Frankly My Dear

Needle Nook of La Jolla has details of their latest monthly club up on their website. It's a series of small canvas by Maggie that reproduce the childlike and sophisticated art of Frank Bielec. They call it Frankly My Dear.

http://www.needlenookoflajolla.com/events/frankly/index.html

Not all the canvases in the series are up yet but you can browse his Maggie designs on their website to get a general idea of what you might be signing up for. Most of the canvases are slyly funny. Check out the Three Wise Men on page three. The title of their portrait is First Christmas Shoppers. LOL This is pretty typical of the designs, which are not nearly as child-like as they first seem.

http://www.maggieco.com/html/drill.php?category=&pg=1&q=@Frank%20Bielec

They lend themselves to fancy stitches and threads, so if you like your humor subtle and your canvases embellished, this might be the club for you!

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

Blogspot is Sick

I apologize to those who read Blog via Blogspot for the odd things that are happening to the data in the right hand column of this page. Everything has been pushed down to the bottom of the page, then popped back up where it belongs. The list of blogs I follow disappeared, then reappeared. Odd things are happening!

All we can do is wait patiently for Google to figure out what's going on and fix it. Anyone bothered enough by this can visit Blog at the Yahoo 360 address below. I post identical information both places just for this reason.

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

More Hearts, No Flowers

I've continued to add diagonal rows of hearts to Holi's underskirt. In order to anchor the nylon perle and Trabizond silk perles I'm using for the hearts, I started putting the tent stitches (yellow Splendor floss) around each row. That seems to hold the slippery nylon threads better. By the way, the purple heart on the right which isn't done yet is a hand dyed thread Odette sent me from South Africa. It's a very nice nylon perle, dyed an intense purple, that is even easier to work with than my Patina. I have to double it, as it is around the size of #12 perle, but I do like it a lot. The thread is from House of Embroidery and the label says is it rayon and 100% Viscoss. The color is #34 Lavender. Here is their website.
http://www.houseofembroidery.com/h_page.asp

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

Holi, The Tudor Dog

I just started on my 5th household pet guardian angel, the Tudor Dog. If you've been following all of us stitching this series to auction off in Milwaukee at the ANG Auction this fall, you know two other Tudor Dogs are done. Pat has been busy with hers
http://needleartnut.blogspot.com/2009/02/we-have-wings.html

and Margaret just finished hers.
http://cranecottage.com/stitchingblog/?p=876

Note that my dog and theirs all are different breeds. This outline drawing had three different heads so one could customize their angel to their liking.

My dog's name is Holi, after the Festival of Color in India last week. I didn't want to stitch my dog in the same beautiful colors that Pat and Margaret used. Inspired by a photo of crepe paper flowers from last years' Cince de Mayo celebration in California, I decided to use a riot of color. When I discovered the festival on the day I started my dog, well, it was meant to be!
http://www.holifestival.org/holi-festival.html

Here's more color inspiration from our friends in India. Holi's got a lot to live up to!
http://artnlight.blogspot.com/2009/03/kerala-truck-graphics.html

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

Happy St. Patrick's Day! UPDATED

I celebrated by arranging a power outage overnight that turned off the alarm and made me almost an hour late to work, so I have no blog entry for you today except to send you to visit Laura Perin, who is celebrating the Day of the Irish with a wonderful series of postings about her Celtic designs that started last week.
http://two-handedstitcher.blogspot.com/

You'll want to browse a bit, then head to Anne Stradal's blog to see her Celtic penguin.
http://thecapestitcher.blogspot.com/2009/03/happy-saint-patricks-day.html

Everyone wear green for me today!

UPDATE: Squiggee has a slide show of shamrock-themed pieces on her blog you won't want to miss.
http://squiggeedesigns.blogspot.com/2009/03/happy-st-pattys-day-to-all.html

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