Where We Choose To Stitch....
I’m probably not the only one that has a “nest” to stitch in... that comfy spot where I like to curl up with all of my tools and stash close at hand... my throne of stitching, so to speak. Yet in the past week, I have had bits of stitching along with me at various meetings and events since I am trying to cram every possible moment before Nashville into being as productive as possible. (It also ensures that I might show up with some fingernails too... if I don’t keep shattering them when I lug boxes around.)
The Illustrative Blackwork is attracting the most attention... partly because it is a cool way of making pictures with just backstitching. Using braid also seems to get people asking questions about how to stitch with the sparkly stuff.
It made me stop and think. How often have I seen people knitting on the bus or train?? At meetings and events where parents are waiting for their kids to finish up activities?? This fall, it was seeing stitchers who had taken classes from me stitching with something called “Boa” that got me re-hooked on knitting. Instead of making those cotton dishcloths on car trips, I was suddenly taking one evening a week to make up scarves as Christmas presents. Each time I saw a new colour combination in the Boa, Eyelash or Fun Fur wool, I had to pick up a ball or two just to make another scarf. I hope they are still in vogue next year, because I still have a few left to knit and two in reserve all ready to go.
Many of us get together with other stitchers... but it is when we take out stitching out to other places that someone else might see what we are doing and decide to try it themselves. I remember reading about Wayne Brady actually knitting on his show a few months ago, or how it made the news that Survivor Winner Ethan’s mom owned a knitting shop.... and I wonder if sometimes that is why one craft becomes more trendy than another. People SEE others doing it and realize that it’s not that hard!!
Just this week, a friend of mine who had introduced a colleague to cross stitch, took her new convert to the local LNS here in town. Do you remember when you first discovered that there could be a shop JUST for needlework??? I remember feeling like a kid in a candy store!!!
One of the things that I still love MOST about any type of craft... at the end of my time (be it a meeting or just watching some TV to unwind) I have something to SHOW for my time.... something I have been able to create.
If I have time.... amid all the preparations for Nashville, I am going to go out and buy a design by some OTHER designer... so that I can have fun stitching something that ISN’T mine! Maybe along the way, I will inspire someone else to pick up a needle and have this much fun!
Saturday, January 31, 2004
Thursday, January 29, 2004
A Week Until Nashville... and the Panic is Under Control...
I should be careful about saying that, especially since I had a crazy Nashville dream last night. Remember in high school when you would dream that you showed up to the wrong room for an exam... or showed up after the test was over etc.? Last night I dreamt that I was in the hotel down in Nashville, looking around my suite, only to realize that not only had I not brought one of my trunks full of models... but I’d somehow flown all the way down without noticing that my second trunk... and my helper from Moncton, Terri, weren’t there either!! LOL! Like I would EVER have left the airport in Moncton without her or my stuff. In the dream however, I was racing around trying to find a phone to see if Nick could put the trunks on a bus....
Other than crazy dreams, I am actually feeling further ahead than I expected to be. I am running the roads today now that Erin is back at school and Bethany is at daycare today. I have to pick up all the photo paper to print off my covers for 2 design (and ink cartridges too), get my order form in so that they can make NCRs and save me from fumbling with messy sheets of carbon paper all weekend, shoot one more photo outside in the not as bitter cold as earlier in the week, develop that film, scan in the photo and print those covers before my helpers arrive tomorrow night for a massive “batching” party once the girls are in bed. My Nanny was right. “Many hands make light work!”
I should be careful about saying that, especially since I had a crazy Nashville dream last night. Remember in high school when you would dream that you showed up to the wrong room for an exam... or showed up after the test was over etc.? Last night I dreamt that I was in the hotel down in Nashville, looking around my suite, only to realize that not only had I not brought one of my trunks full of models... but I’d somehow flown all the way down without noticing that my second trunk... and my helper from Moncton, Terri, weren’t there either!! LOL! Like I would EVER have left the airport in Moncton without her or my stuff. In the dream however, I was racing around trying to find a phone to see if Nick could put the trunks on a bus....
Other than crazy dreams, I am actually feeling further ahead than I expected to be. I am running the roads today now that Erin is back at school and Bethany is at daycare today. I have to pick up all the photo paper to print off my covers for 2 design (and ink cartridges too), get my order form in so that they can make NCRs and save me from fumbling with messy sheets of carbon paper all weekend, shoot one more photo outside in the not as bitter cold as earlier in the week, develop that film, scan in the photo and print those covers before my helpers arrive tomorrow night for a massive “batching” party once the girls are in bed. My Nanny was right. “Many hands make light work!”
Monday, January 26, 2004
Another One Bites The Dust... OR Of Weekends and Wind Chills...
Take your pick. Either of these titles could have applied to my blog today. The weekend was fun but bitterly cold. I got outside for one more photo shoot and took the kids out for a much needed run around the yard. Erin even helped balance the still slightly mangled box against a leveled off snowdrift since, after the last dump of 30 cm of snow, there wasn’t really enough space to set up a chair and sit the box on it as I usually do.
