First of all, I want to thank all of you who have emailed me personally, prodded me on Facebook or nudged me on Messenger or WhatsApp... inquiring about my projects, my hands, my activities and hoping I will continue posting on my blog. I was touched by all this interest and a bit surprised too ... the 'Follower' area has not really changed much over the years, nor are there many messages left here; if I post a link on my Facebook page I get some activity with 'thumbs up' emoticons mostly... so I have often wondered about the relevance of this idea of blogging for me personally.
You see, I am perfectly happy working away on my own projects of diverse nature in my own little corner of the world... I love all sorts of needlework as most of you might know and am passionate and intense about it - like just about anything I choose to spend my time on. I started this blog at a time when I was down with a nasty cold/cough years ago, on a whim and egged on by people on another sampler blog (now defunct) who wanted to see more photographs of my samplers.
I am dealing with another one of those unscheduled cough/fever downtimes right now and decided to try and figure out the issues relating to why I cannot connect to my blog using my Apple devices....
still haven't been able to figure that out yet but, finally, now that my neglected laptop has finished updating a million things, I am just trying this post out - seems like a lot has changed again!
I have surprised myself as to how many things I did complete last year when I was going through my self prescribed 'hand therapy' mode of choosing projects. I didn't realize it myself until I was putting them all away in the 'finished, yet to be framed' drawers or in the ' completed, can be used' drawers. I took pictures on my phone ( not the camera anymore for a while now after I learned about the pirating issues and copyright issues ) ... but still, the phone takes pretty detailed photographs which makes me hesitate to post large or detailed pictures like I used to. Even so, I know that the more recent pictures are not a deterrent to a determined person...which is really a shame. My main reason for blogging on mainly samplers was to encourage people to try other stitches and explore this amazing world of 'needlework'; and many of you have emailed me to tell me that after you read my ramblings, you are now happily over your 'fear' and are busy learning and trying techniques you once never dared to even try.... my smattering of a few crewel, stumpwork, whitework, Schwalm, and other little needlework posts interspersed between the sampler posts have also had the desired effect and people have either started learning or rekindled their love of crewel for example.
Lots to share but have to still figure out all the new things here and the interfaces etc. and see if this even posts. I even have a perfect sampler I started and finished this year that would have been good for a post yesterday, to celebrate Cinco de Mayo!
SO, I will be back to blogging periodically if this works and I can figure out the other issues shortly ...
For now, just experimenting with photos - from old blogposts:
