Organizing metallics

This past weekend, I took advantage of a good sale at Joann Fabrics and picked up a box, originally designed for holding Sulky machine embroidery threads. One of the members in my ANG chapter had shown how she used this to hold her Kreinik metallic threads. Thanks, Mary Lou!

Once I got to putting all of my Kreiniks in the box though, I realized I had a problem. Ummm... I ran out of room.

The only solution was to head back to Joann's and pick up another box! I showed the result to MIL, who hadn't seen these boxes at the store near her, and she stopped by my store to buy the last one on her way home!

To give an idea of size, these two boxes are spread out between the arms of my stitching chair. At a rough guess (since I'm too lazy to measure and I just took them upstairs), the boxes are about 15" across, 17" high, and <2" deep.

***UPDATE: To answer one question about the boxes: these hold 108 spools. As for mine, neither is completely full, and I have a few random non-metallic spools (Silk Bella, Londonderry Linen, etc) in the second one.***

(This makes two posts in two days - but I'm not expecting this to be the norm anytime soon!)

Louisville 2008: a cruise, the closing banquet, and stash enhancement

Ok. I'm inexcusably late with my last post about Louisville, but to hide exactly how late (for future readers) and to help with the flow of the blog, I'm antedating this post. :-)

Wednesday of seminar week gave us a break from the longer classes. Some folks went on tours and some die-hards took a single-day class, but I slept in a bit and then went to the merchandise event. I spent most of the day there, helping with my chapter's sale table and figuring out where to spend some stash money. (More on the stash accumulation later!) The picture shows the beginning of the crowds at the event. There were many more people in the room as the day progressed.

Around mid-afternoon, MIL and I walked the half-block over to EGA headquarters. There, we spent quite a bit of time admiring the National Tapestry (which I had been fortunate enough to put a few stitches in when it was being worked). We viewed the National Exhibit, admiring some pieces and puzzling over others, wondering where a needle might actually have been used. Upstairs we enjoyed some of the permanent pieces of the collection, including a wonderful crewel bench embroidered by the master, Audrey Francini. The Tenessee Valley Region also had an exhibit upstairs which had some beautiful pieces.

Wednesday evening was spent on a riverboat cruise. We boarded the Belle of Louisville at 7PM. Dinner (including, of course, incredible fried chicken) was enjoyable despite the lack of air circulation on the second deck. After dinner, most of us escaped the heat by heading up to the upper deck to enjoy the breeze and to watch twilight descend on the Ohio River. Eventually, the boat turned around and headed back to the city. Louisville is beautiful from the river at night! Though my camera doesn't capture night scenes well, the overall impression comes through with a few pictures.






As classes drew to a close on Friday, we all prepared to say goodbye. The ballroom was decorated beautifully for the closing banquet. The banquet was opened with the "Call to the Post" (call to dinner?) performed by the official bugler of Churchill Downs, and then he (the bugler) shared some of his experiences in that post. He closed his speech by playing "My Old Kentucky Home". Though it had absolutely nothing to do with embroidery, it was wonderful to get a taste of Louisville culture through this enjoyable speech.

Now, on to the stash! I was very pleased with the favor from the closing banquet: a beautiful pair of stork scissors with a leather case. I've been stitching for over 15 years, yet never had stork scissors until now!





Between the bookstore, EGA headquarters, and the merchandise event, I picked up several books:

• Ruskin Lace & Linen Work by Elizabeth Prickett. This has been on my wish list for a long time.
• SuZy's Lite Stitches by Suzy Murphy. I'm hoping this will help with some of the painted canvases I struggle with.
• The Art of Teaching Embroidery by Sandy Rogers. I've enjoyed teaching a few projects to my guild chapters, so thought I'd read up on it to see how I can improve.
• Elegance from the Past, which contains instructions to reproduce a pulled-thread piece from EGA's collection.
• The Lady Elizabeth by Alison Weir. While this novel is not about stitching, this fit in well with the Tudor-Style purse class I was taking.

At the merchandise event, I purchased several small things: a few packs of needles, a collection of various sizes of gold spangles, a pair of extremely sharp scissors from Japan, some new hand lotion, a Brussels lace kit from somebody's stash, and a pair of burling irons (which are wonderful, very fine tweezers - perfect for removing dog hair from projects - believe me - I've tried them already!) I also made one larger purchase: the kit for Joan Thomasson's Czarist Treasures, including the design drawn on congress cloth.

I made a few trips to the seminar boutique over the course of the week. I think Stitcher's Workshop brought their entire shop to Louisville! I combined a search for "new to me" threads with gathering threads for a geometric canvas class scheduled for November.

I really enjoyed my first national seminar! Thanks to all of the EGA volunteers for pulling together a fabulous time.

A good stitching weekend

This weekend, especially Sunday, was a great weekend in terms of stitching progress. I'm almost done with all but the very center of ScottLee. To be honest, many of the newly-added stitches were done in a single strand of pearl cotton, so they took much less time than laid stitches. I only had to use my laying tool for a few areas.In answer to a few recent questions:

• Mary & Cyn: I have no idea what I'm going to do with my Mystery in a Corner. The colors really are not my colors, and I chose them to step out of my comfort zone. I think it worked out really well, but the piece really doesn't work well in my house. Maybe I'll get it framed eventually if my tastes change, but for now it will sit with a pile of other unframed pieces in the old hope chest in my stitching room.
• Jane: I DO know what I will be doing with ScottLee, and sending it to you is not on the list! :-) This one will be made up as a tea tray, simply by framing it with glass (a rarity for me) and adding drawer pulls to the frame. I have no idea where I'm going to display it, but I love the piece so much I really need to do something with it.
  

