sing it with me now (with apologies to gene autry):

i’m back with a needle again.
out where a friend meets a friend.
where stitchin’ fingers feed
on cloth and thread and bead,
i’m back with a needle again.

been through a bit of a drought of late. or maybe it’s just the periodic fallow spell, who knows. won’t bore you with the evolution of it all, just know that i finally picked up needle and thread last night and am happy to report that i’m breathing easier and smiling more. it’s part of my dinner plate series.

couldn’t take it any more, so ripped out all stitching on one plate at my dinner party.

doesn’t look like very much, does it? was surprised at how long it took me to rip everything out – not as long as it took to put it in not once but twice, of course. how many times have i told myself: it’s not about shortcuts or finishing quickly. it’s about pleasing myself with the work.

true, but i am so hoping that third time is the charm cause other plates are getting hungry.

~~~

finished edging on autoquiltography one. now the next fun part can begin.

reworked cup in the few minutes available tonight – the cup on the old-back-now-front/top side. added beaded saucer since granddaddy’s pet grandchild project was teaching us to sip coffee-flavored milk from a saucer. (i never acquired the taste for coffee. to this day, i don’t own a coffee pot.)

leaving steam as is cause i like it better than original idea. tomorrow we trek back across the country to home, so i’ll continue polishing up/off the star using what thread is available.
then/yesterday:

now/today:

3 days of stitching stars – count them THREE days – of stitching over previous messy stitching, ripping and snipping out stitching then just now my boy and i decide we like the backside better.

sigh.

this is a plate in my dinner party, the one for my granddaddy ballard. though the star resembles a starfish, on this plate it is actually representative of law enforcement. granddaddy was a revenue agent and a sheriff who enjoyed playing checkers, teaching grandchildren to sip coffee-flavored milk from a saucer, serving those same grandchildren vanilla ‘cream and small “co-colas” as gourmet after school snacks, playing checkers with saved co-cola bottle tops, and taking care of his favorite plowing mule.

don’t know if i’ll rip out the star yet again or just clean up stray threads and go with the wonky formerly backside version. will for sure rip out cup and redo it, but that’s a project for tomorrow ’cause tonight we’ve tickets to see the blue man group.

well, i think there’s some improvement in my edging stitching. maybe not marked but definitely some. worked on it tonight during rehearsal for into the woods, and i think it’s finally all coming back to me. (i have 16 words – not lines but words – in tonight’s rehearsal page span, so there was plenty of time for stitching.) (thanks, jude, for the reminder about rolling the edge under before stitching. i’d plumb forgotten to do that.) it’s not perfect, true, but may i never do absolutely perfect stitching. decided to leave the awkward, clumsy, just-starting-out stitches in, though. they are at annelle’s name – annelle as in steel magnolias – and somehow awkward stitches that haven’t yet hit their very own rhythm somehow fit.

p.s. okay, i cheated. made the picture a little on the fuzzy size cause stitches look better that way.

i don’t have any more sense than to show you the poor results of my edging efforts today. (it’s another piece for my dinner party series.) tomorrow will undoubtedly be dedicated to stitch removal and search for that ancient instructional book of stitches.

throughout my life, i have shared the table with many people who have nourished me. my maternal grandmother is one.

she loved to cut grass, quilt, cook, preserve foods, make pickles, grow flowers, and enter cake contests. as a young woman, she attended college on a piano scholarship for one year before her father decided there was no need for women to be educated. while her father may have taken her out of music school, but he could never, ever take the love of music out of my grandmother who went on to teach each of her 14 grandchildren to play the piano. one cousin – the one who lived his childhood years in the far away land called new jersey – played the trombone.

which could be the equivalent of the piano in new jersey, i don’t really know.

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