A New Year and a New Project

Happy New Year! I must say I love having a couple of days off work!! I'm catching up with blogs, and this post will make my 3rd post in two days. Truly amazing. I guarantee all will be back to "normal" soon! In the meantime, it's been so nice to relax and focus on a few creative endeavors.

Many of you already know that New Year's eve marked the official groundbreaking for the Me, Myself, and I Neighborhood Round Robins. I've not broken ground yet - will be doing so this evening - but I spent part of yesterday finalizing my plans. I'll not repeat my initial plans I wrote about here. Instead, consider this post my first "progress" report!

I had a frame in mind that I purchased earlier this year that I thought would be perfect for my neighborhood. It has an opening of 21" x 24". However, when I sat down to place my designs and pick a starting point, it didn't take long for me to realize that I didn't have near enough room for the neighborhood I envisioned. So...I've placed the "big" project on hold, and instead I'm taking a very pragmatic approach to my neighborhood: I'll be finishing and framing each of my historical houses, so the end result will be a repositionable wall community.

Please meet the first residents: the local clergy and his dog, a female neighbor, and another neighbor's cow.

This scene is from Jenny Bean's 1794 sampler.

The pattern is from the Scarlet Letter, an excellent source of sampler reproductions and adaptations.

The floss and 29 count linen in the first picture make up the construction materials. Design size is 10" x 6". The history lessons will begin soon!

Me Too

I know I'm not alone when I say I joined the Me, Myself, and I Round Robin that Vonna has opened. Not like I need another project, but this one was too enticing to resist! Like a lot of others who are participating, I've spent the past week thinking A LOT about my neighborhood. Last weekend I went through all of my cross stitch patterns thinking about the possibilities. Thank goodness it was a long holiday weekend! I finally decided to use design elements from reproductions of historical samplers.

Last night I sat down and started pulling out the houses to see what my options are and how large of a building lot I might need. I'm already concerned about size, but that's another issue altogether. So far, I have five house options out of the charts I pulled.

I'm so glad we have time to plan this project. Putting all the ideas together will be a challenge. I'm looking for a few specific elements from historical samplers that I don't have, such as a church, so I get to continue my research and see what else I can find. Seriously, this planning part is just downright fun!


On the stitching front, my "Olympic kitty" is still in training. I'll blame my early bedtime and too much Olympic event watching for my lack of stitching progress! My husband just asked me this morning if I was going to finish this cat before I start my next project. He always makes me smile. Bless his heart!