A Good Week and Progress...

Evenin' Ladies! I have a very picture heavy post for you. As always, double click to embiggen.

I am here to report that you can spend a week with your son, his wife and their two adorable (OK, I'm prejudiced!) children and have a grand time! It seemed like a week long party, albeit with several nights of sick kids. Both Glenn and I took the whole week off so we could fully enjoy our visitors and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. There was quite a bit of... ahem... drinking, a whole lot of eating and even more hugging of babies. We went to antique malls and giant electronics stores, and best of all... bead stores (twice!).

Here are a few family snaps from the week for your enjoyment. First we have a very proud Grandpa and a cutie with a cold. Poor Aiden was sick for half the week. A couple of nights were spent with Randy and Beth waking every hour on the hour. I took him at 6am one night to give them some sleep. He and I snuggled into the recliner and slept for a couple of hours. Lovely!


A patient Daddy... the T-shirt reads "My Daddy's Tattoos are cooler than your Dadddy's." ;0) They were watching Glenn play his guitar.


Beth and I introduced Sophia to beading. Beth held the cording and Sophia did a pretty good job of getting beads onto the cord. She got a bit frustrated but in the end she made a necklace. Got to start them young!


And we did a little beading ourselves. I knew Beth liked jewelry so I took her over to The Bead Museum in Glendale, where we picked up a few goodies. We played with beads that night and then realized we needed some crimps so she could finish her necklace, so we went to another bead store... Bead World here in Phoenix. Oh, what a mistake that was! It is a VERY nice bead store... I was salivating! We had fun!


Here's the necklace and earrings I made. I already had most of the beads, but I needed findings and a clasp... and I found just what I needed at Bead World.

Closeups of the gorgeous clasp and the pendant are on my Flickr page.
I love it!

I did do some beading on my blocks before the kids came down. Here are blocks 1 - 4... only block 3 needs more beading. I want to finish it before I move on to another block. I'll probably be joining some of these together soon so I can start the applique and embellishing. I can't wait, it's gonna be fun!

Block 1


Block 2


Block 3 (only partially beaded)


Block 4 (the center block)


OK... I'm caught up now! I sincerely hope this post didn't crash your computers with all the pics!

>>>>>Drive By Post>>>>>

No time for stitching... but my sewing room is clean!!

No time for stitching... but my patio is clean!!

No time for stitching... but my house is "almost" clean!!

No time for stitching... the kids are leaving a day early!!

GAH!!!!!!!!

Thank you so much, ladies, for your input on how you do your beading and embroidering. Quite a mix I must say! Embroidery in the recliner seems to work just fine; however, like some of you, I think I'm going to try the beading on a table and see how I like it. We have a roll around office table that should work well for me. Cool... you guys are great to let me in on your methods.

Oh, Rian? the way to take a picture with your nose is to balance the camera carefully on the bridge of your nose and push the button with the tip of your tongue.

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Actually, Glenn took the picture whilst standing behind the recliner... ;0)

As promised, here are a couple of shots of the detail on this block that I really like:


and


The second one doesn't show up very well; however, I think it would be stunning on very plain fabric.

It's been a slow week for stitching because we are getting things ready for kids and grandkids (WooHoo!) to show up for Thanksgiving... can't wait. I have managed to get Block 4 done; however, since I've put it up here about 3 times already, I won't bore you with it since there wasn't that much change. I hope to start on Block 5 this weekend. Keeping my fingers crossed, anyway!

I do have one other thing for you... I was reading Cherry Menlove's blog last week, and she noted that the V&A has a new exhibition, The Golden Age of Couture, Paris and London, 1947 - 1957 that has some wonderful eye candy. I'm not a girly girl and I couldn't even begin to wear these dresses but they are so beautiful that I thought I would bring them to your attention. Enjoy!

Wrist braces, beading and a request for feedback

I found some wrist braces/splints at Tarjay this week. They are more comfortable then the ones I wore a few years ago when my carpal tunnel first showed up. This time, I got the braces when the symptoms first appeared so I'm hoping to stave off full blown problems. Exhibit One: Embroidery with braces

This is my main stitching position... feet up in the recliner and lap stand at the ready. I think I'm going to have to figure out a better position though... this one makes for pretty slow beading... also, too many spilled beads!

Actually, I was able to do quite a bit of beading last week; however, I seem to have lost my picture taking mojo because the closeups I took were pretty crappy. Even the regular picture isn't that great. See?

You can sort of get an idea of what I've been up to. I'll try and get some decent closeups in the next day or so. There are a couple of areas that came out pretty good.

This weekend we worked on finishing up the display case project. Glenn stained and finished some new shelves for it and I washed all the pottery (by hand... no dishwashers for this stuff!) and when we were done it looks verra nice!

We'll put the glass top on it tonight. We wanted to make sure the stain and finish had quit releasing fumes, etc.

*******HEREWITH A REQUEST FOR FEEDBACK********

Coming back around to the working arrangements for embroidery and beading. I would like to know how each of you (lurkers, too!!!) do your embroidery and/or beading. By that I mean, do you work on your lap or at a table? Do you use individual pots of beads or do you mix them all together? I have probably a whole year of working on this project and I want to get a good system going so it saves me time and effort. I like to be efficient in everything I do and working this way is starting to bug me. So, please comment and tell me what your setup for working on your crazy quilting, embroidery and beading looks like. Even better, show me (and others) on YOUR blog and leave a comment here so we can follow. Pretty please? With pink and purple and green sprinkles on top of massive amounts of whipped cream and toasted coconut? ;0)