White Threads

the mail out begins

Now that I am back from Beating Around the Bush, the HUGE mailout begins! Today I will start sending out pre-publication orders of Portuguese Whitework. There is a huge pile of orders to go out – thank you to everyone who pre-ordered! – so it will probably take some days to get through them all.

I am also waiting on the bubblewrap mailing envelopes to be delivered, as I have only a few left in my old box. They should arrive today, but if for some reason, they don’t, the mailing will grind to a halt until they arrive!

So if you’ve ordered a copy of Portuguese Whitework, hopefully you’ll be holding it in your hot little hands quite soon. If you’re not in Australia, the post will take a little longer to get to you, so please continue to be patient.

When you get your copy, I would love to hear what you think of it. If you find any mistakes (I really hope there aren’t any, but it is a fact of life that these things sometimes slip through) please let me know, and I will correct them in the next print run.

It would help me greatly if you could blog about the book, or add your review to websites which accept book reviews, such as Amazon or Nordic Needle. I’d be forever grateful for your assistance with this!

I am not sure when the bulk order will reach my UK/Europe distributors, but it will hopefully be soon. The US stock is supposed to get to my distributors there quite soon as well, so hopefully you will also start to see it out there in the shops very soon.

(I do also have my daughters home from school today, as although the school holidays have ended, they both have pupil-free days where the staff do professional development. This means that I will not be working for the whole day, but combining mothering duties with work!)

I’m back!

I had a WONDERFUL time in Adelaide at Beating Around the Bush. Enjoyed the class, and market day, and loved hearing Jenny Adin-Christie last night at the gala dinner.

I really enjoyed spending time with the other tutors, socialising and talking shop. I was just a little overawed to meet some of the international tutors such as Betsy Morgan from USA, and Trish Burr and Hazel Blomkamp from South Africa – what gorgeous ladies they are! I shared a room with Tanja Berlin from Canada, and we had great fun together. And of course it was lovely to spend time with some of the other Australian tutors as well, such as Marg Light, Alison Snepp and Julie Graue. (None of them have websites, so I can’t give you links.)

The students in my Mountmellick embroidery class were a fantastic bunch – really great work was produced. We also shared hints and tips amongst us, including ones that the students had learnt from other teachers earlier in the week. They loved the thread the needle with a piece of paper one that I showed them.

The market day went really well: I launched my new book, Portuguese Whitework, and got back to my stand to find it absolutely crowded with ladies wanting to purchase the book. 😀 It was so nice to hear feedback from happy customers who already own some of my books, throughout the day. One lovely lady said “thank you for all you do for us, with your books” – what a nice thing to say to someone!

Thanks to Sally and Fiona and the rest of the team from Country Bumpkin for organising such a wonderful event!

If you’ve rung me or placed and order since Monday, these will be attended to next week. I apologise for the delay caused by my absence.

Adelaide awaits

Well, I’m not sure that Adelaide is awaiting me, but I’m certainly looking forward to seeing it!

I’m off to Adelaide for Beating Around the Bush today. This afternoon I’ll be setting up my stall for the Market Day tomorrow. And then a Mountmellick class on Thursday and Friday. It should be great fun!

I don’t think I’ll be posting until I get back.

Easter break

I had a lovely Easter, away with members of my extended family, at a conference. I was on the tech team, learning new skills such as how to operate a semi-professional video camera. Not something I ever expected to learn to do, but when you’re rostered on to do that, its sink or swim. I think I managed ok!

One of the talks at the conference touched on forgiveness. I have often struggled with what forgiving someone actually looks like. It was suggested that forgiveness is different to pardon. While pardon means it is as though the act never happened, forgiveness means there are still consequences, but the forgiver turns from being “against” the transgressor, to “for” the transgressor. It was a new idea for me, and very helpful.

It is now Easter school holidays, and I am squirreling myself away and getting stuck into preparing for next week’s Beating Around the Bush.

I am really looking forward to the Stitchers Fair on Wednesday, where the plan is that my new book, Portuguese Whitework, will be launched! However, it hasn’t been finalised yet, so I have no idea of the details. I’m rather in the hands of the organisers there!

On Thursday and Friday I’ll be teaching my Mountmellick Lily Cushion class. We will have lots of fun playing with stitches. I always enjoy teaching Mountmellick classes!

For those who will be at Beating Around the Bush next week, please do come and introduce yourself to me. I don’t want you to be shy – I WANT to meet you!

birdcage hair

Ok, ok, I know you’ve all been dying to hear… I am pleased to report that Rainbow Girl did indeed win a prize at Thursday’s crazy hair day. This year’s creation was a birdcage – my husband’s brilliant idea. There was very stiff competition amongst the other students, so we were not at all sure that she would win, but once again one of the awarding teachers made a beeline for her to give her a chocolate rabbit!

Apparently it was an extremely comfortable to wear creation, as she happily kept it in for the whole day, even going up to the shops with it in place. She said she was looking forward to people looking at her. She’s such a shy little thing… 🙂

crazy hair day 2012

Today being the Thursday before Good Friday, it is crazy hair day at school. The Reader has now gone off to another school, and Rainbow Girl has now moved into the part of the school where she participates in crazy hair day. Thank goodness they never overlapped, meaning we had to do TWO lots of crazy hair before school!

We have a bit of a reputation.

Ferris Wheel hair from 2011

When The Reader participated in crazy hair day, she won, 3 years out of the 4 that she was in it. You may remember our ferris wheel creation from last year.

