Yes, there is something about this time of the year. All the hectic Christmas knitting is done (thank you, Atlanta-area Shop Hop!), the packages are mailed, the kinfolk have visited and been visited by, and the overindulgence is finally over. Having had no traffic to drive through to and from work has kept me re-juvenated, too. It's just that time of the year when there's a little extra energy to spend on projects.
Like blogging.
I really, really enjoy blogging. I enjoy planning what stitched/knitted pieces I'm going to write about, taking picture of them, composing a draft blog in my brain whilst I assemble the pieces for picture-taking, and all of the writing I seem to do once I log onto my NNW blog. And I really, really appreciate how y'all are reading these postings and seem to be enjoying them in your leisure time.
So why haven't I posted in a while? Well, September was a busy month, then came October, and all the while I've been seeing my two-week temp assignment become extended and more involved. Which is fantastic - I'm working in areas that I had considered as possible job options while I was in the process of closing the shop, and am working with a terrific bunch of folks. It's interesting, too, to be in the position again of being an employee after so many years of being the employer; I really think I've gained insight into what an employer really expects and how best to do a task that is asked of me.
To bring everyone up to date, after my blog posting in September, Webmaster Bill decided that I needed to have a happy birthday celebration on Tybee Island, so we spent a long weekend down there in a hotel on the beach. I was really impressed with a small wildlife museum that was close by, and all the work they're doing to keep the sea turtle populations healthy and thriving. When we were there, in late September, 10 of the 11 nests had hatched and they were just waiting for the last one to hatch in the next week or so. Yay! Baby sea turtles! They had a couple in salt water tanks in the museum, and they are really so cute and so tiny! It's hard to believe they grow up to be so huge.
Then October I spent learning about wildlife rehabilitation. You see, there was this explosion in the Gulf of Mexico last April . . . oh wait, you already knew about that, right? Of course you do! So I wanted to help save everything, like I usually do, and I went on the website that spring for the Audobon Society to see when they needed me to come down and save brown pelicans and dolphins and everything else that was covered in oil. So I filled out their on-line volunteer form and it asked questions like, "Can you type?" (of course I can type - 120 wpm was my top speed, thank you very much) and "Can you answer phones?" (well, yes) and "Can you file?" (oh, if you could only see me file!). But then at the bottom was a question "Do you have wildlife rehabilitation experience?" and I thought, 'Well, no, but I could get some.' On-line again I found an organization that teaches folks to be wildlife rehabilitators or updates the skills and knowledge of current rehabbers. They have classes all over the US and Canada and some even in Brazil and they were scheduling one for Knoxville over Halloween weekend. Did I let a few invites to a few Halloween parties stop me in my quest to save all wild animals? Oh my, no.
Learning about wildlife rehabilitation was an amazing experience. I read the book, remembered all my basic anatomy courses and cell stuff, re-learned how to do fractions and use a calculator (after all, how much calcium do you feed a growing owl that weighs x lbs. and calcium comes in mg tablets?) after all these years, and it all came back with a loud *wumph.* I took a long weekend and drove up to Knoxville in the late fall (yes, it was a beautiful trip), found my hotel thanks to Mapquest, found a local brewpub for the weekend evenings, and just really learned a new skill. Will I use it immediately? Well, no, but I did find a place near me that has opportunities when I want to take them to assist with the myriad of tasks that must crop up when rehabilitating wildlife, and will take some time this winter to stay in touch with them.
Oh, and before I forget it, here's the link to the organization I took the course from: it's called International Wildlife Rehabilitation Council and their website is here: theiwrc.org. Talk about a dedicated, amazing group of people; I'm glad I could be a part of their lives and carry what I know back into the world with me.
November and December were Christmas knitting months for all the great-nieces and -nephews. No, I didn't take pictures; I didn't want to post and then ruin the surprise. And I was too overjoyed to finish all of them (well, almost all!) in time for shipping before Christmas. I have asked some of the recipients to allow me to post their baby sweater pictures, though, so we'll see if there are baby sweater pictures in the next few months! Several that I did make were by Roo Designs; their designs are adorable, very versatile, and put fun animals on the front (which means intarsia which also means yarn ends. I really, really dislike weaving in yarn ends.). Their website it here: Roo Designs.com, and while Sheepish doesn't carry them at the moment, you can probably ask them to order you a few, just to try. I'll warn you, though - they're addictive!
OK, well, here we are . . . at the end of a pretty long blog post (again!). Thank you all for reading down this far, and I hope you all have a happy and prosperous New Year!
Still Life from Quimper
A shot of an almost-completed still life needlepoint
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Saturday, September 11, 2010
A Project for Meeee!
At last, at last, at last, here it is: an opportunity to do some stitching, from my very own stash, for my very own self!! And stitching - not knitting, not sweaters or socks or gorgeous shawls, but good, ol' fashioned counted cross stitch. Want to know when was the last time I stitched something for me and not for Nease's Needlework? 2003.
That was the year that the knitting craze really took over, when my dear Gwen came to work for me, when I put aside all fancy scissors and small needles and gorgeous threads and I picked up knitting for real.
In early 2003, I stitched a beautiful Eva Rosenstand piece of a wren in the furze. You know the old English rhyme: The wren, the wren/The king of all birds/St. Stephen's Day/Got caught in the furze. It hearkens back to the custom of young boys on St. Stephen's Day chasing a wren across the land until the poor thing just died of exhaustion. Then these boys would bring the wren's body back to the village and received food and praise for their terrible deed. (I really wonder how many wrens really got away? Probably a lot more than got caught. I know that MY stitched wren got away!!).
