What I Did this Weekend and Some Flowers, Too

Okay, so I didn't do all of this over the weekend; in fact, I didn't do most of it over the weekend! This was a class piece from the very first CATS festival in Minneapolis in, I think, 1997. Yes, it's been in the WIP basket that long! The class was taught by Eileen Bennett -- an excellent teacher and a very nice lady -- and I assume she is also the designer, though I can't find that documented in the chart pack anywhere. Anyhoo, this is stitched on some sort of linen of a count that I don't remember (28 I think) with Anchor threads and Mill Hill beads. The first picture is the outside of the needlecase. I love the lilies. There's a bit of the inside of the case on the right.



The second picture is the scissors case. The beads were the hold-up for the past few months. I started putting them on and they weren't lined up properly and looked awful, so after about 5 beads I said "okey-dokey, so much for that for now" and laid it aside. I finally picked it up on Saturday evening and took out what I had done and started over. This time I got them all on and it doesn't look too bad, if I do say so myself.

The outer borders of both pieces are Palestrina knots; not my favorite stitch but they turned out okay. There are bands between the body of each piece and the flap at the top (well, the bottom on the scissors case pic) and those are eyelet stitches. It really was a fun stitch and I absolutely love the design. The next step is to assemble them, and the fabric for that was included in the class kit. I'm thinking that I should have enough linen left over to do a matching fob.

More flowers!

The roses are miniatures but the bush is quite large. I didn't think miniature rose bushes got that big.

Nasturtiums again!

I've also been re-watching the Harry Potter movies, getting ready for the new one being released this week, and I started re-reading the books, although I certainly won't get them finished this week! I'll probably wait a couple of weeks before I go see the movie. I expect it'll be pretty crowded at first so if I wait, it'll give it time for the crowds to die down. I don't know if my sweetie will want to see it, so I may end up going by myself. That's okay; I've gone to movies by myself for years. It's still kind of novel -- but nice -- to have someone who might want to go along!

And speaking of my sweetie, he'll be in town tomorrow so I spent part of this evening making a Key lime pie -- yumm! It's in the fridge now and looks pretty good!