July Stitching - on vacation

In years to come, when I look at this sampler, I will think about the long conversations I had with my mother and dad while working on this sampler. Since they are 86 and 82, I really treasure this time.

I don't know about anyone else, but I stitch in memories when I do my needlework. I can look around my house at my needlework and remember when and where I stitched so many pieces. I see my son as a toddler when I look at a crewel surrounded mirror. When I see my flower thread sampler, I think of the yearly trip to the Peaks of Otter in Virginia. My needlework charts my children's growing up years and when I go to the houses of some of my friends and relatives, I see the pieces I have done for them and remember that time again.

When I look at Celle, I will remember this vacation and the time I spent with my granddaughter, Eli (Elizabeth Anne), sitting on the porch watching the birds, and the time I spent talking to my folks. I'll also remember the genealogy side trip to Boonsboro, MD where I saw the same mountains and hills my ancestors knew, and the time I spent with one of my favorite cousins when I researched my Hawn family in PA. In every stitch, I think there is a memory.

I also stopped in Charleston on my way back home and saw the Southern Girlhood exhibit there. It was fantastic and being alone, I could spend as much time as I liked viewing it. I went back and forth between the samplers and a nice little bench out front where there was an antiques magazine on the exhibit. Of course, I would love to have had someone to "ooh and ahh" with, but only a sampler lover would have wanted to take the time I took reading each description and looking over each sampler thoroughly.

June Stitching

House sitting for my sister in rural Virginia provided lots of opportunity to stitch and I got a lot accomplished. My sister has dozens of plants and hanging baskets on her wide wrap-around porches and a porch and yard full of bird feeders. I got books on tape from her library and sat on the porch watching the birds and stitching. Doesn't that sound like heaven? She also has a large flower garden with a goldfish pond and waterfall, benches and ornamental trees and a food garden as well. It's idyllic, but takes a lot of care, hence the house-sitting.

I also got my granddaughter, Eli, 4, and brought her over to make doll clothes and have a picnic on the porch. She enjoyed watching the little hummingbird defend his feeder from his "wife" and "children." He was so selfish, she thought he needed to go to "time-out"! Hummingbirds will share their feeders during the courtship and nesting, but once those hatchlings fledge, it's every man for himself! We enjoyed seeing the fledglings hiding in the bushes and attempting to sneak a sip of nectar.

Just as hummingbirds are more aggressive than I ever imagined, we also saw 2 bluebirds dive bombing squirrels at a feeder. What a shock! I had no idea they could be so aggressive either. Since they don't really use the feeder much, we figured that they must have a nest near; probably in the tree above the feeder.

There was even more raw nature to hear about when Mary Beth and Bobby returned. They have a screech owl box with a tiny camera in it and we have enjoyed seeing the owls care for the little babies, but one night an owl got a cardinal that was feeding on one of the feeders. Bobby checked the owl-cam and sure enough the owls were feeding the cardinal to the babies.

Meinen Sampler for May

I finally have all the siblings names done and am starting the border across the bottom. I didn't work on the sampler as much as I usually would since I was also doing Matter's Choice for a local needlework shop, but I am looking forward to doing more work in Virginia while housesitting for my sister. You can click on the picture for a better view of how the names turned out.

The more I work on this, the more enthused I get. Along with stitching and finding out historical details, I find that I am searching my own mind for memories of Grandma Meinen. I was 9 when she died, but I do remember her. On one visit, we drove up a country road to the house and I remember that she was out in her garden weeding, pinching back plants and picking radishes. She grew the long white icicle radishes. What an odd thing to remember! Still, it tells me something about her. My sister was a baby, so she must have been in her late 70's. She was still hard at work even then. By that time, Uncle Gib was doing the farming, so she didn't have that responsibility, but I am sure there still was plenty to do.

I think this was the same visit when we kids had a wonderful time climbing to the top of a huge haystack and rolling and tumbling down it. It seemed to me to be far better than playground equipment! Life on a farm seemed like the most wonderful thing but, like so many other things, the reality was a lot less enchanting. I can only imagine how much work there was to do.

Celle 1826 stitch-a-long May

It's stitch-a-long time again and this is where I am starting for this month's stitching. Since I am leaving for Virginia on June 2, I'm not going to get a lot done before June 1, but I will have time in Virginia to stitch, so I'm not worried. Having my stitch-a-long group really helps though. I probably wouldn't make up for lost time this month without it. Hopefully I can get another motif done this month.

The latest on the Meinen Sampler

Well, I've done some more on my Meinen Sampler and have gotten the middle names of all of my grandmother's siblings. Two of them had names that were very short and just happened to be born in a very short month, May, so I wanted to even out the lines.

