Treasure

This Thanksgiving will be the first Thanksgiving of my life when I can't pick up the phone and call my Mamaw and ask her how to make dressing. It's the first time my phone won't ring on Thanksgiving morning and her voice be on the other end. But imagine my surprise when the mailman left a package by the front door. The package was from my dad. The only thing I asked for of my grandmother's was this jewelry box. It's nothing fancy, but I love it. I would spend hours sitting on her bed playing the music and dreaming about faraway lands and wearing kimonos and binding my feet(don't ask what I read as a child) all I knew was I wanted to be somewhere more exotic than Bartlett, TN.




This is a picture of the inside:




Here's a picture of the front and it's painted like this all the way around:





And this was the note taped to the bottom:

My daddy bought this for my Mamaw forty-eight years ago. Seeing her handwriting broke my heart.

A few weeks ago I found a letter in with some pictures that my great-grandfather wrote to my great-grandmother before they were married. The letter did not really go with the stories I had heard about him. Rumor has it my great-grandfather on my daddy's father's side was mean but he wrote a pretty sweet love letter to my soon to be great-grandmother. That was like finding hidden treasure. The sad part is I've had this letter for ages and never read it because I couldn't make out the handwriting, then I remembered my Mamaw gave it to me because my great-grandmother did a lot of handwork, applique, tatting, embroidery, she always thought I would have liked her.

On to some happy stitching talk, I made some executive decisions:

1) Once all ornaments are ornamentificated I will work on 13th Colony Bay.

2)Since I'm being so positive that 13th Colony Bay will be finished before the end of the year when it's done I'm going to work on Mirabilia's Lady of the Flag

3) Since receiving my Mamaw's jewelry box I decided I now had a good reason to stitch Dimple's Designs Embroidery and I will finish a Dimensions design Serene Shores I started back before I got married in 1985, both are Oriental designs. As soon as I round up both-they are probably out partying with Jane Atkinson and Beatrix Potter- I'll post pictures because I don't have links for them. It also gives me a reason to start Dimensions Mighty Samauri(think that's the name and forgive my spelling).

Now for a conversation starter and some ideas, how in the world does the eclectic stitcher make TW designs, Quaker designs, Reproduction samplers, mermaid, primitive designs, and Mirabilias, etc all work together in the same house? I can't begin to start to figure all this out.

My tastes are all over the place. I also think once I finish Lady of the Flag I want to pull out Design Connections Cowboy Boots which is a design I started a few years ago and it still makes me happy to see it and maybe get it finished. Not by the end of the year though, but maybe by next summer.

New Year, New Stitching Plan

This stitcher doesn't like goals or deadlines. I stitch for pleasure and to hang really cool stuff on my walls. I believe this to be a noble endeavor.

So 2007 is going to start with a wee bit of a stitching rotation but nothing set in stone. Rules are made to be broken and most of my stitching plans are all out of whack a couple of weeks into the year but I believe this "rotation" I've got planned will work out fairly well for me for a little while at least.

Mondays are for Mouline Rouge and a TW project. Chances are the TW will only see an hour or two at the most on Mondays. I have to be in certain frame of mind to work on a TW. I would love to have MR finished sometime this year. On Tuesday I completed the first motif in the top left corner that I started last January. I do believe devoting one day a week to this project I'll make good progress. I've spent the last year following Carol's and Jo's progress on their various SALs and they've both finished several good sized projects this year.

Tuesdays are for By the Bay's 13th Colony Bay, Parts 1-3 all on the same piece of fabric. I want this to be my first big finish of 2007. I want it on my kitchen wall like yesterday.

Wednesdays are anything goes.

Thursdays-By the Bay's 13th Colony Bay

Friday-wild card, anything I want

Saturday and Sundays are for My Missouri(Florida) Home SAL I'm in with some friends from my email loop.

I feel this is a pretty stick to it kind of rotation, not too disciplined, room for other projects, but enough of a plan to maybe keep me focused because my goal is to get this stuff on my walls! Stitching is supposed to be fun so I don't want to suck all the joy out of it but I do need a few guidelines or I'll never finish anything.

Along with the above mentioned projects I'm also working on CHS Strawberry Blonde and trying to get it finished ASAP so that I can start CHS Garden Glade. I'm obsessing over these designs at the moment. Not sure why, but they are what I want to be stitching and I will not start Garden Glade until I finish Strawberry Blonde.

If you want to see some walls full of major stitching, check out the Samplerfarmer link under "People who inspire me" there in the sidebar. Wander around that Webshots album and prepare to be awed. That's some serious stitching on those walls.

I read two great novels on my trip home to Memphis. My new favorite character, Jack Reacher from the Lee Child novels. All I can say is "Wow!" great books. I read Tripwire and Fatal Warning on the plane to and from Memphis and laying in bed when I was the only one awake in my dad's house and pinned in bed by a 150lb doberman. I became his new best friend. I'm currently reading The Enemy. I'm enjoying these books a lot. Great stories, good character development, love everything about this series.

I'm saving for a new sewing machine, my friend borrowed mine and told me it was beyond repair. She said it probably never worked when I got it but since I don't sew that much I didn't realize it-assumed it was my incompetence. I want to learn to sew. I want to do it well. I want to make the zippered clutch from Amy Butler's In Stitches book. I don't know why I have decided that I must sew, that my life will not be fullfilling if I don't conquer my fears of sewing and the sewing machine but I am going to be miserable until I rectify this situation. That's just all there is to it.

My knitting skills are improving and that makes me happy. I can set a project aside for a while, pick it up, remember to check right side and wrong side before I start knitting and manage to make my new stitches flow into my old stitches. That's pretty cool if you ask me. You see I used to forget to check the sides and just start knitting, that doesn't work out too well. It's kind of important information.

Thanks to everyone for the nice comments about HOHRH. Kathy Barrick just rocks doesn't she? I love all her designs. I mean seriously, I can't think of any of her designs that I won't stitch. They are all fabulous.

Also thanks again for the sweet comments regarding my grandmother. This year will be rough. I talked to that woman a lot more than I ever thought I did. Apparently she was who I called for just about any information I needed about cooking or family gossip, so I reach for the phone often only to realize she won't be on the other end of the line. Breaks my heart, but that's life.