April Foolish

Between work, the ANG meeting on Wednesday, and my stitching group on Thursday evening, I haven't had a chance to post! Anyway, here's a few of the items I brought to the ANG "April Foolish" meeting.

I've already explained how my now-MIL got me into cross stitch when I was still in high school. At the time, I also collected cows (no, not real ones, just images & stuffed animals!). It makes sense, then, that some of my first cross stitch pieces were of cows. The smaller piece was from a magazine, and the larger is "Americow Gothic" from a booklet I purchased in WalMart.

Note that both of these were on aida fabric, and one has tons of backstitching. I have since come to love linen and loathe backstitching! When I came across these in my closet, I laughed at the very precise hem job I did all the way around the large piece. Now I'm too impatient to start stitching to do something like that! I also obviously was not too concerned about keeping this clean. I think this was the first time I used scroll rods and rolled them with the stitching to the outside instead of inside.

I also had a story and a picture to share. Even though my MIL got me really started cross stitching, I had stitched on plastic canvas and had done some cross stitch on gingham with Girl Scouts. In going through my childhood pictures, though, I found evidence that my work with "string" started before this! Here's a picture of me at 2-1/2, with the yarn from my first stitching experience to give me long hair! As I recall, I think this came with a very low count (4 ct, maybe?) canvas-like grid mounted in a plastic frame. I have no idea if I used my fingers to actually "stitch" the yarn through this grid, or actually had a big yarn needle!