More on Mermaids and my linen collection.

Barb from Woof Nanny left a comment on one of my earlier posts here and I am starting a new post to reply, as it will be a bit too long-winded to leave as a comment. Here is Barb's comment: Adorable. Were mermaids a pattern at one point (Vogart or something)? I would make this. I'll actually be attempting embroidery again soon--a swap item. I just ordered the pattern. Have you considered buying and selling linen for a living? You seem to love it so. Or document items in a book or a museum?
Well, I really have no idea if there were any transfers around for Mermaids. I don't recall seeing anyone in the packets that I have, but I don't have anywhere near the amount of transfers that are available in the USA. That is why I grabbed this towel when I saw it on eBay - so unusual as well as just plain cute!
No, I have not considered buying and selling linen for a living - I collect it purely because I never tire of looking at it and handling it. As a stitcher myself, I have a deep appreciation of the work that has gone into all my cloths. I have sold a few of my bits on eBay and elsewhere, when I've culled my collection and decided that I don't want some of them any more.
As for documenting my collection; a few years ago, I spent over a hundred dollars on an American computer program called "Collectify" which is apparently widely used by museums and serious collectors to catalogue collections. It is a fantastic program, but because of the time it would take to put my linen on it, I've never got around to doing anything about it! I've thought about doing it by hand too, but again, it would be such a big undertaking that I'd have to spend the rest of my life doing it. I'd much rather just enjoy looking at my stuff, and showing it to other people!

Additions and deductions to sidebar favourites.

Now and again I make some changes to my list of favourite blogs - mostly because it gets far too long, and like all of you, I just don't get time to go through the whole lot. Anyone who notices their blog has disappeared from the list - please don't think I don't love you any more! You are now on my IE Favorites list instead. I just like to put some New Faces on here sometimes. One such new face is Lillian from South Korea. Her blog Hand Embroidery Group shows the work done by the members of her Yahoo Group of the same name. It is all gorgeous, (like every other needlecraft blog I look at!), but while you are there, notice the background 'wallpaper' - Crinoline Ladies! How cute is that!

Embroiderer's Guild Xmas Mail Art exchange.

Danielle from A Peacock's Feather made a mail art envelope for me some time ago, and I have been showing it to all and sundry ever since. I took it into the Guild a few months ago, and the ladies who saw it thought it was fabulous. They decided on the spot that the Guild should organise a mail art exchange, and they got 12 participants very quickly (including me of course). Below is a picture of the envelope I made (with the address blanked out for obvious reasons), and below that is a different kind of mail art, that I received from J. my swap partner. She stitched this and put it in an ordinary envelope to send it, so I guess it isn't true mail art, but I love it just the same!
I was talking to W. today, who organised this first exchange and she was saying that there would have been many more participants, but the country members didn't find out about it until after the closing date. So we may organise another one around the middle of the year, when people don't have the Xmas rush to contend with, and they will be given more time to think about what they want to make. In the meantime, I suggested that all our mail art creations be put on display at the Guild early next year so members can see what we did.

My Mail Art envelope

This is the first mail art envelope I have made, and I am quite pleased with it. The recipient was absolutely delighted with it! Simple design, but a lot of work involved, lining the outer envelope, etc. Still, I know how to do it now, so hopefully the next one won't take as long!

Mail Art

J. made this for me for our Embroiderer's Guild Xmas Mail Art swap.

Statistics..

After the initial novelty wore off, I hardly ever look at the stats. to see who is reading my blogs and where they are from. But with the silly season in full swing, and people being busy with other things, naturally blogging would have a low priority listing for most people at the moment. I've noticed I'm not getting as many comments as I used to, and put this down to more reasons than Xmas. Firstly, I haven't had as many pictures in here as I did earlier, so of course there is nothing to comment on! Secondly, I don't spend as much time visiting other blogs as I used to, although I keep tabs on everyone in my sidebar at least once a week.
So I decided to check out my stats, and after my first shock of discovering I'd hit the 53,000+ mark (I was going to have a blog party when I hit 50,000!!), I went into the Stats Counter site to see who was visiting me. In the past week, I had 30 visitors from the U.S.A., 29 from Oz, 13 from Turkey, 7 from Honduras and Czech Republic, 5 from India, 2 from the U.K. and Canada, and 1 each from Germany and New Zealand. Well! How nice to know there are so many of you still dropping in, and assuming you have your own blogs, I would be delighted if you would leave even a brief comment to say hi, so I could click on your link and visit you in return.
I think we have an option to open our blogs up for anyone to comment on, regardless of whether they have their own blog or not...I thought about doing this, as I have had emails from people who don't have blogs, but wanted to contact me about mine. There must be a lot of people who read blogs and would like to comment. What do you think?

Smaller Crinoline lady on tablecloth

Large crinoline lady on cloth

Possibly my last tablecloth from eBay...

I HAVE to stop buying linen on eBay - I can't afford it now, and my linen room is full to overflowing. But if this is my last crinoline lady, it is also the best in my collection to date. I doubt if it has ever been out of the linen cupboard since it was stitched (in England I assume, since it came from there). It is on pristine white linen, with a large crinoline lady in each corner, each one in different colours. Between them, is a smaller lady. The stitching is simply perfect - a number of different stitches were used to maximum effect. If you would like to see the other corners in the different colours, leave a comment here and I will scan them shortly.

Right hand side.

Left hand side.

IT'S FINISHED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

At 11.50 pm on Tuesday 12th December, I put the last stitch on the Christmas cross stitch commission project. Unfortunately the whole thing doesn't fit on my scanner, so I have done one scan lengthways, with one end cut off, and two more scans, one of each half, right and left.

Hand towel with mermaids.

This is one of two hand towels I received recently from the USA. The other one is a peacock, so it is on my other blog (Patra's Embroidered Peacocks), along with two other embroidered peacocks that have arrived recently.

Guild project as at 30th November.

The word 'greetings' has to be finished off, then I'm back on all those green trees! Hopefully I'll be able to do them faster than I did the left hand side, as I didn't have the tapestry frame then, and I was finding it very awkward to handle while stitching.

Changeover.

Well, I've done it. I thought I'd better - otherwise I may have lost everything! And it was quite painless, really. What am I talking about? The change to Blogger beta, of course! I dislike change in my life ("if it ain't broke, don't fix it") but Blogger was sounding pretty threatening on the Dashboard: "you MUST change before 2007 otherwise there will be dire consequences" (or words to that effect). I was going to change only one of my blogs over, but it was all or nothing, so I went along for the ride and here we are. Can't see any difference at this stage; hope it doesn't have an adverse effect on any of you who read my wafflings!

This is where I am at with my primary UFO (I say primary, because I have so many of them, but this is probably the one I want to get finished first, mostly to get hubby off my back!)
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I'm pretty pleased with my progress on this picture. I'm about half way now, so if I keep going at this pace, I should have it finished by early December, which is when the client wanted it. Crossed fingers!
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Some more teacosies for my collection.

Here are five more teacosies that arrived this week via eBay. I have also put a new picture on Patra's Peacocks, for those of you who are keen on peacocks. Diana from The Lone Beader left a comment regarding the pattern mistake on my Christmas cross stitch project. She suggests that I leave it as it is because trees are all different in reality! Sorry, Diana - I've already fixed it! For anyone who has not seen Diana's blog on her beading, I strongly recommend that you have a look. She creates absolute masterpieces using beads to make up pictures.

Very old whitework teacosy, difficult to scan, but I did it using grayscale, and it's the best I can do.
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Gorgeous old art deco style. I have a couple of doilies that match this - just love finding matches for my linens at a later stage!
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