moving along anyway. Not having to change colors speeds things up, although I'm thinking that things will slow down hugely when I have to stitch the grid in gray over the design.

My garden is trying to kill me, I think. Two weeks ago a brown recluse spider bit me in the hand. I didn't get much of a look at him, but the bite was tell-tale. It is just now beginning to heal; it looks like a bullet wound. Brown recluse bites are bad because the flesh around the bite dies and in order to get the infection out, you have to dig down and scoop out the bitten part, opening it up to drain and heal. Because it was a smallish bite, I resisted going off to the doctor, choosing to "operate" with a sterilized size 28 Piecemaker needle (which, by the way, is all I use now; I have yet to break one off in my needlework the way I do with the John James needles). I got a nasty case of poison ivy in the same outing while weeding the garden beds on the north side of the house.

Anyway, I'm on the mend, my garden is thriving, and I'm stitching, cleaning and blogging happily while DBF makes this luscious Sunday rotisserie. Mmmmm. Think I'll go up to the garden and pick some yellow squash to go with it!

Long Dog, Short Weekend

I've had this in my stash for a while and ran across it the other night when I was cleaning out the sewing room. I've had the urge to put it in order, both because we're having all the floors re-done in the house, and that involves picking stuff up off the floor and putting it away--somewhere. I've also bought a blouse pattern because I was in Exquisite Fabrics in D.C. Friday, and they were having a sale on the most gorgeous fabrics. I bought a bit over three yards of seersucker, only what's different is that the seersucker is silk rather than cotton or cotton/poly. I'm excited but a little hesitant about sewing garments because of the whole fitting thing. I usually don't do that kind of sewing--I'm more comfortable with home dec sewing. But I'm tired of what the stores have in stock, and tired of what I wear all the time (mostly silk sweaters with black pants). I have blouses, but nothing really dressy, and everything out there that's dressy seems sheer. So I'm going to try it--it's a wrap blouse with a graceful neckline. We'll see how it turns out--I'll show you pictures as I go. That project will have wait probably until late July when I take two weeks of vacation at home so I can hang around the house while the floor installers are here. Can't wait--it's been a long slog since my last vacation. I may try to squeeze in a quick trip to the Cape to see my parents as well.

Anyway, this is Long Dog Samplers' "Bagatelle." I saw it stitched in one of my LNS' a couple of years ago and couldn't resist.
This is R&R's 32 count blue spruce fabric with Needlepoint Silk's white (2 strands)--I had the NPI in my stash also, although the pattern actually calls for DMC. After stitching the design, you apply a kind of netting effect by back-stitching about a million miles of a gray silk (or cotton, if you're using that).

The weekend is just too short for trying to get everything done, isn't it? I think I could spend half my time doing needlework and crafts and the other half the time gardening. Here are two fun flowers I've gotten lately; I'm using them both in containers. The first is lantana, which I've just discovered. I love the way it starts out one color and shades into others as the flowers mature.

This guy is a petunia. I love the ruffliness and the purple-and-white flower.

Out the Door

We're having a much-needed steady rain/drizzle, so I can't go out and play (or plant). I should be relieved, since I've spent so much time puttering in the garden, but I'm sort of depressed about it. I wanted to plant these--sugar baby watermelons. The BF predicts they won't grow (for some reason, melons never would grow in his dad's garden), but my canteloupes are coming along, so I'm going to try these.

The banana leaf is unfurling, and since it unwound a bit, it has grown about an inch a day, even in the rain! Maybe that two feet a week growth is not an exaggeration.

I got my RR out the door to Wendy. While I think the house turned out well (although it photographs much lighter than IRL), I'm not completely pleased with it; I'd like to find some more critters for the grounds, expand the lawn a bit and would like to pick out and re-do the lettering. Maybe when I get it back.