So I don't have a picture of THAT wren, which I initialed and dated 2003, but I do have a picture of the companion piece I bought, back in about 2001, when the great and wonderful Eva Rosenstand company (from Copenhagen) was about to close its doors and end its absolutely lovely and colorful and nature-inspired designs. They never sold well in my shop; people either disliked the idea of kits ("I want to pick out my own threads or fabrics") or the kits themselves were just a little too old-fashioned for my hip, new, mod patrons. Remember how popular angels were for a while there? These angel stitchers were very talented, and perhaps these simple but beautiful kits of blues and yellows and oranges were just a little too simple for their tastes. Regardless, I still bought a bunch of small kits before they went out of production.
*side note* The Eva Rosenstand company did not in the end go away - they were bought by Permin of Copenhagen, a Danish subsidiary of Wichelt Imports, so their designs still exist. The threads now are DMC threads, and the linens are regular linen, not the soft and supple linen that was milled by the E.R. company nor the threads dyed by E.R. It's a color-snob thing, I know, but the more colors there are in this world, the more lovely a place it is for all of us *sigh*
Anyway, on to the pictures of my little blue-tit (I think that's the name of the bird!):
It's such a simple design, really. The yellows match the furze of the wren - I've always seen these as companion pieces. And look how big the graph is!! It's easy to read!! It's larger than the stitched piece on the linen. It has symbols that are logical in their set-up (meaning, black is a large big square, then the yellows are lighter symbols, etc.).
Aren't these colors just lovely? Don't they just make you want to pick them up and play with them and see this pretty design come to life on your fabric? There's just something about them that makes me lose all ability to put thoughts into words. But look how many threads of each color there are!! At least twice and a half as you'll ever need for such a small piece of a bird. And you separate the threads into bundles and you get to play with them even before you begin to stitch. Antici *say it!* pation!
Here's the oh-so-recognizable packaging for this little kit:
Remember that packaging from way back when?? I know, it's hard to keep the glare off of the plastic, but I just had to show the packaging anyway.
The other cool thing about having a kit like this in plastic is that you can take it to an outdoor festival. Which I did back in May over Memorial Day, and four of us sat in a corner of the outdoor shed and all of us stitched our projects. Webmaster Bill came by and said that we looked like the 4 Fates (I forget what he said the 4th one was - maybe a new Fate who foresees the future?). It was so much fun to be stitching with others, especially after so many years of knitting with others. It's a different feel - you hold the fabric in your hands, you bring the needle up and down, the design appears as if by magic on your linen, and there's always a brief pause in the conversation when the rhythm of your stitching reminds you that you need to pay attention.
Oh, and another note: I've begun wearing reading glasses when I stitch on linen. Guess I'm over 40 now and my eyes are catching up with me! I stole, uh, borrowed a pair of reading glasses from the storage unit. They're tacky, but they haven't sold so I figure I'll just break them in so that I can brag about what a great product they are. It's nice to be able to see the individual threads on the linen bigger than they really are, so that my eyes don't get as tired as easily and I make no mistakes when I wear them (I finally started making mistakes stitching over 2 threads while stitching on linen - yech!). Now I wear them, they're tacky, they remind me that I better start stitching quickly, and I can see well enough with them to stitch waaaay past my bedtime.
These are the glasses in their little Chinese puzzle box. Aren't they tacky? But they work, and it's just me and Webmaster Bill, and the cats, none of whom care that *sniff* I look like an old woman now!!
I had really, really forgotten how easily I lose myself when stitching a piece of counted cross stitch. Honestly. It's like having a whole afternoon to, say, update your blog, then you realize your butt hurts and your fingers ache, and lo and behold, you've been sitting in the same chair for an hour and a half. Stitching is like that for me. I spent one Saturday afternoon earlier this summer (July, was it?) just watching a couple of movies and stitching. Then I looked up and it was 5 hours later and I hadn't stitched as much as I thought I would, but time had ceased to exist for me. And if there was a weekend marathon on cable of the TV show "House"? Oh, then just forget about me going to sleep for a while!
That was the year that the knitting craze really took over, when my dear Gwen came to work for me, when I put aside all fancy scissors and small needles and gorgeous threads and I picked up knitting for real.
In early 2003, I stitched a beautiful Eva Rosenstand piece of a wren in the furze. You know the old English rhyme: The wren, the wren/The king of all birds/St. Stephen's Day/Got caught in the furze. It hearkens back to the custom of young boys on St. Stephen's Day chasing a wren across the land until the poor thing just died of exhaustion. Then these boys would bring the wren's body back to the village and received food and praise for their terrible deed. (I really wonder how many wrens really got away? Probably a lot more than got caught. I know that MY stitched wren got away!!).
So I don't have a picture of THAT wren, which I initialed and dated 2003, but I do have a picture of the companion piece I bought, back in about 2001, when the great and wonderful Eva Rosenstand company (from Copenhagen) was about to close its doors and end its absolutely lovely and colorful and nature-inspired designs. They never sold well in my shop; people either disliked the idea of kits ("I want to pick out my own threads or fabrics") or the kits themselves were just a little too old-fashioned for my hip, new, mod patrons. Remember how popular angels were for a while there? These angel stitchers were very talented, and perhaps these simple but beautiful kits of blues and yellows and oranges were just a little too simple for their tastes. Regardless, I still bought a bunch of small kits before they went out of production.
