................ gotta dash, but....

... I know I need to get updating because there is so much to catch you up on.

First, I feel compelled to note that last night I almost started 2 new somethings. OMG help me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For today I shall limit my updating to what I've finished in 2010 (besides the belt... sorry I was too excited to wait on that)--

This I know is unusual so it has a story. My BIL owned a Calder painting which he decided to sell last year. That there is my version of it. It's called Triceratops and in painting form it is huge. When I first met what I called The Banana Slug (sorry, I still see a slug before I see a dinosaur) I was not entranced, but over the years I grew quite fond of the ole girl. I was going to miss her at Christmas. So somehow it came to me, I'd stitch an ornament for him in honor of her. So I searched through all my photos from their house and printed out the 30 with parts of the painting in it-- of course I couldn't find a shot of the whole thing... no! That would have been too easy. Once I'd worked out my own line sketch of it, the problem became transferring it to graph paper. I couldn't see to trace it. I tried etching it which worked real well up until the tape gave about half-way through the process. I tried tracing with sharpies so the ink would bleed through -- of course when you want to bleed through your paper, you NEVER do. Ultimately I flipped my (at the time) nonfunctioning laptop on it's lid and used the screen as a light table to trace my drawing onto graph paper. It worked! So there, now you know the saga behind the ornament. And possibly you know why it takes me forever to get anything done.


That's SB's little America sampler which I finally sewed the *&#$@(#*^ button on. Yup, it's been stitched for something like a year and just waiting for me to iron it and put the flag button on. Did I mention I have slowness issues that possibly could be easily solved? By the way, I seek suggestions -- this came with the beautiful Jill mat, but the mat is not cut wide enough to look good in a frame by the time you loose the part of the mat under the rabbit. I've run into this with these mats before and it really annoys me. I don't want to have to pay the exorbitant costs to have my framer cut mat fillers to go under the frame. I was thinking of having it galled and the edges copper wrapped. What do you think? I'm game for ideas.


And finally, SB's Fa La La. At least this one didn't take me a year to get the dang button on!

ttfn -- Happy stitching to all and to all a nice dinner.