This is what I'm working on now. This is my 2nd attempt. The first time, I had decided to do over-one on 36 count fabric, which didn't work well for my eyes. Too bad-I'd seen the finished product done over one on a high-thread-count fabric, and it was beautiful To tell you the truth, this sampler is a tad boring--too many solid blocks of color. That makes it a speedier stitch, but only if you pick it up to work on it.

Raise High the Roofbeam

This is a little better! Now my house block for the RR looks like a house! I need to finish the roof and the chimneys, then put in a bit of greenery and a couple of birdies, and maybe a pet or two, and I'm done! This stone house is featured on my blog a few weeks ago (in April, actually--it FEELS like just a few weeks, really); it is a Vermillion stitchery design, believe it or not, and is called Plantation Sampler. It's likely out of print; I bought it with a little bunch of samplers from an ebay seller. I like it because it looks like the old houses in Pennsylvania.

This weekend was a whirlwind of stitching, grocery shopping (tell me why we need to go each of the three days to the grocery store where there are just two of us living here) and gardening. Lots of gardening! Here's my 20x10 foot veggie raised bed. The neighbors all think it's hysterical and call me the "farmer." Guess they've never seen a tomato growing before. What? They think they grow in plastic packages in the store? Oddly, although all the houses in this neighborhood have large lots, nobody seems to try to grow anything edible. In fact, the covenants of this neighborhood association were quite strict regarding how close to the lot line the garden should be. Why? Are they worried my melons are going to make a break for it?

Bananarama

I'll make this quick because a thunder storm is headed our way. I'm not sure if the banana plant is putting up a shoot or just sent up a periscope to look around.

I made jam (5 jars) of the wonderful fresh strawberries I bought at the farmers' market yesterday.

I've been working steadily on my house block for the RR neighborhood. Mail date for the RR is Friday, so I've been working hard on it this weekend. I'm enjoying everyone else's progress. Next round though, I'm starting a bit earlier. All the same, it's been fun to stitch a lot this weekend instead of tearing up and down the road.

Yes, We Have No Bananas

It's been a while since I've posted since I've been busy at work and at home, and little stitching has been accomplished. At home, mostly I've been gardening. We put in tomatoes and squash and brussels sprouts and melons and peppers in the 20x10 garden plot at the rear of our yard. We've been tending the borders that the previous homeowners left--they're fairly nice, if a bit hosta-heavy. And because I wanted to see what exactly was already planted, I'm not doing much with the borders until I see it all come up, so I've been expressing myself with containers and trying my hand at different plants. Like bananas. We're hardiness zone 7, so bananas have to be brought inside in the winter, but because we have an approximately 20 foot ceiling in our family room, it shouldn't be a problem. Bananas are shipped as a goofy looking bare rhizome with a reedy-looking thing on it. Supposedly during the warm humid season it will grow one-two feet a week. Hard to believe, but here it is (any bananas are inedible but if the season lasts long enough, there will be little bunches of them). It gets enormous leaves that are quite interesting and dramatic, and I'll have to transplant it to a larger container later probably. I also got some bare root orchids and planted them from the same tropical plant company.

Since we're talking about inedible fruits, here is a pineapple plant, also with a purely decorative fruit. Looks good enough to eat, though, doesn't it?

And some yummy iris. The previous owners planted these, and several other varieties of iris, all along the north edge of the house. They're all so heavy that they're flopping over onto the grass, and I've been cutting them and bringing them inside to enjoy.

And finally, some stitching. This is for the group 1 Neighborhood round robin that I'm in. I'm not telling right now what it will look like or where it's drawn from, but see if you can figure out what type of house it will be. Right now it's a mystery, like all those interesting shoots and buds in my garden...

A Day Late

Last week was a killer week, with no stitching. And the weekend continued in the same way, so I'm going to show you something art-related, if not entirely stitching-related.

