Return of the Fairy

Hey, Margaret, she came out to visit! Lol Here’s my progress on wing two:

So far so good. Although I did catch myself in a major snafu on the brown part last night. Luckily I caught it just in time!

Apparently in honor of the Fairy’s return to the hoop, I received this wonderful pack from Teresa as my F&S July 4th exchange.

And look at these totally cool squares!!!!

If only there were smellable blogs – you’d be all over that blueberry tea she included. It’s heavenly. My office stitching buddy has already sent many covetous glances at the flag box. She loves boxes she keeps telling me, but you know what? So do I. lol

The other day I finally finished reading through Andrle and Rudnicki’s Sampler Motifs and Symbolism.

It’s a nice volume, probably worth the purchase if you want to understand/build samplers. It’s organized as an alphabetical “dictionary” of sampler symbols which tell you what means what, where/when they were popular, what they refer to (Bible verse, particular monarch’s reign, etc). Many, but by no means most have graphed example patterns as illustrations (in color and well-produced). At the end there are a small number of charts of actual historic samplers with small bios of the sampler. I enjoyed it although I found it sometimes frustrating to not have images of everything. There are still lots of wonderful gems in here.

Oh, I have to share a bit of humor – the ramifications of going through that long weekend doing not so much besides going through videos. I was watching something on live TV Tuesday night and I tried to fast forward through the commercial. For a second I wondered if I needed new batteries in the remote. Then I cracked up. The night before I was talking on the phone (which is silver and long) and decided I needed to rewind the tape I was watching a little. I rooted around to find the remote and when I encounter a long plasticy thing with lots of buttons I told myself to be sure I wasn’t grabbing the phone…. Yeah, the phone I WAS ON at the time. Sigh. It’s obvious they were right – TV kills your brain.

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Recently finished: the above-mentioned Patircia Andrle and Lesley Rudnicki’s Sampler Motifs and Symbolism
Also recently finished: an older children’s book – Shirley Visits the Zoo by Belle Benchley (Ms. Benchley’s a cousin so I feel it’s really family research). It’s quite cute in it’s telling an photos of a little girl’s repeated trips to the San Diego Zoo and her interactions with the animals.
Started, but stupidly left at the office: Charlaine Harris’ Dead Until Dark – I didn’t do my usual book choosing fest because my buddy Elaine has been after me to catch up with her in Sookie reading
Started because Charlaine was at the office when I wanted to read at home: a book on the British landscape artist, JMW Turner. Sorry, I can't remember the author! Shame on me!!!!