Lee is Closing and More Trade Show News

It's all over the Needlepoint Internet World this morning that Theresa Lee is closing her business. Goodbye to all those gorgeous kimonos, the floral and Asian designs, the fantastic leather goods, and much, much more! Of course everybody should get to retire and we wish the Lee family a wonderful fun retirement and excellent health while we scramble to pick up those items we always thought we'd get Next Year.

The piece above is the Lee one that tempts me recently. Sadly, I can't afford it right now. I'll keep my fingers crossed and keep saving my pennies.

Ruth Schmuff has posted some wonderful photos of things that caught her eye on her blog. Note what she says about Derek Lawford's new line....
http://www.tistheseason.org/blog/2009/06/columbus-market-day-1.html

Homestead Needle Arts has some new photos, too.
http://www.homesteadneedlearts.com/thelatest.html

The Busy Needle posted photos of the new things they ordered at the Dallas trade show in April. Since many of these things are just now showing up in the shops, here is what they saw. I'm told Leigh is showing smaller ornament-sized versions of the new Guadalajara line at this trade show, for example.
http://www.busyneedle.com/Newsletter/index.htm

Amy Bunger and her staff are still tweeting occasionally. Am I the only one that wishes there was a photo version of Twitter?
http://www.amybunger.com/twitter.html

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Beads and Wire

Last night was Wrestling with Beads Night. It doesn't look like much work but to finish the beaded edge of the halo and then attach the pairs of pearls took a lot of time. I set each halo bead individually which is time-consuming. Then I had trouble with the pearls because only 4 of them had holes big enough to insert even the smallest beading needle I own. And I have some pretty small ones!

Enter the wire threader, which you see above in the photo. These are my favorite type of needle threaders. They are cheap and usually easy to find. I used to buy mine at Walmart for 3-5 for a dollar before they stopped carrying sewing goods. I recommend when you buy them you take them all out of the package and line them up on a counter and put a drop of Superglue on each where the tiny wires connect to the base. Once the glue dries it will keep you from pulling the wires out as you tug a thread through a tiny needle's eye. This extends the life of the wire threader a very long time. Usually I have to toss my wire threaders after a year or two because the wire tips are bent, not because I've yanked the wires out.

When I have a bead with a hole that is too small for my needle, I pull out the wire threader and insert the wires into the hole, then thread the bead as if I was threading a needle. That's how I attached the pearls to this canvas. It takes forever, I'll warn you. You have to thread your needle on a knotted length of your thread, and attach it securely on the back of your canvas, then come up where you want the bead to go. Remove the needle, put the wire threader through the pearl, pull the thread through the hole. Remove the wire threader and put a needle, any needle, back on the thread and sew the bead securely to the canvas. Then come up where you want the next bead to go and remove the needle, put the wire threader through the pearl, and repeat. It takes a while to get all this done when you are attaching a dozen pearls!

When I finished I celebrated by adding a few little gold Mill Hill Petite beads on the arch framework to set off the blue Kreinik stitches and also echo the gold background. I think they look nice.

The last step is to put the gold Kreinik border around the outside of this piece. I'll do that tonight and get started on the finishing of these two pieces. I plan to talk about finishing in detail, so pull up a chair and take notes. Finishing is pretty easy if you know what you are doing.

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

More Tweets

You might have noticed I've been fiddling with the look of Blog, changing the titles from pink to navy, changing the header photo, moving some things around, changing the ads and the search box, etc. I have a new header planned but I can't implement it just yet, so today in honor of the "tweets" we are getting from Colubmus, I used a bird theme. This is the view out my window of a pair of blue birds that I noticed yesterday. They may be nesting in this tree; certainly yesterday it was their outside patio as they kept watch for insects, then headed down to the ground to grab one and return to the tree to eat it. They took turns and were there long enough before the skies got overcast and the rains came for me to take photos. In the big header photo you can see them directly under the "ad" and the "en" in Adventure.

Mother Nature certainly gives us wonderful things to enjoy.

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Halo on the Way

As you can see, I've made a lot of progress on the Blue Angel Byzantine Icon from Designing Women. I decided the white wing tips brought out the blues of the rest of the design and looked better overall than the blue Kreinik wing tips I test-stitched yesterday. It can be awfully hard to decide these things. Kreinik brought shine to the party but the deciding factor that made me go with white wing tips was that this piece when made into an ornament will be seen from a good distance. The white wings really added contrast that made the angel more noticable, especially when hanging on a Christmas tree among lights and other ornaments.

I had all the Kreinik I'd pulled out, though, so I tent stitched the rest of the top and bottom corners with it. It looks very dense next to the ligher blue ribbon floss and adds weight to the decorative arch the angel stands under. It is less impressive in the corners but I haven't put the border around this yet. I'll use gold Kreinik for that the same way I did for the Red Madonna piece.

Can you see I've added crystal beads to the spaces between the pairs of wing stitches and started attaching them to the outside of the halo? I've run into a snag with the white pearls that came with these two canvases. I planned to use all them on this piece in the white painted spots but the eye of my beading needle is too big. It won't go through the pearl holes! Today I'll hunt out a thinner thread to attach them with and a smaller sized needle. If that doesn't work, I'll improvize. Don't worry, those pearls WILL get stitched. LOL

Once I finish the halo, attach the pearls and do the final gold border, the Blue Angel will also be finished. I will then talk in detail about finishing them. I'm going to use the same technique to finish them that we are all using for the pet guardian angels we are stitching for the ANG Auction. I deliberately didn't talk about that when I was finishing six angels in a row. That would have been too depressing! But now I'll go over how I am finishing ornaments. It is not really quick but it is durn easy.

Even I can do it!

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Tweets from Columbus

The trade show in Columbus has started and news is starting to appear. I'm collecting what I can find from designer and shop websites. So far the big news is that Amy Bunger and her staff are posting news on her Twitter account about the show. I personally would find it very difficult to confine my messages to so few characters!

You can follow the Tweets on Amy's website if you don't have a Twitter account. The latest message is on top, just like here at Blog.
http://www.amybunger.com/twitter.html

We've already seen that SharonG can make even a painted canvas of a horse's ass look great in her new items on her blog.
http://sharongneedlepointdesigner.blogspot.com/2009/06/ct35-is-newer-canvas-that-now-has.html

There are lots of new designs and stitch guides on Melissa Shirley's What's New section of her website.
http://www.melissashirleydesigns.com/gallery/?bsn=1

Ruth Schmuff has new artists in her line of painted canvases and shows them off here.
http://www.tistheseason.org/ptdproducts.php?catid=216

And here.
http://www.tistheseason.org/whatsNew.php

I have a spy at the show who has promised to write a report for us, so stay tuned for that. As other things start appearing on the WWW, I'll keep you informed. After all, there are probably new tools, new designers, new canvases, new threads and new charts we really do "need." Fortunately, Ruth Schmuff is blogging about her adventures in Columbus. Here's the first posting.
http://www.tistheseason.org/blog/2009/06/were-in-columbus.html

Hugs from the Master Enabler,
Jane/Chilly Hollow
Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow