The Hope of things to come.

I have known that October would be busy for a while. Booking four different trips seemed like a good idea before the beginning of the year…

When I start having weird dreams then I know I need to get organized. I have boxes in several rooms of the house, my suitcases are on the landing where I can pop things in whenever I think of something. I have spare ink cartridges for printing more handouts. Amazon delivers. PostIt notes are my friend!

So, I’m getting there. I’ve done one trip. I’m off to O’Fallon tomorrow, just a few miles short of St. Louis and I’m almost ready to go. Two handwork workshops and one lecture. I love handwork classes. They are a chance to relax and enjoy a change of pace. Lots of students come worried about being good enough but you can’t go wrong with some Folk Art Stitching!

In between times I’ve been doing some stitching myself and I have a few finishes to share.

This one is inspired by a wood carving on an African door.Lots of chain stitch with a couple of whipped woven circles…
Let the hand dyed perle cottons from House of Embroidery do the work!Moving on, here’s an elephant based on Nigerian punched leather work. I finished the chain stitch first.Yesterday I put some batting behind the elephant and added the stone beads and little cross stitches.I bought the beads from The African Fabric Shop at the quilt show in England. (Was that only two months ago?!!) They are heavy so I used a 12 weight thread to stitch them on with three little stitches each.

I listened to an interesting podcast BBC drama set in a tuberculosis sanatorium in 1949 while I sewed. Reliable treatments for TB were only available in 1950. It was a sad play.After I was finished, I cut the batting away from around the embroidery so when I put the block in a quilt the elephant will be slightly padded.

I have drawn out four Russian birds to work on next. This one is coming out really well…We had a discussion in Galena about the stitches I use. Simple running stitch fills in a space so beautifully! The wings are just straight stitch spokes out of the central chain stitch spine.

Another view of my first bird.The second one has an interesting circular border that I’m filling with chain stitch and cross stitches. More variegated threads hard at work!

Meanwhile…

The seasons are changing. I brought the two house plants I own in from the deck where they spent their summer. I used to have lots of plants in London but we have no window ledges here and I’ve never had much success with indoor gardening since we moved!

I had five Christmas cacti plants and last year I put them all in one pot. They really seem to have benefitted from their time outside. It’s covered in buds right now.Each one represents the promise of a beautiful flower. Of course promises do get broken. I am traveling and all those fragile buds might well drop off if neglected…

I could come up with lots of deeper thoughts but I’ll leave those to you to think about for yourself. Leave yours in the comment section if you wish!

Hope is a lovely thing.