The first two pictures are of an art acquisition by Big Law. We have lots of very interesting (and probably very pricey) art in the building. I like that we have sculpture and photographs and etchings and paintings and weaving and glass. We actually have some Chihuly glass, which is just beautiful--a series of ruby-colored ewers. Most all of our artwork was done in the 30s and 40s (although I don't know why since Big Law was founded in the 1800s), and much of it is devoted to work: farming and factories in particular. Some it is sly, referencing our larger clients (which must remain secret, but which are household names) in a flattering way. This is a folk art rendition of the White House, which I love especially since the real White House is across the street, but which a lot of people here do not like at all. The carving is amazing, and the scale of it is eye-popping; you can't tell from this picture, but it's probably a bit over three feet up, sideways and deep. It sits on a pedestal in our reception area which is a bit problematic because the reception area is Italianate and formal, all cold white marble, white leather and white orchids in clear glass vases.


Mostly I worked in my garden. Now that mid/late-spring is seriously, solidly here, I can see what the previous owners of our home planted, and I am adjusting accordingly. Mostly there are lots and lots of hostas, which I like well enough, but not in such quantity. I don't know a lot about them, but I overheard someone in the garden center saying that they tend to take over a garden bed. They sure do! I believe there are flocks and flocks of irises, which I love. Hopefully there are some yellow ones as well as blue/purple ones. The azaleas are in bloom; most of them are scarlet. And there appear to be some lilies, some hydrangeas and some stuff that I can't identify yet. I went to the nursery and purchased a modest supply of peonies (my favorite flower on earth), two enormous pre-planted pots for my front steps and stuff for the veggie garden. The house came with a 20 foot by 10 foot raised bed which we think the previous owners used as a kind of play area/sand box for their kids. We're filling it with dirt (the landscaper is trucking it in tomorrow) and then planting tomatoes and other stuff. When I wasn't planting, I headed for the library (gardening and landscaping books) and stopped along the way at a community yard sale where I bought this for $5. Even though it's done on aida, I really liked the vibrant colors and the folky design (it looks like a Charles Wysocki), so I bought it. The yard seller told me she had stitched it, and that it took her a long time because it was a lot of work. We all know how true that is, don't we? I don't know if it's cheating to buy someone else's stiching, but I'm going to enjoy it anyway because at the rate I'm going, I'm never going to complete anything!

And since we're talking about other people's art, here's something I bought from a lovely blog that I read called http://beachyscapecodcupboard.blogspot.com. Beachy is such a wonderful artist (she hand made this card using a photo of an old house she spotted on her walk to the beach) and is a fellow Cape Codder as well.

Sampler Sunday

Just a quick post today--we've been working ourselves to death in the yard, planting, weeding, edging, now that it's finally warm and sunny. For a change, this week I got a bit more done on a project--Procession:
Here's a sampler I picked up last week at my Alexandria LNS, In Stitches. It's called The Plantation Sampler, by Canterbury Designs, by Donna Vermillion Giampa (and it has a 1987 copyright on it). This is a little different style for her, I think. I'm working on her Glorious Fruit design, and of course, I love the fruit pillows. I particularly like the stone work appearance of the plantation house.

Strawberry Sampler Sunday

Yesterday I headed to the thick of Northern Virginia to pick up some fibers (Au Ver a Soie) I ordered nearly six months ago (for Houses of Hawk Run Hollow). AVAS is always like that, apparently, whether mail-ordered or purchased in the LNS. The woman at the LNS admitted to me that it takes so long to get certain colors that they forget they've ordered them, so they keep reordering a particular color, and then they get a dozen of something when they really only needed two or four. In the meantime they run out of something else, place an order and wait for months. I'd like to go to France to the AVAS factory and investigate this and perhaps suggest ways they could automate their production process to eliminate this dead time when people who need 2516 for instance, wind up substituting fibers from one of their competitors. In the meantime, here's some progress on Procession which uses Soie Crystal by Caron.

