North Carolina

Card - Applique
Originally uploaded by SewDanish

Just spend a lovely week by the Inter Coastel Waterway in North Carolina. Beautiful weather. A great taste of the summer to come.
Took lots of photos of bark. Some of the old trees had just the most amazing texture. Perfect for being translated into textured, stitched pieces. We have a lot of airports and plane rides coming up and I might do a bit of sketching while waiting. We'll see.

In the begining of our stay my husband was working on his next two Fantasy Football book that are due to be published shortly: 'Fantasy Football Almanac 2009' and 'Fantasy Football Tips' by Sam Hendricks. While he was busy typing away, I did a hand stitched piece for one of my textile groups. The Sindano group is having an exhibition in November and we are all to stitch a leaf. A small piece of hand dyed fabric and a some blue threads were given to us. Right before I left on this vacation, I took a photo copy of a leaf from our garden and traced the outline and veins on to the fabric with a light pencil stroke. So far I have stitched a very delicate piece with tiny running and seed stitches. I really like it, but is debating to add more seeded = shadowed areas. It is a fine balance as I don't want to spoil the feather weight feel the piece has, but on the other hand it might be too boring with out. I think, I have to let it sit for a while longer, while I make up my mind :-)

ACEO from Flickr

IMG_1109
Originally uploaded by SewDanish

I've signed my blog up on Flickr and should now be able to send this (trial) post with photo directly to my blog eventhough I'm writing this post on flickr. This is surely a new thing for me, so fingers crossed that it works all right :-)
And honestely.... I am leaving the computer to join the rest of family. Can hear that American Idol is over.... It is just so lovely to be able to fiddel with a computer again. Not having had our own broard band connection for almost three weeks, then leaving for on vacation, you kind of get a little bit of computer withdraw symptoms. Now I'm gone.... :-)

Virginia

Just a brief note to say hi to you all. My husband and I are now in Virginia having a lovely time with family and friends. It is great being back catching up. Tomorrow we'll head up to the Blue Ridge Mountains. Unfortunately there won't be enough time to fit a hike in, but just being there will be great. Maybe next time. Later this week we are going down to North Carolina spending a week at the Inter Coastal Waterway. Very different nature to the mountains, but there is a lot to be said for long walks on the beach regardless of the weather. I just love watching the pelicans flying along the shore line, fishing.
Today I took a lot of photos of some some old trees. The bark was just amazing. The texture with its deep grooves and subtle changes in colors were just beautiful. Areas had peeled away leaving smooth patches among the very rugged areas. An elderly man was walking his dog while I took the close up photos. I smiled and said hello, but he just looked at me as if I had lost it a bit....
Before I left for The US, I prepared a lot of small hand stitching projects. On the long flights and car drives I simply need to keep myself entertained. So far I haven't gotten a whole lot done as we have been busy, but I'm sure I'll get down to a bit more stitching in the coming days. Better finish this post for now and join the rest of the family :-)

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Notice....

Just a brief not to let you all know that I haven't forgotten you. Unfortunately I won't be able to blog on a regular basis for a while. We are currently having major broad band problems which will be followed by upcoming travels. I will when ever possible try to write a post, but realistically it will be rather infrequent for some time. And here I was having so much fun. Ah well, I guess that whats happens when real life interferes with computer life. Take care and see you all soon :-)
Birgitte

Spring Clean

I have had a sort of spring cleaning today. Not in the sense that I have been cleaning the house, rather that I have been working on finishing a lot of small projects. Over the last couple of months I have been working on several batches of items to increase my stock for Autumn fairs, sales tables at our upcoming exhibitions and for my etsy shop. I needed as well to start preparing for an upcoming workshop that I'm teaching. At my Wednesday sewing group to day, we were having an 'own sewing day'. I had been debating whether to bring the long exhibition quilt that is slowly progressing or to bring lots of the tid bits that needed finishing of. I decided on the latter and I was very productive. One of the things I did was to cut a lot of 1 inch strips of fabrics. I have made a lot of straight forward coiled bowls, but would like explore the technique a lot more. And as I'm teaching the ladies of Sindano how to make the bowls, it is a perfect opportunity to have a good play. You might see the results in my etsy shop later on :-) I like taking technique and see how far I can push it.

Out Hiking

A couple of days ago my husband and I went for a lovely 7 mile hike in the gently rolling hills south of where we live. Some years ago we came across this book with local pub walks. The idea is brillant. You drive to a pub often set in a small remote village, park the car, change into hiking boots and off you go following the trail set in the book. The hikes are circular so you will always end up by the pub and the car again. Sometimes we have a drink or a meal at the pub afterwards, sometimes we just head home. The one we did the other day is one of our favorites. Since we have done it before, we knew the trail, where to cross the fields, at what huge old oak break left etc. It was a beautiful weather and I ended up at times, doing a bit of stop and go, as there were so many great photo opertunities. My favorite photo is the one that I'm including in this post. I absolutely just love the contrast of the fresh lush violets pushing up next to the old dusty ivy leaves. The contrasts are so beautiful, so symbolic. I find walking/hiking very meditative and a fantastic way to clear my brain and just absorb my surrounding. Sometimes if I've come to a grinding hold with a project, a good long walk can inspire me to get going again.