*side note* The Eva Rosenstand company did not in the end go away - they were bought by Permin of Copenhagen, a Danish subsidiary of Wichelt Imports, so their designs still exist. The threads now are DMC threads, and the linens are regular linen, not the soft and supple linen that was milled by the E.R. company nor the threads dyed by E.R. It's a color-snob thing, I know, but the more colors there are in this world, the more lovely a place it is for all of us *sigh*
Anyway, on to the pictures of my little blue-tit (I think that's the name of the bird!):
It's such a simple design, really. The yellows match the furze of the wren - I've always seen these as companion pieces. And look how big the graph is!! It's easy to read!! It's larger than the stitched piece on the linen. It has symbols that are logical in their set-up (meaning, black is a large big square, then the yellows are lighter symbols, etc.).
Aren't these colors just lovely? Don't they just make you want to pick them up and play with them and see this pretty design come to life on your fabric? There's just something about them that makes me lose all ability to put thoughts into words. But look how many threads of each color there are!! At least twice and a half as you'll ever need for such a small piece of a bird. And you separate the threads into bundles and you get to play with them even before you begin to stitch. Antici *say it!* pation!Here's the oh-so-recognizable packaging for this little kit:
Remember that packaging from way back when?? I know, it's hard to keep the glare off of the plastic, but I just had to show the packaging anyway.
The other cool thing about having a kit like this in plastic is that you can take it to an outdoor festival. Which I did back in May over Memorial Day, and four of us sat in a corner of the outdoor shed and all of us stitched our projects. Webmaster Bill came by and said that we looked like the 4 Fates (I forget what he said the 4th one was - maybe a new Fate who foresees the future?). It was so much fun to be stitching with others, especially after so many years of knitting with others. It's a different feel - you hold the fabric in your hands, you bring the needle up and down, the design appears as if by magic on your linen, and there's always a brief pause in the conversation when the rhythm of your stitching reminds you that you need to pay attention.
Oh, and another note: I've begun wearing reading glasses when I stitch on linen. Guess I'm over 40 now and my eyes are catching up with me! I stole, uh, borrowed a pair of reading glasses from the storage unit. They're tacky, but they haven't sold so I figure I'll just break them in so that I can brag about what a great product they are. It's nice to be able to see the individual threads on the linen bigger than they really are, so that my eyes don't get as tired as easily and I make no mistakes when I wear them (I finally started making mistakes stitching over 2 threads while stitching on linen - yech!). Now I wear them, they're tacky, they remind me that I better start stitching quickly, and I can see well enough with them to stitch waaaay past my bedtime.
These are the glasses in their little Chinese puzzle box. Aren't they tacky? But they work, and it's just me and Webmaster Bill, and the cats, none of whom care that *sniff* I look like an old woman now!!
I had really, really forgotten how easily I lose myself when stitching a piece of counted cross stitch. Honestly. It's like having a whole afternoon to, say, update your blog, then you realize your butt hurts and your fingers ache, and lo and behold, you've been sitting in the same chair for an hour and a half. Stitching is like that for me. I spent one Saturday afternoon earlier this summer (July, was it?) just watching a couple of movies and stitching. Then I looked up and it was 5 hours later and I hadn't stitched as much as I thought I would, but time had ceased to exist for me. And if there was a weekend marathon on cable of the TV show "House"? Oh, then just forget about me going to sleep for a while!
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Dave the Dog
I know, I know, it's over a year since our sweet friend Dave the Dog died, but I was not in a good place when he passed last spring, and I just didn't have it in me to write out what should be a masterpiece of puppy passing. Then full-time Temp gigs starting picking up, creating a positive cashflow at home, but also taking over my daytime blogging hours.
And then on evenings I was often at my storage unit filling orders (yay orders! They just keep comin'), and weekends I've spent gardening and reading and working on my stash (both stitching and knitting), especially the 5 baby sweaters I knit over the winter, and there was just not the time to write out all the wonderful things that Dave was. Plus, this time delay helped me consolidate what my thoughts were and where my pictures were (always helpful in a blog posting!).
Here's the picture that we showed at his memorial service, thanks to the great folks at Paws, Whiskers, and Wags:
Yes, for all you Atlantans, this IS the snowfall from March 1, 2009. We knew that it would be Dave's last opportunity to play in the snow, and we wanted him to be able to enjoy it. Even here he looks unhappy, with his hindquarters not even able to hold him up and his normally happy face all kind of downward-turning. (For those who don't know, PW&W is a local pet crematory that is a wonderfully compassionate place, staffed by people who love pets and know the grief of losing one. They have an annual ceremony where people who've used their services over the past year come together in a Celebration of Life to grieve and see all the other sweet pets who have also passed. It's a wonderful healing time. The website for Paws, Whiskers, & Wags is here.)
Here are some more photos of Dave, taken when we brought him with us to Webmaster Bill's brother's house up in Springfield over Thanksgiving, 2008. We had to opportunity to see our new great-nephew, and our newly-wedded niece who lives in Chicago who brought her dog, too.
He still looks kind of sad, even though he had visited the Springfield folks before. He certainly enjoyed the visit this time, having a little boy and another dog to sniff, too.
