Lovely Ladies

This has been a wonderful week-end!

Baby Girl came home Friday afternoon so she and I could go the Piedmont Heritage Sampler Guild field trip together on Saturday.  And we did, spending the day with that group of lovely ladies!

Salisbury, NC, is a beautiful old town, with exquisitely restored and/or maintained Victorian houses. It also has a revitalized downtown, with loads of interesting small shops and dining establishments. Our first stop, of course, was Spring Robin, a cross stitch shop. The owner had invited Carol Sessions of Em-Li's and Threads of Gold to bring an exhibit of antique samplers and reproductions.

There was stash enhancement--I bought a repro from Carol and the fabric from Robin. Baby Girl fell in love with two charts, so they and the fabric and threads for them went into the bag.  Baby Girl has been more interested in knitting and crocheting the last few years--since you can wear things you knit and crochet--so I was thrilled to enable her with needlework again.

We then wandered around the corner to a deli which had outdoor seating--and we took advantage of the beautiful spring day to dine outside. There are a couple of us in this group who are working on the casket class with Tricia Nguyen, so we had fun discussing the information shared with us so far in the journey. It's interesting seeing how each of us is approaching the project, and we have all agreed, even if a casket never materializes, the class is worth much more than we've paid for it.

Then, we strolled a couple of blocks to the Josephus Hale house museum:

Is this not an imposing dwelling? The building itself started as  a girls' school, then passed through several hands until it became the property of Josephus Hale, a physician who lived in the house during the War Between the States. The house then stayed in the hands of his descendents until the 1980's so many of the furnishings and accessories are original to the house and the family. As usual during the time, the windows are literally floor to almost ceiling to allow cool breezes to move through the house.

And the furnishings are magnificent examples of Victorian design. Since the rooms are so spacious, they did not look overdone as they can so easily become. Surprisingly, we could have taken pictures but I was so fascinated, I . . . er . . . .forgot to.  Which gives me a perfect excuse to go back. (Alas, I saw no samplers, but there was a great deal of needlepoint--as there would have been during that period.)

Home again, and of course with all the inspiration from talking to other sampler lovers, we had to stitch. I didn't get a picture of Baby Girl's progress but here are the other lovely ladies from Saturday:

Barbara Jackson's Tea Time basket again-it's been an enjoyable piece that's easy to pick up and put down--and the motifs make it feel as if there is immense progress being made. The saying and the ladies are over-one, and I will admit I'm glad to have that part finished. I'm a little concerned about the lady on the right; her posterior looks as if it's looking for a place to perch. Or perhaps her bustle slipped.  Or, the breeze that is propelling those sailing ships is blowing her skirt back. For whatever reason, she's stitched and she's staying that way.

On with the day . . .I need to get myself ready for a work-related trip, as in, which project do I pack for the two evenings I'll be in a hotel room.  I also need to get myself ready for the Betsy Morgan Elizabethan Etui workshop that starts Friday. Since I stitched the pieces last summer ahead of the group so I could do part of the pre-work programming, I should make sure I have all the bits and pieces together and ready to go. Which means I have to locate the scroll bars again since I needed them for something else--now I have to sew the linen back on to them and find a small embroidery hoop and make sure I have the leftover threads and get it all in one place.  And by the time I do all that plus the chores that didn't get done yesterday, it will be tomorrow.