Saturday, June 27, 2009

Stitching and Reading

Good Grief, has it been that long since I posted? I have been busy; reading and stitching and just dealing with life in general. My two oldest grandsons "graduated" from fifth grade and are moving up to Middle School in the autumn. My oldest son kept me busy watching his two young sons (ages 3 years and 9 months) while he and my Daughter-in-law were house hunting. They finally decided to rent for another year (in a different apartment from the one they are currently in) so we will probably go through this again next year, only then there will be three children to watch!


But enough about my "life"...let's get to the stitching! The photo to the right is part 6 of Alla Turca, a nine part Mystery SAL by Pelin Tezer that I am stitching through the Stitcher's Heaven yahoo group. I had to change the top because I cut my fabric too short, or started stitching too high or something like that. Anyway, it will be slightly different from the way it was designed, but let's just call it an adaptation! After all, there are no real mistakes in stitching, just alterations, some-times major ones, and more often minor discrepencies.

I expect to put my initials in the two areas flanking the darker diamonds. I am using DMC 311 on white linen. Part 7 is due out in a couple of days...can't wait.




Gazette 94 designed the second piece and called it "Grand
Abecedere." It was also a Stitch-a-long, but not a mystery, in nine parts. I have posted part of this before, but I finished it today. Again there is an alteration in this piece. Since I do not celebrate Christmas, I eliminated the Christmas tree and reindeer in the section just below the "D E F" and stitched instead a bee hive and a couple of pears that I found in one of my French sampler resourse books. I used Sampler Threads in Pine (the darker green) and Shutter Green for the lighter areas.

This piece may be a gift for my Daughter and Son-in-law for their "new" home. These colors would go nicely with what they have.

I have also been reading. Don't miss The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larson. I will admit, the first chapter is a little hard to get into, but after that it is fabulous. My daughter sent me Eat Pray Love which I totally enjoyed. I picked up an early Easy Rawlins book by Walter Mosely dealing with Easy as a very young man in Louisiana. I also found a remainder at Borders called A Woman in Jerusalem by Israeli author A. B. Yehoshua. This is NOT a religious book at all but a haunting tale of a victim of a suicide bombing at a market. I'll not divulge anymore, but it is a story that I really enjoyed. And ofcourse, Janet Evanovich's new Stephanie Plum mystery just came out and I am lost in Trenton again.

Enjoy the warm weather - although we are still having rain virtually every day here in the Northeast. And the Midwest, where we are headed next week is acting like a furnace. Oh well we can't change the weather, so I guess I will deal with the rain here, and the heat there when we get there.

Be well...............Grandma

3 comments:

Cyn said...

Hi Edy,

Glad to hear from you and to see that you finished "Grand
Abecedere". Very pretty.

And you've made a lot of progress on "Alla Turca".

It's always fun to adapt a design as it's an opportunity to be creative! :-)

Cynthia
Windy Meadow

Maggie said...

Your Grand Abecedere is lovely!
I'm also stitching this one but didn't dicover it until it was along a bit so am only just finishing part 3. I like the changes you have made with the honeycomb and pears :-)
AT is great isn't it? i'm looking forward to the next part too!

wendy said...

Both pieces look great. Finishing Fight Club (it's slow for me...not a bad book, but I'm not speeding through...) and then will read The Master and Margarita.