Since one does not brave Northern Virginia traffic simply to pick up two skeins of fiber from In Stitches, I scoped out their new charts and came home with several new projects. Check this one out! It's called "Strawberry Fields Farm," by the Victoria Sampler. I loved it when I saw it, so I bought the chart, the wonderful Zweigart 28ct Olive Green Cashel Linen (not olive green really, but more a dusty spring green--so lovely), and the packaged bundle of fibers and beads containing Gloriana, Kreinik, Au ver a Soie, Needlepoint Inc., and Gentle Art fibers and a variety of SJ designs beads. Here are some pictures of the entire picture as well as close-ups of some of the panels. I found some other wonderful charts also, and will show those to you later.

Easter Bouquet

I like the Tulip Welcome sampler, and in fact, would like to get going on it as I have the idea to do a bunch of "Welcome to our House" kind of things for our foyer, but it was taking so long with all its many backstiches and quarter stitches that I gave in to the startitis, beginning to stitch Procession, by the Workbasket. I'm doing it with the recommended fibers, Caron's Soie Cristale, on the suggested fabric, R&R Reproductions' "Apple Brown Bindy." Except the fabric is not nearly as dark as it is in the chart photo, so the "yellow" silk disappeared into the yellowish fabric completely. As there was no time to get to an LNS yesterday, I borrowed from my bag of HoHRH stash. The Au Ver a Soie is very similar, but just a bit thicker, so it worked well. I used a darker gold, and it's showing up nicely against the paler-than-expected fabric.

It's been terribly cold here, as it has in the rest of the country, but here's the Sunday sampler: It's "Springtime Delights" by Stephanie Lynn Pearson. I like the picture of the chickens at the top (I'm a fool for little yellow chicks on samplers), and the eggs and flowers and the colors are great, but frankly I think the verse ("Spring time hatches heavenly packages") is just drippy and makes me think of the maggots that hatch in my trash can. I was reading in someone else's blog how they believed they'd outgrown some of the charts they'd once found so appealing.

And here's the Easter Bunny, tearing around our still-empty dining room, looking for the basket of eggs he misplaced. We're still holding our breath that the contract on our house won't fall through somehow (although we have received the lender's commitment letter), but once we safely have the money in the bank, it will be time to think about putting furniture in some of these rooms. I'm planning an antiquing trip in the next few months through rural Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and hoping I turn up some treasures that way. Also I'm hoping to get to the Brimfield antique show in Western Massachusetts in May. I also need to take some vacation time to repaint those dining room walls. They look mauve in this picture (my least favorite color in the entire world), they're darker IRL--sort of maroonish--the Ralph Lauren color that we saw in so many homes. There's also a wallpaper border of big white magnolias which doesn't particularly appeal to me. There's nice chair rail and crown molding which the loudness of the wallpaper strip and the paint cause to disappear. I'd like to paint it all in a nice creamy yellow or in a barely peach, painting all the woodwork in a glossy white. More ideas than time! And who would put white wall-to-wall in a dining room? I overturned a glass of tomato juice at dinner tonight, but fortunately, we were eating in the kitchen, which has wipeable floors! Picture that on a white rug!

Happy Easter everyone!

Cupcake Sunday

I felt like making cupcakes today, so I did. Actually, I've been wanting to make the edible kind as well. I've got a tasty-looking recipe that calls for chopped up Milky Way Bars to be melted with the butter and whipped into cupcake batter, but I'd like to lose some weight, so I made the inedible kind instead. This took me just a couple of hours. The pattern is by Lisa Johnson, and it's called "Just Desserts," and I bought it on ebay. I bought wool felt from the Primitive Cupboard. They have a fun selection of stuff: primitive doll patterns, some quilt stuff, a few primitive style needlework patterns and a bunch of other things. The wool felt is lots of fun to work with--the colors are great, and it's stretchy enough to allow you to ease things together so they stitch up smoothly. The DMC floss came from my stash. I got the beads on sale at Michaels. I have fiberfill left over from an earlier project knitting little mice wearing dickensian clothes for a Christmas display. Oh! I'll have to find one or two of them (although I gave most of them away) to show you!

