Okey Dokey

Quick recap of last week:

Spent two days doing a special project at my LNS for the store owner. We are still discussing payment options. She offered me the Daylight lamp with magnifier, but as I had been eyeing it in black and not silver, I declined. I'm thinking books now.

On Thursday at the morning stitch in, I started my EGA challenge project which needs to be finished for the meeting on July 28th. The challenge is - the view out my window.

Of course the view out my current window is just trees. Green leaves, gray-brown tree trunks, and sunshine. So I started thinking of views out of childhood windows. Which made me think of waking up at the lake in the summer. And suddenly I was contemplating a realistic views. But I wasn't thrilled with that idea. Then I started thinking abstractly - even going so far as to contemplate the window in my mind idea. Oh no. The time crunch made all that unfeasible.

Then I woke up one morning and said, voila! A band sampler - theme sunshine. Words taken from a "summer" song. I started reviewing summer songs. Finally settling on Donovan's line - "sunshine came softly through my window today." Perfect.

All this means that on Thursday morning I started stitching my half-assed ideas, some of which were graphed in pieces, on a scrap piece of linen that fits this narrow oak frame that I have. I did pick up some Crescent Colours for this project. And in an uncharacteristic move for me, I started stitching my band sampler from the bottom because I knew what the bottom was. I still don't know exactly what the top is. The doodle cloth accompanying this piece is getting quite a work out. LOL

AND on Friday I had even more fun. Met up with four stitching friends from RCTN in Baltimore. We took in the Maryland Schoolgirl Sampler show at the Maryland Historical Society. Then the Gee's Bend exhibit at the Walters. Then lunch at Getrude's at the Baltimore Museum of Art in the sculpture garden followed by a perusal of the NUNO Japanese textile exhibit. We managed to cover a lot of ground - from 1700's to 2007. Pretty impressive day.

The Japanese textiles were rather amazing. But I wasn't that impressed with the Gee's Bend quilts. A few of them, yes. The samplers though. Ah, the beauty. The amazing fact that any survive. The variety. More than 100 antique samplers all in one place. Made me happy.

Capped it all off by stopping at the Stitching Post on the way home. Found a Whimsical Elements flip flop design - "A Day at the Beach" - which I had been looking for for the past 2 years. The reason I hadn't just ordered it was that I knew that someday I would just find this one. I bought the Wildflowers that I needed for this and have put it away for the winter blues stitching period.

Also found Mirabilia's "Halloween Fairy." Now don't faint. But this is the first Mirabilia that I have ever bought. This is a limited edition kit and I was happy to find it. I think I passed this by once, but since then I have seen it partially stitched and loved it.

A very good day. Yes, indeedy.