Birthday Present

I knew I was going to make this pattern again, it turns out so lovely. We were invited to a surprise birthday party for a friend, and since she likes purple, I thought I would make this for her. She liked it!



I haven't been writing much the last couple of weeks, because not much is happening. Weatherwise we are struggling to get past winter. The past couple of days, and the next week are all forecast to be well below normal for this time of year. I went to the funeral of the wife of a close friend. I am preparing to teach a all day workshop on temari tomorrow. I hope that each person who attends will finish 2 temari, and will have a good start on the third one. DD2 and C spent a couple of days with us last week, and C started a little cross stitch kit. She is not stitching on her own, but will concentrate for 5 or 10 stitches before going on to the next thing. I picked up a little woven pouch so we can keep her project safe and together.

Last weekend we looked at model trains.

DH is interested in doing some modeling, and at this point is doing research and talking to people to try to decide the size and subject he would be interested in working with.

I am continuing to think about and plan my flower sampler temari. I have February, April, June, August and September done, with Violets, Cherry blossoms, Rose, Water Lily and a Sunflower. I am thinking of Carnation for January, if I can find a nice pattern. The pattern I thought I found, now that I look at it more closely, looks more like a passion flower. For March, I was thinking a daffodil. April? May is Lily of the Valley. July is morning glory. October? November is Chrysanthemum, and December is Poinsettia.

I hope all your projects are turning out wonderful, and are giving you a lot of satisfaction!

September, Sunflower

After the last one, I was worried that this whole project was going to be one struggle after another, but the September Sunflower blossomed in just a couple of hours. Even if I do decide to take it out and do it over (the center weaving is not as regular as it could be) I am very pleased with the design and the way it turned out.



Five down, seven to go!

That was easy... NOT!

I can't really believe how hard I worked on April's cherry blossom flowers. I did the division first, and tried out 2 or three different ways of stitching the flower, and took them all out, and then I took the division out, because it was too wonky.

I had a picture in my head of what I wanted this to look like, but I could not remember how to do it. I wanted it to match this temari that I stitched a year and 1/2 ago. I couldn't even remember what book the pattern was in. So I pulled out all my temari books, and finally found it in Kii Temari. After I found the pattern, it only took minutes to do the stitching.



Another one of the things that made it difficult was the dark green background. It didn't really look like cherry blossoms until I stitched the embellishments. But after all that redoing and fussing, I like how it turned out.

I am discovering that I have so much invested in this ball already, that each new section I add has to meet a higher standard. Usually if I do not like how a ball turns out I just go on to the next one... but each one of these has to be right! I am afraid the pressure is just going to get higher and higher the more of this one I stitch.