Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Allie's Gift

I received a most welcome gift in the mail on Saturday. Allie had asked me for my snail mail addy last week so I was all atwitter with anticipation. The package was nice and squishy and when I opened it there was a lovely surprise inside. (click on the picture to embiggen - go to all sizes)
Allie's gift
Isn't it beautiful? It belonged to her grandmother who was a world traveler in the 50's. This looks like it might have come from Egypt since it has depictions of the Egyptian god Horus. At first I thought his name was Osiris but after Googling (I love Google!) it I realized he is Horus. We think it was part of a jacket since there is a pocket on it. Whatever it was, it is beautiful and it's from Allie and that's all that matters!! Here's some closeups... each depiction of Horus is done in slightly different ways... they used a varigated thread to great effect!
Allie's gift - motif

Allie's gift - closeup

I'll have to see if I can figure out a translation of the hieroglyphics, too. Thank you soooooo much, Miss Allie... I think I have the perfect place to showcase it!

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I don't have any stitching to show off today; however, I do have a before and after shot in the "what we did Sunday" file. Glenn is determined to reclaim the house from the cat's claw vines that have begun taking it over! This is a before shot of the east side of the house (with ancient air conditioner) from when we first moved in. The vines had doubled in size from this photo!
East side

and here it is now...
East side of house - cleaned up
As you can see, we still have to attack the other side of the wall in the front of the house. There was a big mat of roots, leaves and dirt between the A/C unit and the house... it was nasty!! Some of those vines were as big as my wrist! I'm quite sure I'll be spending the rest of the summer using Roundup on a regular basis on them as they grow back. We think they may be the cause of the small cracks in the walls of the house. Lovely!

Anyhoo... it's a start on the landscaping that needs to be done. The next big step is getting rid of this olive stump...
Olive stump
and it's partner in crime, a mulberry tree that was butchered by the previous owners. We have an arborist coming to take a look at them and the other trees in our yard next week. WooHoo!!

Hopefully I'll actually have some embroidery to show next time... this IS a crazy quilting blog after all!

4 comments:

Threadspider said...

Thanks so much for dropping by Marty. Hey-what a lovely gift you received. It's delightful and you must be thrilled.
Great work hacking back the vegetation in your yard!

Susan said...

That's a really cool piece of fabric. How nice of Allie to share!

Rian said...

What a wonderful gift! Allie's da bomb! (So are you...)

Lin Moon said...

What a great piece of fabric. The first thing I thought was - hmmm, I might have a hard time cutting into that. But then, it occurred to me, you could scan a bit of it to play with - but then it's a nice large piece, so maybe not....