How I Spent My Day

How I Spent My Day

[edit] The first part here is my worksheets. There’s a first draft poem at the bottom. Poetry assignment: Sonnet ‘21/03/02 Shakespearean Petrarchan Spenserian Miltonic Modern/Contemporary A A A A 14 B B B B lines A B A B usually B A B A free C A B A verse D B C B C B B B D A C A E C/C/C C C F D/D/D D D E C/E/E C E F D/C/E D D G C/D/D…

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Last Week

Last Week

So…. at 3:30 am on February 13 the ice storm in progress at the time took out our power. Half the city’s, I think. My brother and sister-in-law have had their move to Oregon baptized in fire and ice, not to mention not being able to get out and meet new people because of covid. And they haven’t been here a year, yet. Obviously, I didn’t get my laundry done. I spent a few hours at my sister’s on two…

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Iqbal’s Blanket

Iqbal’s Blanket

It started out as a Big Cloth à la Spirit Cloth. It’s still inspired a bit by Jude’s style of stitching, but is ending up a lot less freestyle stitching. This is partly because it’s being made to Iqbal’s wishes, since it’s for him and partly because I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m learning, though. So, it’s partly traditional and just a wee bit free spirit. I finally got it pieced last month. Piecing before embellishing is one of…

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TAST Week 5 & More

TAST Week 5 & More

 The stitches for this week were feather stitch and feather and chain stitch. (Stitch links go to Sharon’s Stitch Dictionary on Pintangle.) I’ve been doing the TAST stitches on an old doodle cloth I started with TAST a few yeas ago. I don’t really have a project for TAST this year and at some point last fall I decided I want to fill this cloth as densely as possible. The feather stitches are in the lower right corner. The dark…

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Thread Solution

Thread Solution

I have a lot of hand embroidery threads. Mostly this is a good thing because I have a lot of options when I stitch. I had them all neatly organized in drawers by color . . . for maybe a minute. The thing is, the drawers are all downstairs in the studio. My studio is great for all my arts and crafts and machine sewing. I just don’t do hand embroidery down there. What I ended up doing, is putting…

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Sunny

Sunny

It’s funny. I was just thinking how “it’s not summer” = rain because it’s the Pacific Northwest after all, but it’s blue skies and sunshine right now. . . . And now it’s not. Yeah, it’s February My mood is rainy though. Stormy. I’d just like to wake up not hurting/aching and more tired than when I went to bed. Maybe I can get Iqbal to the mattress store this week. That would help, if not cure the problem. Okay/…

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TAST WEEK 4

TAST WEEK 4

I thought I knew how to do Portuguese stem stitch so I didn’t review Sharon’s how-to description carefully. I had these three flowers already stitched so I used it to make the stems. Then I read several posts that questioned if the poster had done their stitches right, so I followed a link to a Mary Corbet video. Nope! I had not done it right at all! So I practiced doing it correctly. As you can see, I also played…

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TAST Week 3

TAST Week 3

TAST week 3 challenge was Buttonhole stitch and Reversed Buttonhole Bar. The bright yellow flower is Reversed Buttonhole Bar with regular buttonhole around it (2 strands of floss and perle 5). The stem is backstitch (perle 5). The dark gold flower is a spiraled overlapping buttonhole over a snippet of fabric (2 strands of floss). I didn’t like how it turned out, so I added single chain stitches (perle 5). That one’s stem is stem stitch (perle 3). The bottom of…

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Visitor

Visitor

I don’t know who walked up onto my deck this morning, but I have never seen such big bird tracks before. The crows’ feet aren’t that big. I imagine something the size of a turkey. They are about the same width and half the length of my feet! (Yes, I do go out into the snow in bare feet,)

The Mantel

The Mantel

Yesterday, after finally clearing the creches off the mantel and piano, I decided I wanted a planned mantel. It’s always what I want, actually, but somehow never what I’ve had. I googled around and finally ended up reading at The DIY Playbook and got an idea what I’ve always done wrong. I was sure I had a “before” photo, but if I do, I can’t find it. It’s not in iCloud or on Flickr. So… I played around with GIMP,…

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