1907 Czech Slovak Sampler Class

Saturday afternoon I had a wonderful class with Marjorie Mueller of Carol Stream, IL in Arcola IL at the Rockome National Counted Cross Stitch Show. She's a dear sweet lady with a lot of knowledge and passion about needlework and Czech/Slovak heritage and has a most giving heart. We had hard candy and Czech/Slovak classical music while we worked our reproduction sampler and listened to Marjorie tell us the story of the sampler, where it lives and how she found it and did the reproduction stitching of it. Before we left the class, Marjorie treated us all to a bag filled with goodies from her own stash that she gathered together while doing some "housekeeping". MERRY CHRISTMAS TO US AND THANKS TO MARJORIE!!!!!

After the class it was off to Stitcher's Express in Mattoon to find the girlfriends and go to dinner at Cody's. A wonderful time was had by all and it all went by all too quickly.

Here you see a picture of the class piece, the one page 8grid chart and the progress I made during class.

The Stitching Rests Your Honor, and I'm off to ROCKOME

"Accomplishments of Jury Duty From Hell" or "Variations on a theme not of Paganini but of Blackbird Designs" (Bluebird's Pins & Needles). This is how I spent my long boring hours at the courthouse last week, plus I stitched a bit on my WMN red Christmas Ornament set.

It really was a pretty good stitching week. I served all five days, got in the jury pool for traffic court (DUI cases) on both Wednesday and Thursday, but my number didn't come up before they seated the jury. Wednesday night I managed to get out of town for the brother-in-laws birthday dinner with family and Friday I was at Rockome with a local friend and we met up with the girlfriends from Chicago. My camera is overflowing with pictures of friends and stash and classes and entries, etc. What a blast!

Jury Duty Stitching Report

JURY DUTY PINKEEPS
DAY 1: Well, if nothing else it's been interesting, but closer to "nothing" than "interesting". You usually have one of two things to say about jury duty after the first day, "A long boring day at the courthouse is worse than a good day in the office", or "I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you."






DAY 2: As you can see from what I've accomplished so far this week, there isn't much danger of me killing anyone anytime soon.

We'll see what tomorrow brings as I have another day planned at the county courthouse (needles yes, scissors no). I have a family birthday dinner out of town tomorrow night that I hope to get to, so I'll update you later in the week on how things went.



My accomplishments were several versions of "Bluebird's Needles and Pins" by Blackbird Designs. This is a piece that once you've done it, you don't have to look back at the pattern again. A little variety of thread and linen, a photographic memory and some creative license (since I can never leave well enough alone) and I managed to keep myself happy. I used smyrna stitch on mine since it's one of my favorites and I also used a couple of beads that I had in my stash for the eye and the flower. One down, three to go!

Celtic Birds

Celtic Birds by Sunflower Seed was a fun stitch with Vikki Clayton silk in Ocean Deep. This will be a basket band once I find the perfect fabric and some time with my sewing machine.

My slacker excuse

I won't be posting anymore family stuff on this blog now that it's open to the public and stalkers

It's JUNE!

Ahhhhh June, another birthday, another pay raise, and hopefully a few more stitches this month. Yes, I'm a cheap date these days. Not a lot of stitching has been done at my house the past couple weeks. Work has been busy and the interview process continues as we add more research staff. I have to say we have never had such a great team of smart, fun, capable women like we do right now.

I've been gearing up for the Rockome National Counted Cross Stitch show, getting my paperwork done and sent in, deciding what to enter and which classes to take. The show is June 15-24 in Arcola IL at Rockome Gardens.


I can now show you the pinkeep I made for Libby when I saw her in Arcola in early May. Libby had shared a great story on my former Rockome group about the first time she came to the Rockome show and was supposed to meet up at Yoder's Kitchen in Arthur, IL for dinner with friends. She and her travel companion were chatting away and kept missing the place, but they twice saw signs that said "Arthur, 9 miles. I just couldn't resist making her this.

I designed this little fob for my dear friend Linn Skinner that has the crown that I added to her Queen sampler design. On the reverse it says "The Most Happy" which was Anne Boleyn (hence the AB under the crown), my favorite of Henry's women. Inside I placed a TN state quarter since Linn now lives in TN.