One of the teachers told me last week that they’re expecting big things from us again this year. And many students have been asking Rainbow Girl what she’s having. All will be revealed later today – we always keep it a secret beforehand. But we do know that several families who have previously done well are no longer at the school.

Can you tell we play to win? This is one instance where a school assignment does not have to be the student’s work. How could they do their own crazy hair? It is completely expected and allowed for parents to go completely over the top.

The husband came up with an excellent idea on the weekend, and we were up rather late last night making the armature for it. Rainbow Girl has just woken up, seen the armature and come in to me, VERY excited!

Its going to be a fun day, and we’ll see if we can uphold our reputation!

getting ready for Beating Around the Bush

I’m spending a lot of time at the moment preparing for Beating Around the Bush. I’ve got kits to organise for my class, and stock to prepare for the Market Day. So if I seem a little absent from here over the next week or two, that is why!

Today I’ll be organising for the printing of a large poster featuring my Portuguese Whitework tablecloth. Because the actual tablecloth will be at the Royal Easter Show, I won’t have it with me at BATB. So a large photograph of it will have to wow you instead!

This coming weekend I’ll be celebrating Easter, remembering Christ’s death for me, with his sacrifice meaning I can be right again with God. What amazing grace and mercy!

tablecloth on show

I’ve entered my Portuguese Whitework tablecloth in the Sydney Royal Easter Show this year. I dropped it off at the showground a couple of Saturdays ago. We were late in the day on the last day of drop offs, so I could see what was there in the way of competition.

There didn’t seem to be much embroidery this year. The show seems to be getting smaller and smaller in terms of embroidery. Of course, though, it wasn’t actually all properly displayed yet, so there may have been much more that was wrapped up still.

I had to fill out a form with my entry and one of the questions it asked was “Why do you enter things in the show?” This was an interesting question. Why DO I enter things in the show?

I think my answer is along the lines of peer review. I have, in the past, won at the show, and my work has even been in The Cabinet of Excellence. I guess I enter things to give myself an idea of how my needlework skill compares to others’ skill. If I do well, it tells me that my work is still of a high standard.

However, being realistic here, I suspect that skill is not all that they are measuring. A tiny piece of work done with AMAZING skill may not win against a much larger work with slightly less skill. So I wonder if quantity of work also counts as well as quality.

It would be very interesting to have the perspective of a needlework judge actually.

Anyway, if you go to the show, you might like to head to class 62 in needlework section of the Arts and Craft Pavilion, and see if my tablecloth is on display. It will probably be in amongst a fairly disparate group of articles, as the class description is “Embroidery work. Exhibitor’s own design, with or without machine embroidery.” That was the best category I could find for it. (Actually, that’s one of the rather annoying things about the show – it IS hard to find the appropriate category for a lot of needlework, unless it is something standard like Hardanger or cross stitch.)

I’m not sure if I’ll get to the show this year – it is doubtful with the amount of other things I have on – so I’m not even sure when I’ll find out how it did! The Sydney Royal Easter Show starts this Thursday, 5th of April.

Thread a needle easily using a piece of paper

I recently shared this tip with one of my classes, and it was new information to many of them. While I have shared it previously on my blog, it seemed a good idea to share it again.

Sometimes you just can’t seem to get that thread through the eye of the needle, and you don’t have a needle threader handy. That’s ok. If you have some paper, you’ll be right!

To thread a needle with paper, cut a very narrow strip, about 1cm/0.5 inches long. It needs to be narrow enough to fit through the eye of the needle. Then fold the paper in half, insert the end of the thread into the little paper “pocket” so that the thread end sits inside, towards the fold.

Hold the folded paper (with thread inside), and feed the folded edge through the eye. It gives a “sharp” edge to thread through the eye, taking the thread with it.

This doesn’t work for needles with very narrow eyes such as straw needles, but if it helps you out with threading other needles, then that’s a bonus! Its cheap and easy, and if you lose your precious piece of paper, you can always cut a new one!

Gymnastics report

Just a little extra post to report on today’s gymnastics exploits.

The Perfect Bun was still perfect at bedtime this evening. I think she’s got buckley’s of it still being Perfect in the morning too, but she is ever hopeful…

But to the real results of the day…

1st place on Beam! It was a huge improvement on the trial, where Rainbow Girl came 10th against exactly the same cohort. I think all her hard work on improving during the three weeks between the two competitions definitely paid off!

For those who understand anything about these things, you might be as shocked as I was with her beam score: 15.4! I kept thinking they must have transposed the 4 and 5, and that at any minute a correction would be put up on the score board. But it didn’t so it must have been the right score! I believe it was the highest score on any apparatus, for her division, in this competition.

And instead of her goal of 9th place overall, she actually came 6th, meaning she got a medal for that too, as they award the first six places! We are still unsure of her placings for her other apparatus, but they mustn’t have been too bad to come sixth overall. We’ll probably find out on Monday, unless her coach has a list of rankings tomorrow at training.

Her coach was thrilled with her results. She said, “Rainbow Girl (well, she used her name, actually!), do you realise that means you came 1st in the whole state on beam?” Putting it like that, it does sound extremely impressive!

Rainbow Girl was over the moon with her results. We happened to be coming home past her school at about the time that school ended. We dropped in so that she could show off her “competition hair”, leotard, and The Medals to her friends and teachers at the end of the school day. It was very cute to see her looking so proud. Her teacher has requested that she brings back the medals on Monday for special “news”.

So as always, we are shocked by her amazing results. We are as pleased as punch, and very proud parents!

Thanks for indulging me with this very personal but excited post!