SBQ: The Essentials

Don't look now, but I'm actually answering an SBQ for the first time in a very long time...

This week’s SBQ was suggested by Terri and is:

What items do you consider essential to your needlework that you keep in your stitching bag?

Let's see. In the caddy on the arm of my stitching chair, I can find:

• A variety of needles stuck in the pincushion; everything from 28 to 22 tapestry needles to #10 crewel needles (great for beading or for ending threads) to long beading needles.
• A tekobari (Japanese laying tool) in a wooden case.
• Two pairs of good scissors, one Gingher and one Dovo (because I like them both and I need to be able to find scissors easily!).
• One pair of serrated-edge scissors for cutting metallics (so I don't ruin my good scissors)
• Hemostats, which are wonderful for pulling needles through the back of tight canvas stitches for ending off threads. These are rarely needed for linen work.
• A pen
• A pencil
• A telescoping magnet, which is necessary for tracking down errant needles or scissors that fell off the arm of the chair.

In my main stitching bag, I can also find more packs of needles and clean cosmetic sponges (great for dampening unruly/kinked threads). Also, I take my Elan lap stand with me to all stitching events, since a pinched nerve in my neck means I can only stitch "in hand" for very short periods of time.

Great question!

Minor progress on Scottlee

Thanks to everyone for the great comments I've received recently!

I just realized that I neglected to tell the end of the Evertite story. As I mentioned previously, I found that both ends of one bar had split last Sunday. I contacted the company, a replacement bar was sent out on Monday. It showed up at my house on Wednesday!

The bars went together wonderfully (no warping!), and Scottlee is in progress once again. Between finishing the GAR sampler, the Jane Zimmerman samples, and another kissing pillow, I haven't spent a ton of time on Scottlee, but I did finish a couple of sections of alternating continental and added some satin stitches in Very Velvet.Any crookedness in the picture is entirely due to operator error in taking the picture, and does not reflect how the piece is mounted in the frame! (The operator being me!) :-)

I hope to make more progress this evening.

Thanks again to the Evertite company for an amazing response.

Broken stretcher bars

Ever since I picked up Scottlee again, the fact that the frame is warped has been bugging me! You can see it in some of my pictures - one corner looks like it's not square in the pics. So, I took the piece off the frame.

Hey, look at that - the bars are actually starting to break! This is my first time using Evertite stretcher bars, and I really appreciate not having to restretch the canvas all of the time. Wait a minute, these things are pretty pricey - why are they breaking on the first project?

On the pics, you can see a shiny spot near one of the cracks. I tried, unsuccessfully, to use super glue.

My next resort was to try to find some information on the company. Google quickly led me to the web site. Wow - the company actually has decent contact information right on the web site. (That doesn't always happen!) So, I sent off an email, explaining the problem and asking about warranty information.

Within a couple of hours, a reply was sitting in my inbox, explaining that since wood is a natural product, it's not always easy to see where defects might arise after manufacturing. The same email asked where the replacement bar should be sent.

WOW! What customer service!

I replied with the pictures and my address. The maker replied that he had never seen them break like that, and that my bar would be in the mail tomorrow.

I am so impressed with the way this was handled. Thanks, Evan!!!

If the bars breaking truly was a fluke thing, and they hold up fine through the rest of the project, I will certainly invest in more Evertites for future large projects.

As a result of all of this, I obviously did not work on Scottlee yesterday. I stitched up one of the kissing pillows, instead. 3 down, 2 to go.

One dead lamp

When I sat down Monday evening to stitch, my 18W Ott-Lite floor lamp took longer than the normal 2 seconds to illuminate. I was talking to DH, and had actually forgotten that I switched the lamp on, and it suddenly lit up. It took a few minutes to light!

On Tuesday, I thought we were in for a repeat performance. I switched on the lamp and waited. And waited. And waited. Apparently for something that was not going to happen. Well, it's probably the bulb, although these bulbs are supposed to last 10000 hours, and I haven't used it nearly that long since I bought the lamp. So, I trucked off to JoAnn Fabrics to buy a bulb, coupon in hand.

Armed with a new bulb, I sat down again in my stitching nest. I installed the new bulb, and hit the switch. And waited. Well, apparently it wasn't the bulb. This lamp is DEAD. I decided I should look for the receipt for the lamp.

Wait a minute - when did I buy the lamp? I remember that I walked into JoAnn's and they were on sale for a very good price, so I called MIL, and ended up buying one for each of us. It had to be within the past year. Luckily, I keep an accordion file of my bills and larger receipts for the past year. I don't think it was snowing when I walked out of JoAnn's with the two lamps, so I checked the spring records. Nope. Ok, let's go through month by month. Nothing. Time to hit the "to be shredded" shoebox where the records go when they come out of the accordion file. Ah ha! Ok, so it wasn't in the past year. It was last August. (At least I remember the "not snowing" part right!)

I sent a note to Ott-Lite customer service, and got a very helpful email back. There's no way to replace the likely bad part on this lamp. I need a whole new lamp. But, they can warantee the lamp for up to 15 months if I have proof of purchase. It's a good thing I found that receipt! I sent a picture of the receipt to the customer service lady.

The latest note says that I need to send a picture of the lamp completely disabled - with the cord cut. I suppose that's reasonable. After all, the lamp's dead already. It's not going to make it more dead if I cut the cord. And that way the company knows I'm not scamming them. Then I just need to pay $10 shipping, and a new lamp will be on its way to me!

So here goes nothing... off in search of wire cutters or a junky pair of scissors!

(In the meantime, I've been stitching with my old high-intensity incandescent lamp. Wow, that light is so much more yellow! I'm looking forward to getting my true color lamp back!)