Twiggs

I meant to have this ready early this morning but the cat threw up and my morning went downhill from there.

This link shows beautiful finishing done by Twiggs of Savannah. Check out that chair! Those stairs! Those darling kids with their stockings and then the dog canvases! Lovely eye candy finished beautifully. As I am about to finish up the Three Women and a Peach Canvas, I really appreciate good finishing.

http://twiggsofsavannah.com/display.cfm/page/BragPage.html

Tonight I hope to have time to post the photo of ice on the Shenandoah River that I intended to illustrate this blog entry. The picture was taken last Saturday about a half mile from my house in Chilly Hollow.

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

America the Beautiful

Gay Ann Rogers filmed Tony Mineri leading the students at Calloway in singing America the Beautiful. Very appropriate for today, don't you think? Head to her website and look for the Callaway link, then click on Callaway 12.

http://www.gayannrogers.com/

Good luck to President Obama. Hope he doesn't need it.

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

More TNNA Reporting, This Time From SharonG

SharonG reports from TNNA about Brenda Hart, "She is working hard on book 4. It will be a 5x11 book. The size is easier to carry. I saw the cover and her draft stitches on her computer. It will be great. Brenda is very creative."

Personally, I can't wait for Brenda's new book. I have all of Brenda's stitch books and use them a great deal. In fact, I've just been browsing them looking for stitches for the Baroque Fish's face. I want to do scales maybe.

Sharon continues, "There is a new canvas from Zweigart. Tweed and it is stunning. The warp threads are white and the weft is black. Wait till you see it. Leigh painted some bathing beauties ala 20's on it. I think it would make a great handbag canvas because the unworked canvas would look so much like tweed fabric. "

The illustration for this blog entry is a custom canvas of Marilyn Monroe by Leigh, by the way.

About her own designs, SharonG says she is bringing back some of the lovely fountain pen canvases and that "My plan is to concentrate on designs that will retail for under $100. Shops tell me the consumer is looking for smaller canvases they can complete without a major commitment of time and $$. I know our shops appreciate everyone of you and others who love what we love...needleart."

If you aren't familiar with SharonG's fountain pen canvases, here are some of them. One lives in my stash, waiting for me to come up with wonderful threads and stitches for it.
http://www.sharong.com/catalog/pens/index.html

I'm very grateful for the reports from TNNA!

UPDATE: Colleen has updated her shop website with new TNNA items.

http://www.theneedleworks.com/new.html

And Amy Bunger talks about a new book from Patsy Snyder.

http://www.amybunger.com/catalog/item/6262613/6670444.htm

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Our Intrepid Reporter Colleen

Needle Works of Austin's blog is posting photos of new items Collen the shop owner saw at the TNNA show and ordered. It's not always clear who designed what but given how tired the shop owners must be, I am surprised Colleen even managed to post news on her shop blog. But we are very glad she did!

http://theneedleworks.typepad.com/the_needle_works/2009/01/day-one-of-market-did-i-get-into-trouble.html

http://theneedleworks.typepad.com/the_needle_works/2009/01/cant-sleep.html

http://theneedleworks.typepad.com/the_needle_works/2009/01/more-marketmy-mind-has-been-racing-all-night.html

Keep up the good work!
Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Another Day, Another Halo

One of the things I thought I'd play with while stitching six different household pet guardian angels was the halos and the wings. I am going to attempt a different halo and a different wing treatment on each angel.

This may not be easy as I may run out of ideas and I do love how the Victorian Parakeet's wings turned out, but I am going to try. The silver (Kreinik #4005, my favorite silver!) halo was created by tent stitching an oval floating above the Baroque Fish's head, then stem stitching right on top of the tent stitches to give the halo a bit of Ooomph and dimension. Although you can't see the pretty silver shine, I think this is a very nice halo. (Although Pat's halo for the Georgian Rabbit angel on her Needle Art Nut blog is better. See the link and judge for yourself.)

http://needleartnut.blogspot.com/2009/01/tickled-purple.html

By the way, Three Women and a Peach is mostly assembled. The piece needs to spend a bit of time under heavy weights to both glue the additional magnets I put inside and flatten the quilt batting a bit. I will leave it alone a day for this to happen but hope to have everything together later this week. (I hope. Best laid plans and all that!)

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow