A quick painting and some stitching.

Wishing you cool breezes on a hot weekend.

Ná bris do loigrín ar stól nach bhfuil i do shlí. (Do not break your shin on a stool that is not in your way.)

Outing with my friend Ramona. She took me to Value Village because I'd never been, and I found this wooden gizmo for next to nothing and brought it home.

I came up with an idea for Miss 2-year-old, and made it last night. I kept going and going -- I hate leaving something unfinished, although sometimes I do set something aside and finish it later. Maybe I was enjoying it too much! I especially like now the "cover" turned out, but I don't want to show it until it has left the building ;)

Ná bris do loigrín ar stól nach bhfuil i do shlí. (Do not break your shin on a stool that is not in your way.)

As I said in an earlier post, the words will turn into phrases. And they have (I know myself). As children we ate La vache qui rit cheese. It's now available here as The Laughing Cow.

Which led to... the laughing bird

Available in my Etsy shop

Then there was this word, which I stitched and turned into a little gift for someone special

Ná bris do loigrín ar stól nach bhfuil i do shlí. (Do not break your shin on a stool that is not in your way.)

The thing about stitching words is that there are so many, many words that I want to stitch, and that means I could never get bored. I can see going from single words to phrases, too.
           It's also an eminently portable craft. When I'm away, I don't take any art supplies with me; I suppose I need to be in my environment with everything around me. Sewing small items, though, is not a problem; supplies don't take up much space and I don't need to spread everything out. The next thing I'm going to do is make a kit to take with me when I'm travelling.

Ná bris do loigrín ar stól nach bhfuil i do shlí. (Do not break your shin on a stool that is not in your way.)

I'm officially enamoured of hand-stitching words.
Today, I experimented with very thin twine and heavy brown paper.

I was expecting one of my oldest and closest friends who is in town from Santa Barbara, so I stopped there, and we went out for brunch and other fun things, to say nothing of catching up -- although we talk on the phone regularly.

After we said our goodbyes (she returns to California tomorrow morning), I came home and eventually finished the stitching.

Coup de coeur. Translation:  favorite/things I love

Ná bris do loigrín ar stól nach bhfuil i do shlí. (Do not break your shin on a stool that is not in your way.)

Friday's child

My next thing: embroidering words (by hand, of course). This kind of stitching is the easiest, I find, and it it has a nice, clean look, too. I attached cotton fabric to a piece of thick handmade paper, applied white acrylic paint with a palette knife, and stitched.

I like this style of stitching a lot, but I also find it more difficult than the one above... so I'm practising...

"The only way to keep ourselves from wounding others, doing harm with words, is to become aware of them. Ultimately, this is compassion, and wisdom is the understanding that when you hurt someone else, you drop poison into the whole world, and you are an intimate part of that world" --  the Dalai Grandma

I've been collecting words all my life. I have notebooks filled with words; they (the notebooks) span the last 20 years of my life. When I was writing full-time, I filled my notebooks with expressions, ideas, observations, and words that I liked.
Now I'm sewing them:

and stamping them:

And enjoying every minute.


Be good to your friends -- Kevin Bacon.