About Me

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West Virginia
When I started my retirement travels in 2009, I wanted a way to share it with family and friends as it was happening. Hence, "My Travel Journal". However I realized I wouldn't always be on a trip and wondered what to do with the blog in between times. My daughter pointed out, wisely, that travels can also include trips to the kitchen to try a new recipe, trips to visit family, trips to my neighborhood Starbucks, or a fun day trip with a friend. You're welcome to join me on any of these journeys! I've set up individual pages for each of my major trips (see tabs above).

Also, I have an Etsy shop where my current needlework resides. The last pieces I posted here were in 2013! So if you'd like to see what I have accomplished recently, go to (and I apologize for having to copy and paste):

www.etsy.com/shop/thedollhouseneedle

I recently added an "Italian Word a Day" thingie which shows up at the bottom of every page. You see the word and can click to hear it pronounced. I've been enjoying it and I think my accent is improving as time goes by.

NEEDLEWORK


To see my mini quilting, click HERE (new photos added 8/4/12)

To see my mini cross stitch, click HERE (new photos added 11/23/13)

This page will have just my petitpoint work and I'm posting some of the pictures small so if you want to see them bigger just click on them. Some of the older ones won't get any bigger cause they're from my website and I resized them before I posted them there (back when I didn't know anything about posting photos except that smaller loaded faster).  Plus, some were probably taken with my ancient digital camera and none of those were very good.  So with that proviso up front, I'll get started.

4/25/17 - When I first created this page I had three items at the end that were UFO's (unfinished objects).  Just was organizing some needlework to take with me when I go to visit Chris and Heather and the grandkids and realized one of those has been finished (and sold!) and the other I have made visible progress on.  So I'm going to post photos of them first.

This is the finished one - a Joan Adams Aubusson pattern.  A woman contacted me through my Etsy shop wanting to know if I had any rugs that had lavender and pink and amazingly enough I was able to tell her I did!  She liked it and told me to finish it and she would buy it so I got to work.

The other one is still and probably always will be unfinished but I'm taking it with me and hopefully will get at least a little bit done on it.  I'm posting the first photo too to prove I got some done. :)

This rug is my largest and most detailed rug so far (although the Chinese one I'm working on and will probably never finish is larger and is on 40 count).
This is a rug I stitched from a Joan Adams chart.  It's stitched on 24 count Congress cloth (if I remember rightly) with DMC floss.  I started it just because I liked the patterns and colors and at some point as I worked on it, I realized that a chair I had purchased years before would probably look nice with it.  The chair is for the roombox I want to make for my daughter January and so now the rug is too.  For right now, though, it sits on my coffee table and makes me happy when I look at it.  The next picture shows the rug with the chair and the desk that I bought at a miniature show which will also go in the roombox.  The desk was made by Gary and Carroll Elmer.


I want to make roomboxes for all three of my children and have already finished Heather's and given it to her (after holding on to it with various excuses for as long as I could!)  It was already all finished (I thought) and then at some point I realized that this next rug would look really nice in it, so I gave her that also.  It is a chart from an old magazine I came across somewhere and is stitched on 22 ct. canvas, again with DMC threads.  At some point, I'll get a picture of her roombox posted on the dollhouse page.  (I have no idea why this one won't "center" but it won't!)
This last rug is one of the old pictures (which is why it looks so splotchy) and is another Joan Adams rug, this one stitched on 40 count silk gauze with silk threads.  I made it quite a few years ago and ended up selling it at a miniature show.  I'm posting two pictures of it too - the desk and chair stayed with me when the rug when the rug was sold:

Two more 1/12th scale rugs - the blue and white is on 22 count and I think the flowered one probably is too.  These were made many years ago also and are quite simple, but attractive enough.  The three little bits on top of the blue and white rug are tiny 1/4" scale rugs that I cross stitched onto red 28 count fabric.  I made up the "oriental" designs myself and fringed them with a knotted fringe.

Those are all my finished rugs (at least all I took pictures of)...and the only other pictures of finished petitpoint pieces are these two:


The colorful cat was from a painted canvas I bought and then used that to stitch the design onto 40 or 48 count gauze.  It's awful that I don't keep better track of this stuff.  Anyway, the first one is a close-up to give a better idea of the design and the the other one is how I framed it.  the colored border is quilted fabric with black braid surrounding the petitpoint.  Then a black mat, and a black frame (not done yet when I took the picture.


And this last one I was quite pleased with.  I wanted some way to display it and ended up making this little stand from scratch cause I've seen kimonos in real life displayed this way.  This design was also from a painted canvas but it's stitched on 22 count canvas.

Oops, I almost forgot this little doober - this was one of two Mother Goose patterns that I thought made cute little rugs for a child's room, although one woman bought one to put on a little easel on her desk...






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