And here's a picture we took on the way up to Springfield, when we stopped by a place called Land Between the Lakes in Kentucky at a wildlife preserve where we saw red wolves, a bald eagle (and two in the wild!), and other wonderful animals under the care of some very loving Park Rangers. We were taking Dave out to sniff and to go for a walk:
Dave loved to sniff. In fact, he sniffed sometimes to the exclusion of all else, even walking. No matter how hard I tried to persuade him that he could smell things as he walked along, he still had to at least try to sniff out what was under a bunch of leaves.
Dave came to us via a phone call from a mutual friend who had a friend working at the Lithonia Animal Hospital. A box of puppies had been dropped off at the vet (fortunately, it was at the vet and not on the side of the road), and they were looking for good homes. All of the puppies who were left (there had been a total of 12) were either black or yellow labs with their big puppy feet and square heads. Dave, though, had this small body, these legs longer than his body was tall, and this pair of ears that stuck out straight to the side as he literally perked up his ears to hear what was going on around him.
With the streamlined shape of his head, his loooong legs, and his large barrel (chest), he had all the makings of a whippet with the constitution of a lab. He loved to run, he would somehow curl up his legs on his bed to make a "Dave ball" (I still don't know how he did it), and he was a little high-strung when it came time for training. All whippet traits, but with the coat of a lab and the desire from his earliest puppyhood to be right where his people were (very much lab traits). I still remember him as a brand new puppy jumping up and down on those long legs of his to try to get onto the bed, because that's where his people were. When we moved to Decatur, during the winter months, he would jump with his Lassie jump (oh, so graceful) over the back rail of the bed, then stop instantly and curl himself up into a Dave ball where he hoped he would be unnoticed by us. And he'd never get up on the bed in the summer, except to sleep on it when we weren't there (I guess it was cooler?).
He also had learned about shoes and humans during the time we still lived on 11th Street in Midtown and I had injured my knee in martial arts. I was job-hunting at the time, having been laid off from a computer company, and one afternoon Dave needed to go out. I was having a hard time walking around because of my knee, so Dave took himself into the bedroom and got my shoes AND my socks, to alleviate any extra walking on my part. Just like that - no prompting, just knowing that his Susan was injured and needed help. From then on, he would bring us our outdoor shoes from wherever they were in the house, pretty much until 3 years or so before he died, just when we adopted Max. Maybe he saw that other dogs didn't have to bring their persons' shoes to them in order to go out?? Still, it was a great trick and we really loved to be able to encourage him in that "endeavor" of his.
Dave was the first dog I had for whom I realized the necessity of crate training and formal dog training. He had a penchant for chewing when we first got him - rugs, my left shoes (never my right ones), skirts, and a little bit of a table leg. Never mind that we had chew toys all over the apartment for him to chew - he had to chew what was forbidden. It all was too much, and we went down to our locally owned pet supply store where we bought our first dog crate. He had some anxiety about going into his crate as some dogs do, but then we saw the movie "All of Me" with Lily Tomlin and Steve Martin. We were both working for an Indian-owned company at the time and laughed during the parts when the Indian guru is trying to make sense out of what the silly Anglos wanted him to do with Lily Tomlin's spirit. We chose the phrase "Back in Bowl" to be Dave's training signal for stopping all activity and going in the crate. And you know what? The crate training worked. After a few months Dave learned what we wanted him to do and not do, and we never had a problem after that.
He was never a rambunctious dog for all of his high-strunged-ness, but he was always there to greet us when we came home, to let us know that he would like one more ear scratching before bed by thumping his tail against a hard surface, and that it was time for me to stop staring at my computer for so many hours when I worked at home on Tuesdays by poking me with his nose round about 4:00 every Tuesday afternoon to go on a walk around the neighborhood.
He was so loyal in the ways that dogs are, and despite the fact that he was in obvious pain - the walks were becoming shorter, he couldn't stand for more than a few minutes without his hindquarters giving out, he couldn't jump on the bed that last winter - his heart was still good and loyal and he just didn't want to leave his people. But as so many people have said to themselves and to their vets, we just couldn't stand to see him suffer any more. Our vet was kind and loving, too, the staff as well as the veterinarian herself, and when I had to make that phone call to say "it's time," they set up the appointment for the next day, let us in by a back door to give us some privacy, have some last time with Dave, though they still had to sedate him in order to put the tubes in by which they would administer that last dose. But he had looked so sad for so long, he had suffered with pain for so long, and it just wasn't going to get any better. Even our veterinarian was crying when she administered the shot - she was a professional who had worked with us every step of the way to make these last few months possible.
Dave was born during that horribly hot summer of 1993 (when the temps were in the 100's for several weeks), found his way to a caring vet to get the care he needed to come be our canine companion, helped bark away the homeless guys when we lived in Midtown, barked fiercely when we first moved to the 'burbs until he realized he didn't need to, did a Lassie jump onto our bed during cold winter nights, and brought us our shoes for nearly 16 years. He left us on April 21, 2009, and we will always remember him.
And then on evenings I was often at my storage unit filling orders (yay orders! They just keep comin'), and weekends I've spent gardening and reading and working on my stash (both stitching and knitting), especially the 5 baby sweaters I knit over the winter, and there was just not the time to write out all the wonderful things that Dave was. Plus, this time delay helped me consolidate what my thoughts were and where my pictures were (always helpful in a blog posting!).
