Potted Plants

I thought I was going to get a lot stitched today. After all, I had two lectures on needlework to listen to as I stitched, and that usually means a lot gets done.

Nope, the lectures were fascinating and the photos of the work were engrossing, and I just put down my needle and made no attempt to stitch. The first was with Theresa Baird, who designs the samplers for the original 13 colonies--she just published the one for North Carolina and it is nothing short of amazing. It was interesting to hear about the inspirations for each sampler she's done so far and how she got started in designing.

The second was offered through EGA's lecture series and featured Isabella Rossner, who talked about needlework in times of crisis and chaos. The lecture covered a thousand years of history, starting with the 1066 Norman invasion of England and ending with Covid, including stories about the English revolution and the Great Plague as well as the sorrowful situations arising from incarceration.

So I got my intellectual stimulation for the week, which I decided I really needed after trying to remember if I had applied shampoo once or twice while showering.  Have you ever noticed that some things are so automatic that you don't quite notice whether you did them or not? Or am I showing my age and decrepitude?

I finally got a couple of pots stitched on Sarah Ann Purdy:

I used to be a stitch-the-whole-border-first sampler maker--you know, eat your veggies and then you can have dessert. However, I finally figured out that it was less boring and more interesting to work sections of the border while I was doing the insides. That way I could check the placement of both border and interior against each other. And hopefully have less frogging to do.

And, yes, I'm still frogging Carmen. I will be frogging Carmen until the next millennium.

Meanwhile, in other news, I realized that today is the 15th anniversary of Stitching Foolishness. I never planned to be blogging for 15 years but here we are.

And I plan to continue blithering on.