Peaceful Pursuits...

This past weekend, my husband, Bruce and I spent a lovely, lazy weekend together at home.  We are both avid stitchers.  Bruce is an avid stitcher of Hardanger.  Here is one of his recently finished pieces.  Pretty amazing, wouldn't you say?!

Sometimes, I am overwhelmed by his talent, which I think far surpasses anything that I stitch.  He is so kind though, and says to me, "Oh honey, you stitch beautiful needlework too.  It's just that we each have different interests in what we like to stitch.  What a sweetheart!  He definitely wins the "Blue Ribbons", dont' you agree?

Last weekend, I decided to start something easy to stitch.  I just wasn't in the mood to do anything complicated, so I decided to stitch a pretty little piece called "Cottage Pinkeep Sampler", by Midsummer Night Designs.  I changed a few of the fiber colors here and there, substituted some Weeks Dried Thyme for the trees and flower stems, but I it has been fun and relaxing to stitch. There is just one more row of little pinkeep designs and then a sweet green border with little flowers that goes all around the pinkeeps.  Fun!

We are leaving on a vacation trip to Pennsylvania this coming Saturday, August 14th, with another couple, who are our best friends.  We will be spending a few days with our son, Kevin, his wife, Gwen, and our 6 month old grandson, Emery.  Then we will be off to explore interesting areas, like Gettysburg, the Amish towns, and then on to King of Prussia at the end of the week, to visit the gorgeous botanical gardens of Longwood Gardens, located near Kennet Square.  You could spend a whole day there.  Longwood Gardens was developed by the Dupont family, where their historical home is also located.  We always visited these beautiful acres of gardens when Kevin attended Messiah College.  It was always our very special treat to go there.

So, of course, I am thinking of a new stitching project to take along, just in case I have a few quiet hours, when we are all sitting and relaxing.  Bruce gave me a wonderful design, complete with linen and fibers for my birthday called "Quaker Faith" by Little by Little".  I have already prepared the linen, fray checked the edges, and am about to baste it onto my roller bars to be attached to my mini-doodler frame. 

One word of caution if you would like to stitch this design, the pattern calls for an R&R Reproductions Dark Expresso 35 count linen, which is a wonderful color, but I unfortunately discovered that it is not colorfast!  There was a little mark on the linen that looked like a pencil mark, and I tried to gently dab at it with a a little drop of water on a cloth, and the color RAN!  I was so upset!  Fortunately for me, it ran within the 3 inch margins of the piece where I will not be stitching!  Some lessons are learned the hard way, but now at least I will be more cautious and test the overdyed linens in the future first!  Thank goodness that I didn't try to wash the linen first!

Hope that you find some quiet, peaceful moments to stitch sometime this week, hopefully in a cool place.  These summer days have been filled with lots of sun, and pretty humid weather lately, but now and then, we have enjoyed some cooler evenings, thank goodness!