Confessions of an addict

So this is a stash, spread out on a bed. How will I be able to justify this on judgement day? I know what to say: This material is no longer produced in Europe. Crewel embroidery is dead on the continent. I had to salvage what I need.
I bought these boxes at about 0.35 $ per skein online. I bought larger stashes for almost no money, because the embroiderers gave up using it or passed away. I sort them out, collect them in groups of reds, greens, blues. I separate bundles. Just got a parcel with wonderful new and used wool skeins. Danish wool. Love it!
And I tell you: never make bundles by tying them together with rubber strings. Never ever. The leftovers after 10 or 20 years are just icky.

Sunshine

I don't have a wall to put up my quilting project. It is all lap work, so to say. But I'll have to arrange the strips before I sew them together. The sunshine brings out the quilting nicely, so I took this picture. I'm not all that pleased with the bright sun, because together with the full moon, it makes my head kind of dizzy. Too much energy, I guess. I found the right material for the inner line. It is the right top turquoise fabric.
I'm still thinking if I should do a wool batting with the lovely material I got from Judy; or should I just give it a backing, as the dark parts are wool fabric anyway? My husband loves warmth. But can the quilt be washed with a wool batting? Do you have a quilt like this, and do you have it dry cleaned?

What the full moon does

It's full moon! And I've been fighting with my German blog. My identities got entangled, and I don't know how. Sometimes I'm suspicious about the hidden connections that we create when signing in into this and that network. I just joint one in order to communicate with my friends. I was musing about networks, and don't they all use the knowledge of our emotional side, the desire to be among the others and not to be excluded, but to be part of it instead? Each of us is 12 years old deep inside, I guess. The inventers of internet communities are very clever to use this emotion and the feeling of being alone in an ocean of websites, unless we start fighting this loneliness by making friends in cyberspace. Is it because you lack human companionship in every day life? In my case, it is a bit like this. My relationship with my husband is very harmonious and full of love. But during the days when he's gone to work, I need you, my distant friends. It doesn't matter if you have 10 or 1000 contacts; the quality counts.
And so, I overcame my suspicion against networks and joint http://handembroidery.ning.com today.

New concept on the bauhaus quilt

Do presents necessarily have to be surprises? We decided against that.
My husband knows what he will get for Xmas or hopefully during the winter season. My initial intention was to do the pieced pattern all over. But this will be too puzzling. Some solids should calm the pattern down, and my husband would like a dark fabric to make a kind of frame, together with a turquoise line. I'm perfectly sure that I won't be able to do such a straight line as photoshop did. Now I'll have to find a fabric that goes with the bright stuff I've done already. But I haven't got much left, just a small scrap.
Jude sent me fabrics, among them the center piece of this detail. It is a velvet which fits perfectly into the concept.

E-Mail from Siberia

A few days ago, I received a mail from a gentleman in Siberia. He told me that he had the same name as my ancestors in Estonia, and his family came from Estonia, too. Now, there are obviously relatives of mine who speak Russian and English.
He sent me a photo of his greatgrandfather J. He and my greatgrandfather V must have been brothers. Their second name is very rare, and there is only one family of this name in Russia.
Two of these brothers, V and A, had a forge in the Wall Street (ha!) in Tallinn, Estonia. Their mother Anna (picture) must be the ancestor we have in common. She lived from 1833 until 1903. Her family probably came from Lithuania. She was née Filipov.
If it is true that our ancestors J and V were brothers, then Evgenij is my nephew of which degree? 4th?
This shows how closely related mankind really is, doesn't it?

How far do your most distant relatives live?

And this is how far I got with my bauhaus quilt in the meantime.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is an American holiday. We have a "harvest thanksgiving" in the churches. But as every day has reasons for gratitude in some way, why not join the feeling of gratitude which spreads from the blogs of you, my friends. And without a deeper analysis of the American feast, I take the oportunity to express my thank to my late parents, whom I saw in a dream last night, and who knows if they saw me, too. And I want to thank my husband for his constant love, protection and generosity and a sense of humor that it takes to handle me.I know that some of you will say, excuse me, this gratitude is for the Lord. Right, but as a Buddhist, I don't have a personal idea of God.

Animal prints

After working on a website for a furniture shop, I fortunately could go back to my animal print project at last. Recently I finished another print I gave away already and forgot to take a picture. Now this one will be on the way soon to an artist who inspires me infinitely.
The idea of animal prints in a square keeps haunting me after finishing the Chickenshack quilt. I'm working on a theme, this is something I never did when I was younger. It had to be perfect right away, or I would discard it. But this is not the way to accomplish something, when trying to become an artist.
I called this animal print project the Pazyryk project because the tiger is part of the treasures found in the kurgan of Pazyryk. It was carved into the cascet of the nobleman in this grave, but I never found another picture of it. Chris, thank you for sending me a reproduction.
Two more print cloths are in my Etsy shop; you may have seen them and will find them changed. I painted the background of both of them.