Sunday afternoon we took the girls to their first hockey game as the Moncton Wildcats played the PEI Rockets. One of our best friends has a son who has just started hockey and all of the players from the Timbits tournament (this is going to take some explaining to those who don’t know Tim Horton donuts... they sell a little round bit that looks like the bit from the hole of the donut... They are very small, just like most of these 7 to 9 year old hockey players... so the name has that “Cute” factor going for it) got to parade around the ice between the 2nd and 3rd periods. So off we went to show our support. We actually ended up having a lot of fun!! I did notice that Hockey has gotten a bit more aggressive since the days when I used to watch the Montreal Canadian at the Forum. My dad delivered the babies of Guy Lafleur and Larry Robinson, so we got some pretty good tickets every now and then. Nick also pointed out that at the level we were watching, the players are still developing their skills and trying to catch the eyes of any scouts who happened to be watching.... but we were right behind the boards and all of us jumped a bit when the players would get smashed into the Plexiglas right in front of you!!
This morning, we woke to a wind chill warning of -41... lay there waiting for them to cancel school again... but exams are on at the highschool level and so the “powers that be” must have decided that, although the safety of the students was a priority for 3 days two weeks ago, it wasn’t today. Why they didn’t just close the K-8 schools and let the older kids still write their exams is beyond me, but a nice neighbour drove Erin up to the bus along with their own kids so that she and I didn’t have to freeze. Nick had left early with the van and dropped Bethany off at daycare. Such are the occasional trials of being a one car family in subzero weather.
I got down to work and motored through some of the charting/layout/proofing I still had to do for Nashville with my CDs blazing away in the background. Sometimes I like to work to the purr of the computers, but this was a “blast the tunes” kind of day... perhaps because I am warmer when I tap my toes.
But.... the phone rang at 11:30 and a very tearful Erin on the phone told me that her tummy was REALLY hurting. I asked her to be brave until dismissal time and bring home her work, but when Nick called 10 minutes later and told me that he had no lunch duty, we decided that he’d pick her up and swing her home.
She was pretty pale by the time she made it home, so I have cleared my meetings from tomorrow morning’s schedule. I think the poor thing has Nick’s flu.... and I am going to keep washing my entire body with antibacterial soap or Detol!!
I HATE GERMS!!!!!
Take your pick. Either of these titles could have applied to my blog today. The weekend was fun but bitterly cold. I got outside for one more photo shoot and took the kids out for a much needed run around the yard. Erin even helped balance the still slightly mangled box against a leveled off snowdrift since, after the last dump of 30 cm of snow, there wasn’t really enough space to set up a chair and sit the box on it as I usually do.
Sunday afternoon we took the girls to their first hockey game as the Moncton Wildcats played the PEI Rockets. One of our best friends has a son who has just started hockey and all of the players from the Timbits tournament (this is going to take some explaining to those who don’t know Tim Horton donuts... they sell a little round bit that looks like the bit from the hole of the donut... They are very small, just like most of these 7 to 9 year old hockey players... so the name has that “Cute” factor going for it) got to parade around the ice between the 2nd and 3rd periods. So off we went to show our support. We actually ended up having a lot of fun!! I did notice that Hockey has gotten a bit more aggressive since the days when I used to watch the Montreal Canadian at the Forum. My dad delivered the babies of Guy Lafleur and Larry Robinson, so we got some pretty good tickets every now and then. Nick also pointed out that at the level we were watching, the players are still developing their skills and trying to catch the eyes of any scouts who happened to be watching.... but we were right behind the boards and all of us jumped a bit when the players would get smashed into the Plexiglas right in front of you!!
This morning, we woke to a wind chill warning of -41... lay there waiting for them to cancel school again... but exams are on at the highschool level and so the “powers that be” must have decided that, although the safety of the students was a priority for 3 days two weeks ago, it wasn’t today. Why they didn’t just close the K-8 schools and let the older kids still write their exams is beyond me, but a nice neighbour drove Erin up to the bus along with their own kids so that she and I didn’t have to freeze. Nick had left early with the van and dropped Bethany off at daycare. Such are the occasional trials of being a one car family in subzero weather.
I got down to work and motored through some of the charting/layout/proofing I still had to do for Nashville with my CDs blazing away in the background. Sometimes I like to work to the purr of the computers, but this was a “blast the tunes” kind of day... perhaps because I am warmer when I tap my toes.
But.... the phone rang at 11:30 and a very tearful Erin on the phone told me that her tummy was REALLY hurting. I asked her to be brave until dismissal time and bring home her work, but when Nick called 10 minutes later and told me that he had no lunch duty, we decided that he’d pick her up and swing her home.
She was pretty pale by the time she made it home, so I have cleared my meetings from tomorrow morning’s schedule. I think the poor thing has Nick’s flu.... and I am going to keep washing my entire body with antibacterial soap or Detol!!
I HATE GERMS!!!!!
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