Here's the picture that we showed at his memorial service, thanks to the great folks at Paws, Whiskers, and Wags:
Yes, for all you Atlantans, this IS the snowfall from March 1, 2009. We knew that it would be Dave's last opportunity to play in the snow, and we wanted him to be able to enjoy it. Even here he looks unhappy, with his hindquarters not even able to hold him up and his normally happy face all kind of downward-turning. (For those who don't know, PW&W is a local pet crematory that is a wonderfully compassionate place, staffed by people who love pets and know the grief of losing one. They have an annual ceremony where people who've used their services over the past year come together in a Celebration of Life to grieve and see all the other sweet pets who have also passed. It's a wonderful healing time. The website for Paws, Whiskers, & Wags is here.)
Here are some more photos of Dave, taken when we brought him with us to Webmaster Bill's brother's house up in Springfield over Thanksgiving, 2008. We had to opportunity to see our new great-nephew, and our newly-wedded niece who lives in Chicago who brought her dog, too.
He still looks kind of sad, even though he had visited the Springfield folks before. He certainly enjoyed the visit this time, having a little boy and another dog to sniff, too.
And here's a picture we took on the way up to Springfield, when we stopped by a place called Land Between the Lakes in Kentucky at a wildlife preserve where we saw red wolves, a bald eagle (and two in the wild!), and other wonderful animals under the care of some very loving Park Rangers. We were taking Dave out to sniff and to go for a walk:
Dave loved to sniff. In fact, he sniffed sometimes to the exclusion of all else, even walking. No matter how hard I tried to persuade him that he could smell things as he walked along, he still had to at least try to sniff out what was under a bunch of leaves.
Dave came to us via a phone call from a mutual friend who had a friend working at the Lithonia Animal Hospital. A box of puppies had been dropped off at the vet (fortunately, it was at the vet and not on the side of the road), and they were looking for good homes. All of the puppies who were left (there had been a total of 12) were either black or yellow labs with their big puppy feet and square heads. Dave, though, had this small body, these legs longer than his body was tall, and this pair of ears that stuck out straight to the side as he literally perked up his ears to hear what was going on around him.
With the streamlined shape of his head, his loooong legs, and his large barrel (chest), he had all the makings of a whippet with the constitution of a lab. He loved to run, he would somehow curl up his legs on his bed to make a "Dave ball" (I still don't know how he did it), and he was a little high-strung when it came time for training. All whippet traits, but with the coat of a lab and the desire from his earliest puppyhood to be right where his people were (very much lab traits). I still remember him as a brand new puppy jumping up and down on those long legs of his to try to get onto the bed, because that's where his people were. When we moved to Decatur, during the winter months, he would jump with his Lassie jump (oh, so graceful) over the back rail of the bed, then stop instantly and curl himself up into a Dave ball where he hoped he would be unnoticed by us. And he'd never get up on the bed in the summer, except to sleep on it when we weren't there (I guess it was cooler?).
He also had learned about shoes and humans during the time we still lived on 11th Street in Midtown and I had injured my knee in martial arts. I was job-hunting at the time, having been laid off from a computer company, and one afternoon Dave needed to go out. I was having a hard time walking around because of my knee, so Dave took himself into the bedroom and got my shoes AND my socks, to alleviate any extra walking on my part. Just like that - no prompting, just knowing that his Susan was injured and needed help. From then on, he would bring us our outdoor shoes from wherever they were in the house, pretty much until 3 years or so before he died, just when we adopted Max. Maybe he saw that other dogs didn't have to bring their persons' shoes to them in order to go out?? Still, it was a great trick and we really loved to be able to encourage him in that "endeavor" of his.
Dave was the first dog I had for whom I realized the necessity of crate training and formal dog training. He had a penchant for chewing when we first got him - rugs, my left shoes (never my right ones), skirts, and a little bit of a table leg. Never mind that we had chew toys all over the apartment for him to chew - he had to chew what was forbidden. It all was too much, and we went down to our locally owned pet supply store where we bought our first dog crate. He had some anxiety about going into his crate as some dogs do, but then we saw the movie "All of Me" with Lily Tomlin and Steve Martin. We were both working for an Indian-owned company at the time and laughed during the parts when the Indian guru is trying to make sense out of what the silly Anglos wanted him to do with Lily Tomlin's spirit. We chose the phrase "Back in Bowl" to be Dave's training signal for stopping all activity and going in the crate. And you know what? The crate training worked. After a few months Dave learned what we wanted him to do and not do, and we never had a problem after that.
He was never a rambunctious dog for all of his high-strunged-ness, but he was always there to greet us when we came home, to let us know that he would like one more ear scratching before bed by thumping his tail against a hard surface, and that it was time for me to stop staring at my computer for so many hours when I worked at home on Tuesdays by poking me with his nose round about 4:00 every Tuesday afternoon to go on a walk around the neighborhood.
He was so loyal in the ways that dogs are, and despite the fact that he was in obvious pain - the walks were becoming shorter, he couldn't stand for more than a few minutes without his hindquarters giving out, he couldn't jump on the bed that last winter - his heart was still good and loyal and he just didn't want to leave his people. But as so many people have said to themselves and to their vets, we just couldn't stand to see him suffer any more. Our vet was kind and loving, too, the staff as well as the veterinarian herself, and when I had to make that phone call to say "it's time," they set up the appointment for the next day, let us in by a back door to give us some privacy, have some last time with Dave, though they still had to sedate him in order to put the tubes in by which they would administer that last dose. But he had looked so sad for so long, he had suffered with pain for so long, and it just wasn't going to get any better. Even our veterinarian was crying when she administered the shot - she was a professional who had worked with us every step of the way to make these last few months possible.
Dave was born during that horribly hot summer of 1993 (when the temps were in the 100's for several weeks), found his way to a caring vet to get the care he needed to come be our canine companion, helped bark away the homeless guys when we lived in Midtown, barked fiercely when we first moved to the 'burbs until he realized he didn't need to, did a Lassie jump onto our bed during cold winter nights, and brought us our shoes for nearly 16 years. He left us on April 21, 2009, and we will always remember him.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
It's Never Too Late To Start . . .
a project, be it a blog, a book, or a needlepoint. These pictures you see below? They are taken of a needlepoint I bought from the famous Needlewoman's Shop in London in 1979. When I was 14 and had saved up all my house-cleaning and baby-sitting and oddment-earning monies one year and went with my school's drill team and band to Newcastle, England, in the first-ever Friendship Force exchange program. Yup, that's when it all started. The Friendship Force, that is, and I'm proud to say I was a part of it.
So at the tender young age of 14, being a sophisticated needlepointer, I ventured into this big shop. Full of screen-printed needlepoints from floor to ceiling. I wanted to buy something for me and my mother, who had taught me all the needle arts, so I looked. And looked. And perhaps caught some of the salesladies' eyes who thought perhaps I was up to no good, I was looking so long. And you know, choosing a piece to stitch was hard! It really was. The European/British pieces were different in style from the American pieces I had seen, and I was a bit intimidated by the enormous selection.
I finally settled on 2 pieces, canvases complete with yarn and instructions, that came folded in a box. I was so proud of my grown-up decisions and ability to withstand the teasing from my fellow students about the amount of shopping I had done with my saved up monies, and I managed to bring these boxes all the way back to the States, ready to show my mother what I had bought for the two of us. That moment was a typical moment for us, really, and has been one of the examples I use to show my friends how unthinking and quite unkind my mother could be. Her response when I brought these two boxes to show her? "Well, I don't really like either one of them. I guess you bought the swans for yourself, so I'll just take the other one."
But this is not a post about my difficult relationship with my mother; it's about stitching projects like the swan piece, entitled "Sunrise," no matter how much time has elapsed since buying them. I found the companion piece to "Sunrise," entitled "Sunset" when cleaning out Mom's home after her death, and both pieces are in my "to be stitched stash" even 30 years later. In one way, I'm glad I waited as long as I did, when I have a bit more skill and a few more resources and a lot more experience with kits. Like, they never have enough yarn.
Heck, for that matter, even the canvases that call for "x" number of skeins of DMC wool (which you can't find in Atlanta any more - I've tried) or Persian or Appleton are often wrong. 'Member that piece I posted about buying in Quimper, France, in 1997 and stitching during the evenings of spring and summe
r 2008 before I closed the shop?? I ran out of one of the colors of DMC wool earlier this year, short 75 stitches from completing it. 75 stitches! That's all! (Webmaster Bill counted the empty holes one evening, that's how I know.) And then began the mad dash calling all of the needlepoint stores in town, none of whom carry DMC wool. I finally had to buy a skein on-line, but at least I finished it, and here are the pictures of the tiny little bit of stitching I had to do before it was all over. Note to former customers: yes, yes, I really did feel your pain when you were in this position.
The part I hadn't finished was underneath the handle of the copper pot.
Here's another picture that will show the un-stitched area better:
The picture is a little dark, I know, but the holes are more pronounced.
So, on to the Sunrise swans. I used the Rolaframe frame from the above piece of needlepoint so that it would stay square and be more manageable to work on. It's a BIG piece of needlepoint, and working on a frame keeps the edges of the canvas tucked away so you don't have to mess with them or wo-man handle them. And learning the lessons from the still-life above, I'm stitching the entire thing in tent stitch (where the back goes up and down) rather than continental stitch (where the back is slanted like the front) to conserve wool. The shades of Anchor wool are 30 years old, and I really don't want to have to stitch large sections of this piece with borrowed colors or go hunting on e-Bay for one color out of a huge stash.
I did find one flaw in the colors that came with this piece, though: one of the color numbers had two numerals switched, so the wrong color of wool got put into the box. Had I not had the experience of customers running to my shop with a panic-stricken look on their face I would probably not have known what to do. But I did! I ran (well, drove) to my storage unit armed with some Anchor-to-Paternayan conversion sheets from the internet, and still made my own decision about which color I was going to use, based on the color-scheme in the piece itself.
So here are some pictures of the WIP, a work I stitch on in the mornings on weekends before I get going with my days:
The part that is rolled beneath the swan shows more early-morning water with the swan's cygnets around her. You can see the highest one to her left (your right).
Here's the box it came in. Can you say "70's packaging??" (Sorry about the flash - it was too dark a shot without it.)
This is some detail of the swan herself. She's not entirely white, as my 14-year-old mind couldn't understand, because of the light source coming from her other side. Something my artist friends have taught me. The blues and greens that are her darker shades give her an outline and some definition.
