I still only have a single project in this week’s WIP queue, which is what I prefer! However, what I don’t prefer is that it is last week’s TAST. Boo. I have it all finished but the little motif challenge. I have some ideas for that but I just couldn’t pick which might be best done so I want to let them swirl in my head for a bit yet.

This week’s TAST is the buttonhole wheel. I am not sure how I feel about my decision just yet, but right now I am deciding not to stitch up a pennant for it because I included some variations on the second challenge of TAST: buttonhole stitch. I know a whole lot more could be done than what I have in my wiggly seaweed there, but I also know that with my archaeological responsibilities, I needed another week off from TAST and I’d rather skip a familiar stitch now, than be forced to skip a new stitch in the future. (I had some reports to write up – they’ve been a long time coming, I’m afraid!)

In better news, the guild met last night and a couple of neat things happened! First, I was gifted several things by one of my new friends there (the one who already gifted me with some amazing fabrics; I ended up gifting her the little mouse ornament as a thank you). She received duplicate copies of her magazine subscription so I have now been introduced to the super neat-0  Stitch magazine. She also let me leaf through her latest Inspiration magazine; I knew it would be great since I have been receiving their newsletter for some time now. Alas, without a “real job” I am still on my self-imposed spending hiatus so I cannot justify signing up to either. Sigh.

She also gifted me a lot of Brazilian threads and some old books to teach me the technique. I never knew, from the internet searches, what Brazilian embroidery is but now I think I do! I think it is using rayon threads – mostly perle cotton style (as in they come in different weights but are named differently than with numbers corresponding to thickness) rather than six-stranded floss (which I believe is the only rayon thread DMC carries, but I might be wrong on that). These threads are also Z-twisted rather than S-twisted (Nordic Needle has a great article about the difference). And the goal is to make a somewhat 3D texture in the embroidery. Nothing as significant as stumpwork, but the culmination of using french knots, buillon stitches, couching, and some specialty stitches, all of which bring the threads up off the ground fabric.

Second, I got a huge compliment from one of the other members. She loved Mabel the Raccoon and told me she always looks forward to what I bring for Show-and-Tell. That made my day:)

And last, I might be redesigning the guild’s website. Another avenue of crafty ambition, no?

Oh, and I did design a postcard for my work down at the Daniel Boone National Forest. It isn’t finished yet, and if I showed it anywhere, it would be on my anthropology blog, but just because I haven’t finished stitching this doesn’t mean I haven’t been creative! I took a photo and turned it into a line drawing with some cool texture effect. Having never formally learned Adobe Photoshop, I still surprise myself!