i've been challenging myself (sometimes) to take my camera off of the automatic modes when i shoot . . . while doing this i get very few decent photos. but this one of the ornamental fruit tree by our front door was at least acceptable enough to demonstrate that spring has finely sprung around here. ~!!!~hallelujah~!!!~ i spent most of this morning doing some embroidery work. the other day i was wandering around in blogland when i discovered www.pintangle.com/ . Pin Tangle is an "online resource, news and information" blog relating to embroidery and textiles by Sharon Boggon, an Australian woman who goes by sharon b. this lady knows her way around a needle (~!!!~) and is willing to share her knowledge with those who stop by. if you like to embroider you should take a look at this one. i LOVE to embroider and have done it since i was a kid so i've managed to learn a quite a few stitches but this blog is going to stretch me to completely new levels. every tuesday there is a feature called "Take A Stitch Tuesday" and a new stitch is demonstrated. there are links to other bloggers who are participating and practicing that particular weeks stitch so we can all see many of the possibilities in using it and share the experience of freshening up our skills together. so this may become a regular tuesday thing for my blog too . . .

a while back i won a give-away from Carolyn Saxby at www.love-stitching-red.blogspot.com. i've said it before and i'll say it again: this is one of my favorite blogs~!~ Carolyn is a fabulously talented mixed media artist who ALWAYS manages to inspire me when i go for a visit. and the cool thing is she actually maintains another blog: www.carolynsaxby.blogspot.com in which she further shows her work and sometimes even gives tutorials on how to become a mixed media art diva yourself~!~

well, anyway, back to the giveaway . . . i won a huge package of assorted art goodies and within that package there were several hanks of various and beautiful threads. you can see one of those in the above photo. thank you once again Carolyn~!~

i pulled out the twisted orange and black thread from this beautiful assortment and decided to use it within my TAST practice.

today i'm stitching on a fabric postcard. feel free to enlarge any of the photos for a closer look at my work as well as some notes that i have included. this stitch is called a "Ladder Stitch" and i liked it's sort of primitive woven(ish) quality. i experimented with incorporating beads into the stitch and that was fun and i'm sure has many more possibilities . . .

i also played with changing one of the edges into a free form curvy line . . .

i now realize that doing the stitch in a furry twisted thread probably complicated it a bit for myself but those threads also add so much in texture that i'm really not sorry that i tried it.


the beads i used within this bit are handmade using colorful recycled paper from women living with HIV/AIDS as well as refugees displaced by a devastating civil war in northern Uganda. i invite you to be part of "eradicating poverty one bead at a time" by checking out this website: www.BeadforLife.org where you will also find beautiful and interesting jewelry made from these beads.

"All proceeds from sales go to BeadforLife, a nonprofit organization that supports community development projects in health, education, employment, and housing to the impoverished in Uganda"

so here you see the finished seam. i added a bit of leftover (recycled sari) silk ribbon and some buttons, stitch, beads, etc.

btw: i took the liberty of flattening the larger paper beads a bit as i didn't want them to stand off the card as prominantly as they were. they weren't easy to flatten and are truly quite sturdy beads. i love the one on the far right that was made from a bit of text.

i have also included a photo of the stitch from last TAST called a Buttonhole Herringbone.

i liked the way that this one resembled crocheted trim and made a lovely scallop as it was being worked. i didn't like that my stitch had "horns" at the top of the curve and so to compensate i added a single red colonial knot right between said horns. i think i like the way it looks now better than before i added them . . . once again, the possiblilities for adding and subtracting various elements are endless.

so here you get to see the card coming along as a whole. there's more work to do but it's getting there don't you think~!?!~