Sooo many shades of yellow in the sunrise-on-the-water section. It was a bit hard to distinguish one shade from the others on rainy or cloudy days, when the sunlight was less.
She's still coming along quite nicely and I'm enjoying stitching her. Immensely. I feel so glad that she is out and showing the world her stitched self, instead of sitting in a box, languishing away, for another 3 decades.
Next on my stitching agenda for my weekend mornings stitching sessions is a Hardanger ring box I bought at market years ago. The kit came with the fabric, thread, and instructions, and a pretty cut-glass ring box to go on top of the stitched piece. The store-bought lace on my dressing table is ready for the yard sale bin, and I'm excited to have both a current stitching project AND a piece ready for stitching, too.
Have a great new year, and will post more early in the new year!
So at the tender young age of 14, being a sophisticated needlepointer, I ventured into this big shop. Full of screen-printed needlepoints from floor to ceiling. I wanted to buy something for me and my mother, who had taught me all the needle arts, so I looked. And looked. And perhaps caught some of the salesladies' eyes who thought perhaps I was up to no good, I was looking so long. And you know, choosing a piece to stitch was hard! It really was. The European/British pieces were different in style from the American pieces I had seen, and I was a bit intimidated by the enormous selection.
I finally settled on 2 pieces, canvases complete with yarn and instructions, that came folded in a box. I was so proud of my grown-up decisions and ability to withstand the teasing from my fellow students about the amount of shopping I had done with my saved up monies, and I managed to bring these boxes all the way back to the States, ready to show my mother what I had bought for the two of us. That moment was a typical moment for us, really, and has been one of the examples I use to show my friends how unthinking and quite unkind my mother could be. Her response when I brought these two boxes to show her? "Well, I don't really like either one of them. I guess you bought the swans for yourself, so I'll just take the other one."
But this is not a post about my difficult relationship with my mother; it's about stitching projects like the swan piece, entitled "Sunrise," no matter how much time has elapsed since buying them. I found the companion piece to "Sunrise," entitled "Sunset" when cleaning out Mom's home after her death, and both pieces are in my "to be stitched stash" even 30 years later. In one way, I'm glad I waited as long as I did, when I have a bit more skill and a few more resources and a lot more experience with kits. Like, they never have enough yarn.
Heck, for that matter, even the canvases that call for "x" number of skeins of DMC wool (which you can't find in Atlanta any more - I've tried) or Persian or Appleton are often wrong. 'Member that piece I posted about buying in Quimper, France, in 1997 and stitching during the evenings of spring and summe
r 2008 before I closed the shop?? I ran out of one of the colors of DMC wool earlier this year, short 75 stitches from completing it. 75 stitches! That's all! (Webmaster Bill counted the empty holes one evening, that's how I know.) And then began the mad dash calling all of the needlepoint stores in town, none of whom carry DMC wool. I finally had to buy a skein on-line, but at least I finished it, and here are the pictures of the tiny little bit of stitching I had to do before it was all over. Note to former customers: yes, yes, I really did feel your pain when you were in this position.
The part I hadn't finished was underneath the handle of the copper pot.Here's another picture that will show the un-stitched area better:
The picture is a little dark, I know, but the holes are more pronounced.
So, on to the Sunrise swans. I used the Rolaframe frame from the above piece of needlepoint so that it would stay square and be more manageable to work on. It's a BIG piece of needlepoint, and working on a frame keeps the edges of the canvas tucked away so you don't have to mess with them or wo-man handle them. And learning the lessons from the still-life above, I'm stitching the entire thing in tent stitch (where the back goes up and down) rather than continental stitch (where the back is slanted like the front) to conserve wool. The shades of Anchor wool are 30 years old, and I really don't want to have to stitch large sections of this piece with borrowed colors or go hunting on e-Bay for one color out of a huge stash.
I did find one flaw in the colors that came with this piece, though: one of the color numbers had two numerals switched, so the wrong color of wool got put into the box. Had I not had the experience of customers running to my shop with a panic-stricken look on their face I would probably not have known what to do. But I did! I ran (well, drove) to my storage unit armed with some Anchor-to-Paternayan conversion sheets from the internet, and still made my own decision about which color I was going to use, based on the color-scheme in the piece itself.
So here are some pictures of the WIP, a work I stitch on in the mornings on weekends before I get going with my days:
The part that is rolled beneath the swan shows more early-morning water with the swan's cygnets around her. You can see the highest one to her left (your right).
Here's the box it came in. Can you say "70's packaging??" (Sorry about the flash - it was too dark a shot without it.)
This is some detail of the swan herself. She's not entirely white, as my 14-year-old mind couldn't understand, because of the light source coming from her other side. Something my artist friends have taught me. The blues and greens that are her darker shades give her an outline and some definition.
Sooo many shades of yellow in the sunrise-on-the-water section. It was a bit hard to distinguish one shade from the others on rainy or cloudy days, when the sunlight was less.
She's still coming along quite nicely and I'm enjoying stitching her. Immensely. I feel so glad that she is out and showing the world her stitched self, instead of sitting in a box, languishing away, for another 3 decades.
Next on my stitching agenda for my weekend mornings stitching sessions is a Hardanger ring box I bought at market years ago. The kit came with the fabric, thread, and instructions, and a pretty cut-glass ring box to go on top of the stitched piece. The store-bought lace on my dressing table is ready for the yard sale bin, and I'm excited to have both a current stitching project AND a piece ready for stitching, too.
