Work-in-progress

This project is making slow progress, but the colors are rather nice....... M

New project

What with all the rain and cool weather, I finally felt motivated to begin my new stitching project. I've had the pattern, cloth and threads for quite some time now and even started just a little bit. But then I put it down and left it until I could reconcile some feelings that kept stirring around inside me everytime I even thought about the project and all the work that would have to go into it to complete it. I'm still feeling a bit ambivalent about it, but having spent some time with it now I'm beginning to feel the 'groove' return. Not sure how it will turn out, but the project has begun. ~M

BTW, that's my little bird that keeps an eye out for spare threads to use in a potential nest....

Bookmarks-variations on a theme

For several years (I have lost track of the number) I would stitch bookmarks as Christmas gifts. Usually I would gift a book and the bookmark would be tossed in as an "extra" feature. Sometimes I tried to match the theme of the book with the stitching on the bookmark, but not always. I like to stitch bookmarks because they are short projects and can be finished quickly (relatively speaking). Also, they can be 'practise' sheets to try out something that I find interesting but not prepared to turn into a larger project. Just about everyone in my family can use multiple number of bookmarks, so there's no problem with having too many of them around.

This year I decided that I would stitch bookmarks for everyone on staff at my library. I selected a pattern that I used before (Emily might recognize it) and rather liked. I decided that I would make each bookmark all in one color group and the color group would correspond to what I noticed was a favorite color of that person. Once I got started I noticed that I didn't have the time to do one for everyone on the staff, so the two men were dropped off the list.

I also noticed that working the full pattern would take too much time if I was going to complete the task before Christmas. That's how I started thinking about making each item different; a variation on the main theme. Along the way I also ran out of cloth, so I had to cut down the size. At first I thought that would speed up the process, thereby enabling me to include the two men....but it turned out that the smaller bookmarks took just as long as the larger ones to complete. I suppose it was because of the amount of detail that I put into the smaller ones so that they didn't seem to be not as nice as the larger ones.

One of the bookmarks is missing from the picture as I had to give it away earlier (Kirsten departed on annual leave early in December). It was my first and was black/grey/silver.

I enjoyed stitching these projects. As always, I found that working the projects gave me time to really think about the person that I was making the project for. Good thoughts, positive thoughts, thankful thoughts. I hope that when I give away these small gifts today the recipients won't feel bad or feel like they owe me something in return. It truly was my pleasure to work these projects and I am glad that I could post a picture here for future reference! M