In the process I found out that my great-grandmother kept a diary and that my Great Aunt Henrietta, who is 93, has it. That was a big surprise. I'd planned on getting more information on her, but never dreamed there was a diary. I'm going up to Virginia next week and my mother and I will put our heads together and see if we can find out more information. I'm getting so excited about this project. I only started out with a sampler, but I am getting more and more interested in her life. I'm hoping that I can get my mom to go with me to visit an aunt who spent a lot of time with Grandma Meinen when she was a child. More on this later.

Celle Blog Promises

(many thanks to fodey.com for this wonderful newspaper idea.)

Celle 1826 stitch-a-long

I made a lot of progress on my Celle SAL. I started each motif on the left side so that I can pick my work up and find an area that is suitable for my stitching opportunities. There are easy motifs to do when chatting with a friend or watching TV and harder ones to take advantage of time when there are no distractions. I find it so much easier to work this way. We do this SAL on the last day of the month and the first 2 days of the next. As can be seen from the dates on the photos, I kept on working until April 8th. I just had to get to the motif with a tiny bit of wine color which really perks the sampler up. It is amazing that such a little bit of color can make so much difference.

Progress on Meinen Sampler

I have been stitching up a storm lately. It is so beautiful out on the upstairs porch and I find it compelling. I know that heat and humidity will soon strike Amelia Island Florida and I will be inside forever grateful to the inventor of air conditioning, so I am feeling only a little guilty for being so trifling.

It may be hard to see on these pictures, but the fabric is actually a color called platinum, a very light warm beige gray. It is similar to the tan of this blog. It is a beautiful shade and works well with these colors. I am working on the large lawn area around the cottage which contains numerous odd animals. It is hard to put it down when one of them is emerging.

I'm also finding more about my great-grandmother...clues to the person she was. Mother said that she alwas greeted them saying, "Wie gehts." (I hope I have spelled that correctly.) When she left, she always said, "I go now." This is an important clue because her parents were from Belgium, a country with three languages, French, German & Dutch. Her father's name was Pierre, but he was also called Peter. She may have spoken some French, but this indicates that German was her native language.

Great Grandma Meinen

I need another sampler to work on this year about as much as I need a 6th toe, but the creative juices got going and I just had to get this done. It has been floating around in my brain for a long time now and suddenly, it was just like labor pains. I just had to give it birth. You can double click on the picture to get a larger size and then click in the bottom right to get it big enough to see my wierd animals. I just was looking at a sampler book and they followed me home.

This is the story of my Great Grandmother, Anna Marie Stoffel. She was born August 24, 1873 in Tilden, WI. Her father was born in Barnich, Belgium and her mother was born in Toernich, Belgium, but both of those towns are now in Luxembourg. They immigrated to Wisconsin in 1868. It was a rough land then. While I was doing the genealogy, I realized that Grandma's mother had made that long voyage with 6 children ages 2 to 12. She got off the ship on August 10, 1868 and took a train to Eau Claire, WI and then made the 30 or so miles to Tilden by wagon. Twenty-five days later, she gave birth to her 7th child!

Grandma Meinen came from strong stock and she would need it. Her husband, Peter Meinen died March 13, 1918 at the age of 47. Grandma was 44 and her youngest child was 6. Her only son, Gib, was 11. We don't think much about whether we have sons or daughters, but for a farming family it was critical. Fathers looked at each son as potential helper on the family farm. Land was cheap, but a successful farm took a lot of work. Daughters could help some, but not the way strong sturdy sons could. There were six daughters in the family before a son came along and Peter died before Uncle Gib was ready to take over. It all fell to Grandma Meinen, her older daughters and a hired man.

Just to work the farm was difficult, but in the late twenties, things began to get hard for the farmers. Rains didn't come when needed and prices skyrocketed. Things began to get out of control and then came the Black Friday when the bottom fell out. A lot of farmers had borrowed money when the crops were bad and they couldn't grow enough feed for their cattle. Their ancestors had cleared the land and poured their lives into it, but many of their descendants couldn't hold on. Many men lost their farms or sold out for a fraction of the value.

How did a woman with 7 daughters and 1 son make it on that farm? I don't know, but I am sure that it wasn't easy. It took determination and hard work. My mother told me about her story when I was doing some genealogy and I kept thinking that the story shouldn't die. I remember Grandma Meinen, but I was 9 when she died at the age of 80, so I didn't know her well. She raised a family who loved and supported each other and they were always close. They all raised fine families or their own. What a legacy!

I wanted to make this sampler to celebrate her life. I used a border I found in a French sampler book to represent her French Belgian ancestry. The scene at the bottom is a combination of French & German as was her family. I listed all her children, one of whom, Henrietta, is still alive and well at 93. The house looks like the houses found in the Belgian countryside and the animals don't look like anything I've ever seen, but they are charming. I couldn't find a nice flying bird, so I perched a blue bird on the chimney. He is way too big, but I couldn't seem to get him to leave.

