The Origin and Progress of a Species - My Blog and Others

Anne Stradal announced, along with her new post today, that her blog is now two years old.

(The Cape Stitcher) Amazing. I decided to go back to my own origins and see when I started mine. I had no idea what I was doing, but mercifully, I had "met" Allison Aller, who graciously pointed out the errors of my ways and helped me along.

Mine began on September 13, 2006. YIKES I had no idea how to do it. I didn't even separate it into paragraphs. I had already fallen under the spell of the art crazy quilters, and had stitched this small stocking for my older daughter, Marie. Four years later, I'm still mesmerized by this style, and continue to attempt to replicate those gorgeous things in needlepoint - the embellishment being almost instant gratification.

Originally, I didn't intend for it to be a totally needlepoint blog, and wanted to use a lot of the crafts I do, including my pottery - but gradually it became more needlepoint oriented.

Incidentally, these were taken from the first page of blog posts way back then - the one that shows Sept. 2006. You can click on that on the archives and see it from the beginning.

The next photo (taken with my first ancient second hand digital camera) is of two greeting cards I had used to make transparencies - the way we did it before the craft stores started selling something they called "transfer medium" and making it more expensive and complicated than it need be.


This was done with simple polymer medium. It was very enjoyable, and elegant decorative items were produced. I liked putting these onto candles, as when they were lighted, the light glowed through the picture.

I also put them onto glass vases (on the inside) and then backed them with gold leaf - gorgeous vases for dried plant material.

Today I was crusing around the blogs as I do each morning, and found that Kris of Kris' Color Stripes has changed her format, and is doing her colors a different way. They are perfectly beautiful the way she presents them, and easier to use, I think, to create our own color schemes for needlework.

Be sure to go see her HERE, and click on "colour files" on the left side bar to see what she will present every Monday. This is her very first one on the new blog, and I look forward to many more.