Have a great new year, and will post more early in the new year!
Friday, August 28, 2009
Website Updates
That's right, my website has more stuff on it. That's one thing I'll say about this long, dry summer waiting for temp assignments to come in - I've gotten a lot of work done on Nease's Needlework.com! Let's see, what have I done recently?
And the temp orders are coming in hot and heavy (thank goodness!). I had the opportunity to spend time on a mock jury for a case, where the lawyers were trying out their arguments with some strangers to see how their case would stand up in court. It was really, really fun and I had a chance to use my brain, something I really love doing.
Speaking of brain, I really need to get working now on my third of three talks for DragonCon. I was asked a couple of years ago to present a talk on the Tolkien Track about Frodo, the Reluctant Hero, and this year I'm serving on a panel of 3 talking about Music in Middle Earth, and I'm also presenting a talk on Sam as the Companion. My tendency is to read everything I can that I think pertains to the subject (since I'm doing this in tandem with my volunteer work with Mythic Journeys), and when a phrase or an idea just suddenly hits me, I write the talk at a frantic pace. This rainy day is definitely lending itself to a reading and writing day, so I'll end this blog entry now and wish you all a great weekend!
- Added some Featured Products to coincide with the school year (including samplers and a constellation in honor of my friend Sirona who teaches science for gifted kids and knows sooo much about planets and stuff!)
- ALL the shades of Persian yarn that I currently have in stock. There are over 300 shades on my website, and about another 50 that are out of stock (i.e., I didn't re-order after I closed up shop so as not to overstock the storage unit and its budget), so if anyone is looking to match a color of yarn or add to what they already have they can do so via my website. Or call me and I'll see about getting it in for you.
- A good quantity of DMC thread, that necessity for cross-stitching, is also on-line. I've inventoried the second third of DMC threads in the storage unit and the list is quietly sitting there, waiting for me to run out of things to do that are more exciting than coming up with creative ways to say, "bright green with some yellow shades." Some call it procrastinating, I call it creativity.
- All of the Teenie Tweenie designs by The Sweetheart Tree are now on-line! There's a bunch of them, and as I added the scissor fob Teenie Tweenies I could just feel my head hitting the desk *headdesk* when I thought "What a great stitch-along these little scissor fobs could have been!" They are great little projects, and for you non-stitchers out there, these are tiny stitched pieces that have a front and a back. You stitch both the front and the back, sew them together, add some cording, and voila - instant thingie to hold onto your scissors! You'll never lose your scissors again (unless the cat gets frisky and decides that your beautiful, hand-stitched scissor fob is just the right shmoo to attack and it must be done at all costs). The best part about stitching these is that they are designed to use scraps of fabric (mostly the small counts, like linen). Think "de-stashing exercise."
- All of the reproduction samplers currently in stock designed by Handwork Samplers. I had carried her designs as an auto customer for several years, until the cost became too prohibitive and the sales were not what my "market research" indicated. I came to realize after a while that they seem to be more a culturally Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic form of needlework. On the other hand, the stitchers who did enjoy stitching this type of needlework are totally enraptured by this form. And it was always nice to take out the folder full of samplers and show customers how so many of these large pieces were stitched by young girls at the age of 8 and 9 and 10. By firelight and candlelight. About 250 years ago. It still amazes me.
- FABRIC! FINALLY some fabric (besides Aida 11 count) is on-line. I had stressed and pondered how to show the colors and changes of the hand-dyed fabrics which I knew I would have to photograph, and I finally realized that I could include a skein of DMC white in the picture, to give a stitcher a frame of reference. Every stitcher knows what DMC white looks like, so no matter how different your monitor shows from the picture I've taken, you can use the skein of white as your touchstone. Pretty clever, eh? I also came to realize that one of the hand-dyed fabric companies, Picture this Plus, already had a website that showed their lovely fabrics on-line, so they had already done the hard part of the photography. Yay! So while I still have a list of R&R Reproduction fabrics to download from my camera, I've been able to enter all of the fabrics by Picture this Plus and some of the Jobelan fabrics currently in stock. Which also involved measuring each piece on the front porch table when the weather wasn't rainy (like today) or too incredibly hot (it was anyway) or the sun wasn't shining too directly on the fabric, thus washing out any picture taking I attempted to do. So if you go to the "Fabric" section of the Cross Stitch pages, you'll see the different sizes of pieces I have, such as 8 x 13 or 17 x 38 and their price.
And the temp orders are coming in hot and heavy (thank goodness!). I had the opportunity to spend time on a mock jury for a case, where the lawyers were trying out their arguments with some strangers to see how their case would stand up in court. It was really, really fun and I had a chance to use my brain, something I really love doing.
Speaking of brain, I really need to get working now on my third of three talks for DragonCon. I was asked a couple of years ago to present a talk on the Tolkien Track about Frodo, the Reluctant Hero, and this year I'm serving on a panel of 3 talking about Music in Middle Earth, and I'm also presenting a talk on Sam as the Companion. My tendency is to read everything I can that I think pertains to the subject (since I'm doing this in tandem with my volunteer work with Mythic Journeys), and when a phrase or an idea just suddenly hits me, I write the talk at a frantic pace. This rainy day is definitely lending itself to a reading and writing day, so I'll end this blog entry now and wish you all a great weekend!
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