Weekend Progress Report: March 6, 2011

I am posting this two days later than usual ... I had a very long weekend. In addition to the usual Saturday morning classes, I taught a 7th grade mini-course for three hours on Saturday and another three hours on Sunday ... spending 6 hours in one weekend with five 7th grade boys is many things ... but relaxing is not one of them. I also had to lector at Mass on Sunday and help out with the hospitality after the 9:30 Mass ... so when I finally, got home at about 5pm Sunday all I was in the mood for was a glass of wine, a bit of a meal and an early bedtime. The scary thing is I have to teach two more mini-courses over the next two weeks but at least there will be a blend of boys and girls in the next lot. Girls tend to be a little easier to deal with.

Last week, Monday's news of the death of Lisa Roswell, the designer who was the creative spirit behind The Primitive Needle, began the week on a very somber note. Oddly, many of her designs had to do with death: tombstone angels and epitaphs, a catalog of the Salem Witch Trial victims, and similar thematic material. One has to assume she had thought much about death [she was, after all, an RN working in a cancer treatment facility] and had come to terms with it as an abstract concept. At 51, she probably would not have thought to confront death as an immediate and personal and concrete concept ... at least, not in the ordinary course of events. But we are reminded that the ordinary course of events is a fantasy with which we all console ourselves in the face of uncertainty. This is not a predictable universe in which we live. Reminders of mortality, like Lisa Roswell's tombstone charts, are everywhere if we but open our eyes.

The loss of such creativity diminishes us all, but her work does remain: memory made tangible. I doubt that is much consolation to her family at this stage but perhaps, at some later time, they may take comfort in the knowledge that many stitchers continue to bring Lisa Roswell's vision into being with needle, floss and linen.

The Primitive Needle's The Black'd Skie is the Day 15 project of my Crazy January Challenge ... though in light of recent events I may decide to move it into my stitching rotation a wee bit earlier than that ... as a personal reminder to pray for her family as they struggle with their grief.

For the moment, though, I have concentrated on this piece during the past week:

Dragon Dream's The Ice Dragon's Kingdom. The needed flosses finally arrived so I have been able to stitch more of the dragon and backstitch more of the outline. The Ice Dragon no longer fades into the background but is beginning to stand out a bit. I decided to finish stitching the trees first. I wanted nice easy-to-handle DMC instead of specialty threads since the last few days have left me a bit weary. Even so, it seems there is some frogging in my future. I'll be moving onto the wings when I am ready to tackle some frogging and recounting since I can see that the wings are not meeting up with the tree branches as planned. Still, I continue to be optimistic about finishing this second Crazy January Challenge piece and starting on the third sometime before the end of the month.

After I get all the Crazy Challenge stuff taken care of, I am going to pull out Dragon Dreams' Dragon of the Winter Moon and Dragon of the Summer Sky, to complete my quartet. I stitched Storm Bringer many years ago. When I finally have a craft room, one wall in it will be designated as the Dragon Wall since I have many, many dragons stitched from a variety of designers: Teresa Wentzler, Vickey Mackey, Cross-Eyed Kat and others.

Ort Jar: I did stitch the cording onto the ort jar I am using for my March Giveaway but I confess to being slightly wounded ... a little after lunchtime on the 4th I checked to see how many folks had signed up to participate in the giveaway ... with 78 page views noted for the day there were still only 2 people who wanted the giveaway enough to comment. And I thought the thing was such a cute stitching accessory. It just goes to show that I am way out of step with mainstream stitchers ... either that or folks are not all that impressed with my little offering. I bet if I had offered the fat quarter of St. Patrick's Day material [which had been my other thought] there would have been more takers ... or maybe not. I have noted in the past that I am not all that good at gauging which of my giveaways will be popular and which will not ... those that I think will be quite popular tend to bomb and those that I figure won't be all that attractive seem to take off into the stratosphere. I am so clueless! Since that first day, a few more folk have signed on for a chance at the Ort Jar ... so I am feeling a little less wounded.