19 - 2 - 19

A VERY VERY PRECIOUS DAY :

today two long-time friends

(mother and daughter)

visited us.

  

A good forty (!) years ago

they lived in our village and we became friends :

the mothers and the daughters (mostly)

(because the mothers and the fathers had the same names, we always

referred to each other as "the other ..." , our children called us at 

our first name instead of mom and dad )

They moved somewhere else in Holland

but we still kept in touch though not as frequently ...

And then the parents moved to France

(without their (almost) grown children)

But from time to time we wrote.

After some sad time

now my namesake is visiting lots

of old friends in Holland.

For the "girls"it was about 30 years since they

had seen each other !

WHAT A SWEET MEMORY-DAY IT WAS !!!

(the connection)

just lovely

A sunny day

the first that let us think that 

SPRING

is not so far away anymore.

(though the rest of February and also March

can be rather cold still)

Ahhhhh !

There was some stitching of course

10 x 10

in black (gray) and white.

wordless Wednesday

buttonhole

Stitching is still "hot"

It's so easy to take with you :

a cloth

a needle (or two)

some threads

and scissors

...

on the boat,

in a waiting room,

at the Alpaca knitting group

(no ... they didn't mind !)

I did some really small pieces

with mostly ONE kind of stitch

buttonhole stitch

Cotton (in fact for crochet), embroidery floss, rayon and silk

on shot cotton (with a piece of felt at the back)

10 x 10 cm

Initially I did one like this in reds

on white cotton with a ragged edge,

but stitching on the edge

on not easy then !

So for the blue one I took a bigger piece of fabric

but still a 10 x 10 piece of felt.

A nearby trip last week

through a foggy landscape

resulted in this gray and white

feather stitch piece.

TAST week 5

The front side of my cushion cover

is growing more than the backside :

too many narrow lines.

Week 5 is the feather stitch

but before that I made a twig with leaves,

twisted chain stitch and fly stitches close together.

Then I made the Portugese stem stitch

around the edges and today some feather stitches at last

The Portugese stem stitch looks a bit lumpy,

because you wind the thread two times around the stitch

I also have now an overall plan

for the colour scheme.

(ha : guess what :

the whole rainbow)

wordless Wednesday

19 - 1 - 19 ... T A S T

The year had a quiet start :

I love that

after all the hussle and bussle of December.

Now January halfway gone ...

I am making sketches again for new pictures,

forming ideas of  "stories" ...

painting them will take a while.

But

I started something else :

T A S T 

No, not "task", though it is,

but Take A Stitch Tuesday.

I found this accidentally

and it reminded of my try two years back :

something similar but abandoned very soon.

Let's see what this year brings ...

An old IKEA cushion cover I found

(the back is almost totally white)

A thread-nest with odds and ends of other

stitching projects

The start of  T A S T  at the back side of the coverlet.

Me, I was stitching on Thursday

and catching up the first three weeks :

chain stitch, fly stitch and buttonhole stitch

(with variations if you want to)

All familiar to me so time to play !

(I hope it's allowed to stitch on other days too ?

at least I did !)

Start at the front ...

(HA, someone in the TAST - community

is using the very same coverlet ...)