Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, needlepointers!  I hope 2010 is great for all of us.  To celebrate, I have a photo of my mother showing off her needlepoint ornaments including the new Gay Ann Rogers cameo ornament I stitched for her last November.  Mom didn't bother with a tree this year (she says folks who are 87 are exempt from decorating everything except the toilet handle at Christmas) but she did get out the ornaments I've made her over the years and also displayed the lovely Renaissance Designs Christmas door Mimi and I stitched several years back.  She appreciates all the work and detail in handmade needlework.  I hope you are as lucky in your friends and relatives as I am.

In the photo above you see the Melissa Shirley wisteria teapot ornament and the little Maggie cat in a hat mini stocking which she adores and grabbed from my niece to use.  Mom claims it is a portrait of HER cat so she gets it.  LOL

I don't normally make New Year's resolutions but this year I did decide to not stitch so many Asian-themed designs.  I like them a lot but there are many things in my stash that are not oriental that need my attention.  Other than that, I didn't resolve anything.  Except maybe to keep accumulating stash credits by using threads from my stash....  Anyone taking bets as to when my stash credits will hit 100?

However, Althea DeBrul is making up for my lack of interest in resolutions by deciding to do a huge bargello sampler with a stitch a day for the next year in honor of her father.  You can read about the project here.  I plan to follow along to learn more about bargello and see some amazing and beautiful patterns.
http://bargelloneedlepoint.com/365-days-of-bargello-needlepoint/comment-page-1/#comment-194

Again, Happy New Year to all from Chilly Hollow!

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Santa's Sunglasses

Joan Thomasson's Hawaiian Santa needed sunglasses and I wanted him to have heavy black framed ones like the ones my youngest brother wears since this is for him.

The first thing I did was to tent stitch the glass part of the sunglasses with navy blue Water N Ice, using the kit's enclosed light blue/green metallic for the highlights where the sun hits the sunglasses.  Then I pulled out my black DMC memory thread and cut off a 4-5 inch length.

DMC memory thread is actually thin copper wire wrapped with DMC thread.  You can read more about it here at the DMC website.
http://www.dmc.com/majic/pageServer/0k010101l7/en_GB/Desire-memory-thread.html

This was my first time actually using the thread that DMC kindly sent me to try out.  It is a lot more flexible than I expected it to be, so it was very easy for me to twist it into a rough figure 8 shape, then bent it a bit with the eraser end of a pencil to the exact shape I needed.

As you can see from the long end on the left, the cut end does unravel a bit, so I was careful to cut plenty of this stuff.  I ended up cutting off the short end under the earpiece knot I made and keeping it from unraveling with a dot of my fabric glue.  After that dried, I had to enlarge the hole in the canvas for the long end to go in, but it was easy to couch down the glasses on the front with black DMC cotton floss and easy to tied down the long end on the back with the same thread. After that, I trimmed down the long loose end a bit on the back side and Santa has his sunglasses.

DMC memory thread is certainly something I'll use again.  I have a SharonG bra and tap pants set in my stash I plan to work soon and memory thread (perhaps in silver?) will make a great coat hanger.
http://www.sharong.com/catalog/bras/index.html

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow
Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com
Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow