Friday, September 18, 2009

200th Post!

This is my 200th post! I'm sorry it snuck up on me, I would have planned a celebration (or at least not have procrastinated so long).

This is the favor each one of us received at our Homewood Embroiderers' Guild annual September dinner this week. One member made these crochet flowers for everyone, all of them in different colors. They have a pin back so you can take it out of the pot and wear it. Lovely, thank you Chris!

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I'm having fun working on a temari, but it is a multipole with 32 faces: as you are learning, that takes a while to stitch. If you are interested, it is number 2 on page 21 of the Japanese temari book "Kii." The diagram is on page 51. There are 32 flowers stitched in 3 colors each (only about 18 inches of fiber needed for each color). I'm cheating a little bit and stitching each color twice on opposite sides of the mari, so you can't really see any color more than once. If you are interested, that means 48 different colors! Plus I didn't need to buy anything to stitch this one. In fact, more than half the stitching was done out of my "orts" baggie, where I store threads that have been cut from the skein that are too long to discard. I have one flower left to stitch, and then the center of each flower is embellished with beads. I'm afraid I have the 16 colors of beads I'm going to need in my stash as well. Colors may not match exactly, but that will add to the beauty.

A co-worker brought in his 5-month-old baby boy and I got to hold him a minute. It's making me homesick for my grand-kids, even though my grand-kids are not babies any more.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Tanabata GITS from Karen

I received my star/Tanabata temari from Karen last night, along with a box crammed full of cross stitch fabric and patterns. Thank you Karen!

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There are 6 8-point stars in red, green and aqua and 8 6-point stars in light blue. (It is a c8 division.) I was very interested to see that Karen's mari was as dense and as hard as the ones I make. For me making them hard and dense is the best way to make sure they are very round.

Thank you again, Karen!