New Challenges and Celebrations

We were spared the worst of the hurricane but my feelings are with all the people who have lost loved ones, have been left homeless, without electricity, and have a big clean up ahead of them.  You are in our thoughts.

The last of the fall colours

  I have pretty much finished my first rug hooking project.  I just need to add a few highlights, tone down some of the areas, and fill in some spaces that can only be seen from the back.  This one was done all in wool yarns.   I am now anxious to gather up enough strips of fabric to try a bigger one on my large frame.

 And here is a peek at the challenge piece I am doing with my fibre arts group.   We chose either orange (tomato red) or blue and the piece needs to be at least 20% of that colour.  My inspiration is a photo of tiny red orange mushrooms that I took in Cape Breton a couple of years ago.  Here it is before I started to stitch.  I have since added some dyed cheesecloth, stitched leaves, and will also add some tiny pebbles as I go along.  I plan to do a lot of hand stitching on this one.

I have also started to paint a background for a larger stitched piece which will be a swamp when it is finished.  I hope to do some free motion stitching on this but I need to practice first.  I went out today and bought a new hoop and some stabilizer to get me started.

Background for a swamp - painted with setacolours and caran d'ache crayons and pencil crayons

Last weekend I celebrated a birthday!    Birthdays have a different meaning these days.  They seem to come so quickly.  I was just getting used to the big one that came last year and now I am one past the big one.  Yuck!  Nevertheless I celebrated with three of my friends and we ate lasagna, drank wine, and read our cards - which ended up turning into more of a brainstorming problem solving discussion about each of our 'questions', along with a lot of laughter.  One friend said she had a sore tummy from laughing so hard all evening.

Here I am showing off my handiwork

And here are my three friends at work in the kitchen

We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and I realize that I am truly blessed to have good friends in my life!