Molly's first embroidery

I'll spare you the details of why I haven't been around too much lately. Suffice to say part of it was the loss of both of our pets (we put Snickers down and then a couple weeks later our cat Garfunkel died on her own). My job situation has changed; I'm no longer working at Quilter's Corner, but I am still teaching classes there. I am, however, helping Swirly Girls Design out with their website and I'll be teaching a handwork after school program at my daughter's school. More on that last thing below. Oh, and my in-laws visited and my daughter turned seven.

In absolutely fabulous news, my husband passed his final actuarial exam! If you follow that link, you'll see a snapshot of the grueling exams he's had to take over the past several years (all ten items in the white part of the table at the top, and then the Group and Health track column below). He's now very near the bottom of the chart, working on his Decision Making and Communication Module. He's hoping to finish that by Monday, and get it graded (passing, of course) so he can go to the Fellowship Admissions Course in December. This should be a gimme. In the unlikely event his paper is not accepted, he'll just have to revamp it and get it done so he can go to the March Admissions Course. But of course, he's really hoping to get it wrapped up before the end of 2011. Me too.

So today a couple of my wonderful sewing friends came over and one of them brought her daughter. She got my daughter interested in doing some embroidery. Her first attempt is a really big running stitch, but then this afternoon I decided to teach her the backstitch. Here's how she did!
If you ignore the chocolate milk stains on the left, I think it's fantastic for a first attempt and just having turned seven! Next she'll do the bird at the top in blue. This gives me confidence for my after school program this year.

Anyway, with school starting in a few weeks and some planned sewing time on the horizon, I hope to update this blog way more often.

Okay, so now I have to go work on my round robin block for the Richmond Modern Quilt Guild. The meeting is tomorrow night. Ah, deadlines, how I've missed you!

Little embroidery

I have a very good friend, Meenoo, whose husband, Bill, does these terrific little doodles. Usually they end up in the recycling bin, but when I saw them for the first time I said, "I need to embroider one of those!" Meenoo thought I was nuts. But I got her to confiscate one of them and I recreated it in floss. This is my first time doing this kind of fill stitch. I think it's so cute! I gave it to Bill for Christmas.In Molly news, she has a walking cast on due to a sore foot. We're not sure of the reason for the soreness, but she's been a toe-walker forever and never grew out of it. The cast will stay on for a total of three weeks. She says it's feeling better. I'm not sure how much of this is serious injury and how much of it is pandering for the upcoming Oscar season. I'm hoping this cures the problem regardless of its origin.