I'm not sure I am finished with this sampler yet, so if anyone has any great ideas, feel free to speak up. I'll probably change it when I start to stitch. I am toying with the idea of doing it on 32 ct. Dirty Linen, but I'll have to see how it looks. The original idea was from a sampler made in 1905 in Wisconsin or Michigan, but I have changed it so much only the skeleton of the idea survives.

There are so many people in my ancestry that I'd like to celebrate. Someday I hope to have my sampler wall full of them...along with my 6 Permin Dutch/German samplers, And they Sinned, Dutch Beauty, all the samplers I have marked in Fine Lines and SANQ and about 50 more! If there was only enough time.

Workshop with Lorraine Mootz

What a great time we had this weekend! Lorraine Mootz came to the Azalea House Sampler Guild. Jill arranged to have Lorraine come to the Azalea House and give us a wonderful slideshow and lecture on her great collection of needlework tools. What a fount of information she is! In the afternoon we worked on an exquisite kit she designed for us from a needlebook in her collection. I can't wait to get mine done and use it for my new favorite John James petite needles. Years ago needles were very precious and well cared for. I like my little needles so well and I can't get them locally so I kind of know the feeling.

Several of us stayed the night at the Azalea House Bed & Breakfast and had the opportunity to have dinner with Lorraine and catch up on her busy life and hear about some of her work at the Celle Museum in Germany. I'd love to see her collection of samplers and tools and I have long planned to go to Celle with a German friend of mine and now I have another reason to put that trip at the top of my list.

Lorraine graciously gave me a consult on my Dutch sampler. I had been concerned about the church and it was so great to be able to talk to someone who has so much experience. I feel better about it now and happy that my instinct was right.

I also made some changes on my sampler again. I'm wondering if I'll ever be satisfied. A little problem with Caleb and Joshua bothered me, so I finally frogged it and changed them. Now their faces are a little more distinct and I moved the whole works up a little. I should have changed it when I first noticed it. It just kept nagging at me. I feel like I have to offer my very best for my 9th great grandparents...gee, I hope they were nice people!

I also added a cute little Weather Pixie to the blog. She tells me how to dress for the weather. She's so cute, I decided to put on another one to show me the weather in Virginia where most of my family is. Click on the pixie if you want to see your weather.

Staats Sampler - Progress

The designing process goes on. I've made some more changes. I knew it would be this way and I enjoy the freedom I have to change things around. I'm stitching down the left side and I decided the deer didn't stand out enough from the fencing, so I frogged what I had and made him a shade darker. I am pleased with the results.

I lined up the motifs with the border and HORRORS! I was off by a row and the mistake was in the very first motif. The little bird's neck is two rows long and I only put one. What to do? Well, it's my sampler, so I just deleted a line. I'm using PCStitch Pro to do the graphing and it wasn't very hard. I did have to juggle the motifs a little bit to move them into position without catching the motifs to the right of them, but it wasn't hard...the wonders of technology! I remember back when I charted everything by hand. I'd be trying to remember that my count was off as I started each motif.

It's going faster than I thought it would. Part of it is the size of the motifs. Most are the perfect size for an evening or two and it's hard to put it away when I am almost finished. I just have to see how the finished motif will look, so I've spent some late nights.

I'm going to a mini sampler retreat in Palatka, FL. It is our regular sampler guild meeting which is held at the Azalea House B & B. A few of us are going down the day before to get some extra stitching in. Lori Mootz is giving a needlebook class and she is also doing a slide show for our workshop. It should be a great class and lots of extra stitching too.

Aftermath of Christmas and New Years

Well, Christmas and New Years are over. All of the memories of 2005 are created and can never be changed. Each of my projects brings back the memories stored while I was working on them. When psychologists talk about memories, they say that odors bring back our strongest memories, but for me, it is my handwork. I have a crewel mirror I made when my son was a toddler. He's 38 now, but when I look at the picture, I see two little areas at the very top that I forgot to stitch because he managed to disappear while I and 7 friends were watching him. He was a little Houdini and he could disappear right before our eyes. I was checking the embroidery for errors or undone areas and I put it down to go and corral him. When I picked it back up I thought I had finished checking it and didn't catch the omission for about 10 years. Looking at the mirror brings back memories of a little blond head ducking around the corner of the townhouses.

After Christmas shopping was great as far as my samplers went. Mom & I went to Richmond, Fredericksburg and Williamsburg. Of course, we went to yarn shops and cross stitch shops. I went in one for some linen for my Christmas Sampler and on the sale table were back copies of "Fine Lines." If you are not familiar with it, it is a historical sampler guild. They were 75% off and I got 7, all they had. What a wonderful surprise! I took the magazine for several years, but then stopped when I started a couple of knitting magazines. These cover almost all the issues I've missed at a fraction of their cost. Now I just have to see if I can get the 2 or 3 between the time I quit and when these issues pick up. I really miss the magazine, but I'm downsizing and space is becoming a problem. Fortunately, they are small and don't take up much space.