Still Abit Fuzzy Brained!!

I'm getting back to normal slowly. I'm still feeling abit off. I was going to go back to work today but just couldn't do it. Yesterday I went out to a few shops and did some food shopping, thinking that I was feeling better. But by night time I felt exhausted. My bodies telling me it needs more time to rest. So I'm having 4 more days at home, then next week I'll be working Monday and then Friday for 4 days. So atleast I have a few breaks in between.

I've been doing a little bit of sewing here and there. Nothing to show just yet.

I have to give you some links to some fantastic Embroidery. Go to the blog Fat Quarter or to Flickr to see a beautiful Assisi-dragon piece. Make sure you click on the photo to enlarge it and check out the amazing variety of stitches. I love this piece - I have to keep going back to look at it more to take in all the stitching. Colours are beautiful too.

Also Lisa did the Personal Library of Stitches class with me. She did some wonderful contemporary embroidery samplers for the class using lots of colour and great designs. You can see them on her flickr page . She posted a great photo of all the samplers together on the Joggles class forum. They looked wonderful. I don't think she has that photo on flickr.

Anyway, bye for now.

Things are going well.

Thank you for all the well wishes. I haven't had a chance to reply to you all, but I will soon.

I'm feeling abit tired and sore still. It isn't so bad though as it was key hole surgery, so it seems to be alot easier than when I had my caesarian. Anyway I'm taking it very easy and resting alot. The good news is my husband will be home from his motorbike ride today. Yee Haaaaa!!!! I'm not sure if I'll let him go away again if things like this are going to happen when he goes (only joking).

My mum is still in a fair bit of pain but they managed to get her up and sitting in a chair yesterday. Hopefully things will keep progressing well for her.

I was surprised to see the new Joggles classes are out. I didn't think they would be for awhile yet. There looks like lots of good ones. Go here to look at them.

My Quilting Arts magazine has finally come today, so I'm going to go and relax now and look through that. I love the cover, I can't wait to look inside.

Anyway, I probably wont blog for a week or two. I'm just going to take the time to rest and get over this. See you for now.

What a Week!!!!

Well things didn't turn out the way I thought they were going to this week.

On Wednesday I started getting some stomach pain, which lasted all night and into Thursday. It wasn't extreme pain but it wasn't going away. So I went to the Doctor who referred me to the hospital where they diagnosed that I had to have my appendix out. I was feeling abit scared of having an operation. I was also feeling abit sorry for myself as my husband is away and he was out of mobile phone range for a few days. Anyway, I had the operation very late on Thursday night and I got to speak to Duncan (my husband) on Friday night. Anyway he is on his way home. He may be here tomorrow or Monday at the latest.

The worst thing though was that when my Mum, Stepdad and son were coming in to see me at the hospital on Friday morning, my mum fell over across the road from the hospital and dislocated her shoulder and has a small fracture in her hip. She ended up being in emergency all yesterday and is in quite abit of pain. She is fairly old and has quite a few things wrong with her, so this is the last thing she really needed. It looks like she will be in hospital for atleast 2 weeks if not more. I really hope it all goes okay for her.

I got home today, but will be taking it easy for awhile and wont be working for 1-2 weeks. So I didn't end up doing the stitching I intended to this week. But after I have a few days of getting over this I should feel up to doing some I hope.

Happy Easter

Hope you have a Happy Easter.

My husband is going away tomorrow for a week on a motor bike trip out to Cameron's Corner, where the NSW, Queensland and South Australian borders all meet. He can't wait. He will have my camera, so I wont be able to post any new photos till he gets back. I have to work a few of the days he is gone but I'll be trying to get some stitching done on the other days. It is school holidays though, so if the sun comes out (we have had rain on and off for weeks), we may go on a few outings to the park, etc. Otherwise we may have a few snuggly days watching dvd's.

Personal Library of Stitches

This class is going way to fast. This is my exploration for Week 4. I used about 8 shades of green. I also used a couple of thicker threads and also DMC 6 strands. This thick background is just made up of layers of Cretan stitch.

I then went on to explore some stitches that can be used to represent flowers. From left to right - Algerian Eye or Star stitch, Fly stitch, French Knots grouped together, top - French Knots and Bullion stitch and bottom - Palestrina stitch. I used two different coloured threads in my needle for the Palestrina stitch that has the yellow in it.

This was really fun and I'd like to do a full piece with this type of background sometime.

I now have the Week 5 notes to go on with and then the Week 6 notes come on Thursday. I still have lots of exploring of stitches to do for all of the weeks. This class really gets the ideas flowing. I now understand why Sharon Boggon from Pin Tangle (and the teacher of this class) has such a very long sampler.

I haven't done the last 2 of the Stitch Explorer challenges but I'll catch up on them when this class is finished.

Banjara Patch

This Banjara Patch came in the post this week. The two main shisha mirrors are quite big. I love the beads, bells and coins along the bottom. I bought it from Rayela's Art Etsy Store. I love it. I don't know what I'm going to do with it yet. I will probably put it up on my studio wall. Check out all the other interesting things Rachel has in her shop.

You can read about the Banjara and Roma people in Rachel's post on her blog Rayela's Fibre Focus. It's sad how these people have been treated throughout the years.

I only came across Rachel's blog recently but I've been enjoying going back through all her previous posts - I still have lots more of her posts to explore.

I also found this website called Surya's Garden which is a trust set up to revive the ancient Banjara - Lambhani embroidery skills and motifs. I love how colourful their traditional dress is. This site also has an interesting section on their History - Go here to find out more.