I'd do a couple of things differently on the next pattern: I'd add some weighted plastic craft beans before stuffing it with the fiberfill, and I'd stuff it tighter. I'd add the flower to the "frosting" top before I attached the frosting. But overall, it was a hoot to do, and will make a fun little gift for friends having a birthday or celebration. It might make a fun little pin cushion, too.

I knitted some also on the soft yellow sweater I've been working on. Getting the new Vogue Knitting always makes me want to dig out my needles, although it's rare for me to actually find a pattern I want to make in that magazine these days (they've gone unwearably cutting edge, I'm afraid), although I still read the lessons and look at the ads. This week I did just a little more on Tulip Welcome while stuck in traffic on the bus, but didn't do much other than that.

And here's the Sunday Sampler: "Ocean Daughter" by Who Knew? Darn--forgot the instructions/materials list, but it appears to be done in a single color of something on a sparkly/metallic hand-dye. I love the use of the negative space to define the carb, shells, starfish and coral.

Lcome! Sunday Sampler

A little more progress on Tulip Welcome this week:

I didn't try to load a new sampler photo though, as we're still working on dial-up at home since the move. Oddly, even though we moved from an older neighborhood just two miles away, you can't get Verizon DSL here. So disappointing (and by the way, if you haven't received a comment from me, that's why--I surf at work when I can since I don't have the patience to surf from home, but don't have the time at work to formulate replies--I'll be back soon though, especially since I've seen so many nice things on your sites, and have discovered some wonderful new sites as well.) We'll remedy that with satellite service, but that takes time to set up, since they actually have to come to the house and it involves an initial outlay of Big Cash. Looks like we'll have the cash though, because:
Sold, in 48 Hours!!!!

We were so worried, buying a large house and moving into it, and then putting our little house on the market. Common wisdom says that a house will sit on the market for six months or more these days, and it's certainly no fun paying a pair of mortgages. But it would have been so hard to show our little house while we still lived in it; it was pretty stuffed full, even after moving things into a storage unit (12 years in a place will do that), and with six cats and the bunny, we figured we were virtually guaranteed that a cat box would contain an eyewateringly smelly load to meet a prospective househunter. So we took a deep breath and a leap of faith and aided by a team of painters, carpet layers, a handyman or two, a realtor, a whole lot of elbow grease and a statue of St. Joseph buried in the garden just behind the "for sale" sign, we had a contract within 48 hours--a good contract with no contingency and accompanied by a qualification letter from a mortgage company. Phewwww--fingers crossed that it works out all right--the subprime loan thing may bite us in the rear, since it means mortgages are being tightened up, and folks without sturdy credit or a nice down payment may have more trouble getting a loan than previously, so a lot of contracts have been falling through.

The job front is not so pleasant these days, and I have an appointment to talk with another law firm about doing structured finance instead of the horrible antitrust litigation I've found myself involved in since my beloved corporate team picked up their marbles and moved to Baltimore. If I get the structured finance job, I'll be going back to a fairly regular commute to Manhattan, since that's the heart of the finance world, but that's ok. I remember from my last Manhattan stint that living in a hotel room during the week, despite massive homesickness, allows plenty of evening stitching time (if not necessarily enough light in the hotel room to see). And there's the consolation of really good Chinese food (something we lack in the Virginia suburbs) on nearly every corner.

And it's finally spring in the DC area: a whole lot of these were blooming Friday around the Mall reflecting pool. I'm not sure if it's a type of magnolia (although it doesn't have leaves, and they're evergreens generally) or if it's a tulip tree, or something else. The cherry blossoms are beginning to come out, and the willows along the Potomac are greening up. Yay!

Still Wishing for Spring: Sunday Sampler

This week was not one of my better weeks with the needle--too many distractions and events at work and home. Work has been busy enough to necessitate my working through lunch--which is my normal stitching time (and which I resent like heck giving up). And in the evening and during the weekend, we've been putting the finishing touches on our now-empty townhouse, which will officially go on the market Monday or Tuesday. The Realtor, knowing that I enjoy blogging and photography, has tasked me with writing the blurb and taking the photos that go into the MLS. Photographing empty rooms is difficult, it seems (oh, for a nice fish-eye lens), and wading through the standard "gleaming hardwood floors" language is not very inspiring, even if they are gleaming hardwood floors. Maybe the property would get some notice if I wrote "pamper yourself with a shining black-market toilet!" (BF used to be a plumbing rep, and we had lovely toilets with a water-wasting, hearty flush. Now, I'm sorry to say, we have quite pedestrian toilets that do the job with a teaspoon of water or so and a "power assist.")

Well, then--enough about my toilets. On to the needlework! Here's Tulip Welcome--this part of it is stitched with two threads over one. Fussy work--I'm looking forward to the flowers.

And here's a work in progress, nearly complete. It's by The Drawn Thread and is called "The Easter Egg Sampler." It came as a kit (so long ago I don't even remember acquiring it); the fabric is 36 count Antique White Edinburgh linen with silk floss, silk ribbon, beads and a gemstone heart trinket. It was a fun stitch because there were a number of different stitches and I love springy/Eastery samplers with rabbits. All I have left to do is sew on the rest of the beads.

Which brings me to this week's sampler: Little by Little's "Caught in a Garden" which is designed to be stitched with DMC and a few colors of Gentle Arts threads on 40 count Hand-dyed Gold Finch Linen by R&R Reproductions.

Happy week, everyone!

Sunday Sampler: Almost Spring

A little more this week on Whale Hunting:
Temperatures have gotten warmer here--hard to believe there was snow on the ground two weeks ago. I went to my LNS in Fredericksburg today and picked up two projects in honor of spring. I almost bought the Mermaid Folly design and a couple of other things I've been seeing around the 'net but resisted for now. This design is by the Trilogy and is called "Easter Line Up." It's charted for 32 count Summer Khaki linen and Weeks Dye Works and Gentle Art threads, although a DMC/Anchor conversion is offered as well. It comes with a "posey" trinket that I find a little unnecessary; I don't think the trinket adds anything but expense to the design. What I do enjoy is that it looks as though someone has taken a bite out of the chocolate rabbit's foot; the design says "yum" at the base of the rabbit--funny. I don't know about you, but I'm not much of a trinket, button or gee-gaw person on my projects, although I love beads.

I like this design as well. It's by the Sweetheart Tree and has everything included to stitch the design in a plastic clamshell box, including 28 ct. blue linen, threads, beads and a sunflower trinket.

Sampler Sunday: New England Style

I made some progress on Whale Hunting this week, although I'm still working on grass. Because I'm tired anyway and the grass is boring to work on, I found myself falling asleep over my needle more than once. But, still, it's progress, especially since the left edge is actually the margin of the picture.
Yesterday was fun; my sister came to visit me at the new house. In the spirit of things, she wore a jacket color-keyed to my kitchen rug! Hi, Sis!

Most of you, like me, have probably looked around that the newest designs from Nashville. I liked a couple of them a lot including Mermaid's Folly (I think it's called) from the new designer, Courtney Collection. But here are two new ones (not part of the Nashville group) by Brenda Keyes that I stumbled on when I went onto Em-Li's site. I love shopping at Em-Li's--a nice lady in North Carolina (who volunteers her age, which is something north of 65) answers the phone in person and takes your order and ships out the samplers to you quite promptly. Anyway, these samplers are in the style of the Plymouth Sampler and Providence, which so many stitchers like and are working on (I'm doing Plymouth myself). It's kind of funny that a designer from the U.K. creates the quintessential New England Sampler. The top one is called "Puritan," and the one on the bottom is called "New England." These pictures are borrowed from Em-Lis's website. The only thing I find jarring is the flame stitching around Puritan. I think I'd substitute something else for all that zig-zagging which gives a nice 3-d effect but makes me dizzy.