TAST Week 30 + knitter winner

The winner of Henya's stitch markers is Sarah, who said "i am a subscriber of henya's blog! i have been for quite some time actually lol"! Congratulations, Sarah! I will be emailing you shortly for your address. Thank you to everyone who entered and are now readers of Henya's blog.

This week's TAST is the Oyster stitch. I just did a little doodling with it. Sharon B.'s image tutorials are very good, but I do better with video. Another great video tutorial by Mary Corbet! Don't know what I would do without her!

One of Mary's recent posts at Needle 'n Thread is about Random Stitch Samplers. What she shows is sort of what I've been doing with the TAST stitches. Five or six of the stitches are not on this sampler, they were done on individual pieces of fabric, for various reasons. 

I had been thinking of cutting them all up and then mounting them on other fabric to make a band sampler, but I decided to keep it the way it is. I will add more fabric to lengthen the piece for continuing the TAST. I will also add temporary pieces of fabric to the sides (after trimming and straightening) so I can fill in more spaces on the sides of the main fabric. For those not experienced in embroidery and may not understand what I'm doing, the extra, temporary, fabric is in order to have support for a hoop in that area.

Enjoy,

Debbie

TAST Week 29

Don't forget to check out my giveaway for knitters! Deadline July24.


This week's TAST is a good one. I did a simple experiment and got through it quickly. Not so perfectly stitched this time, though. Again, Mary Corbet has a very good video for the Basque stitch.

Enjoy!

Debbie

Giveaway for Knitters!

Two weeks ago I had a lovely visit from Henya of Chicken Stitches blog and her daughter. They live a less than two hour drive north of me but had someplace they needed to go to in my neighborhood. They braved the public transportation and made it here several hours before the place opened. We had already planned for them to hang out at my place for a few hours. We started with a nice lunch at a local joint down the block from me and then we walked home.

We had an enjoyable afternoon talking and doing show and tell. Henya brought several of her knitting projects with her and I pulled out a bunch of my quilts to show, along with a bit of my knitting. the current knitting project I showed her was the Mystery Knit a Long by Wendy Johnson. The last clue was released just a little while ago.

I learned a lot while Henya shared some of her expertise on knitting. I knew I would be sorry later when I didn't write down anything when she described to me how to make her adorable little girl's skirt with ruffles! Now I'll just have to wait until she writes up the pattern (hint, hint), which she does do eventually, to sell in her Etsy shop or website.

From her Mary Poppins bag, Henya pulled out a few small gifts for me! One is this little fob, with an 'I Love Quilting' charm, that she once bought and had been saving for me for a while. Then she pulled out a bunch of the knitting markers that she makes and sells in her shop. When I truthfully told her that I'm only comfortable using weightless markers, she said, keep them anyway or give them away. I decided to keep the two for marking decreases because they are lightweight and one of each of the glass bead markers.

All the rest of the markers will be going to one of you! 

*If you would like a chance to win nine of Henya's knitting markers, just leave any comment on this post (only this post).

*For a second chance, become a subscriber of Henya's blog and leave a second comment telling me that you are a subscriber of her blog.

*If you are a member of Etsy, you can have a third chance by adding Henya's Etsy shop to your favorites and leaving me a third comment telling me that you did so.

You have until midnight, Tuesday night, July 24, to leave your comment. I will use the Random.org guy to choose a winner and announce it on Monday.

Only entries that have an email address come up when I hit reply to the comment that comes to my email, OR have an email address within the text of the comment, will be eligible to win. If you are not sure if you are a no-reply blogger or not, go to SewCalGal's page where she explains the whole issue and how to fix it if you wish. As SewCalGal implies, if you have never gotten a reply to comments you left on someone's blog, chances are that you are a no-reply blogger. If you don't use a google blogger account, you can always leave your email address in the body of the comment.

Good luck!

Debbie

TAST Weeks 27 and 28

I combined last week's and this week's TAST. As I mentioned last week, I'm not crazy about the Bonnet stitch and I didn't find it in any book either. But, I managed to make something simple of it along with this week's Up and Down Buttonhole stitch.

I did find a nice video tutorial at Mary Corbet's Needle n' Thread for this week's, the Up and Down Buttonhole. All of Mary's photo and video tutorials are very good!

Enjoy!

Debbie

No TAST, yes quilting workshop!

I'm not crazy about this week's TAST, so I'm going to wait for next week's and try to work them out together. 

But, I did go to a quilting workshop! OK, so I didn't do any actual sewing. I was very behind in the project because I made a mistake and had to go back and repeat several steps.

This week was the annual quilting retreat for the Israel Quilter's Association celebrating it's 20th anniversary. There were numerous attendees and some teachers who came from out of the country. I met several people who I met from email over the years.


There were many workshops and side activities from Sunday through Wednesday, but I only took a workshop on Wednesday. I took Phyllis Cullen's fabric portraits workshop. Here are two of her own pieces that Phyllis brought to show us. You can see a lot more of her work on her blog, Phyllis Cullen Art Studio.

Some fellow students listening attentively to Phyllis explaining one of the steps.

Cindy cutting out her ambitious project, larger than anyone else was brave enough to try.

Danielle doing an impressive job on the thread painting and quilting of her piece.

A work in progress of another member of the class. 

Maybe one day you'll get to see my project...

Enjoy!

Debbie

The next cherry pie

My husband brought home yet more cherries this week. That called for another pie, which came out perfect this time. My son topped it with a crumb topping.

My son also made challah. I'm so fascinated by the dome that develops from the rising of the dough.

After braiding and rising again

After baking

No topping on the challah as one of the children in the family we had over for lunch is allergic to sesame seeds and peanuts. So, to be extra careful, they were just left naked.


Enjoy!

Debbie