One of My Favorite Stitching Days

One of my very favorite days of the year and certainly one of my favorite stitching days starts tomorrow morning at first light.

Yes, that's when I intend to pick up my needle and I plan to stitch the entire day long until twilight tomorrow evening.

Why tomorrow? Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year and therefore more daylight stitching hours, minutes, seconds than any other day all year long! Since the Summer Solstice is on a Friday this year, I thought, why not extend my stitching days to three, right through the weekend.

So in essence I plan to pick up my needle tomorrow at first light and not really put it down again until twilight on Sunday. By then I should have aching hands and bleary eyes, but hopefully I will have accomplished a great deal!

A while ago I stitched a fantasy design. It's the first of the genre that I've tried and the whole concept is a departure for me. It has a long story that goes with it, a real one, and it also has a fantasy story that I made up. As I invented the story, I also invented two geometrics, a 'Garden Tile' and a 'Jeweled Tile'. It is my plan that by Sunday afternoon I shall have finished both 'Garden Tile' and 'Jeweled Tile'. I don't think this will be too difficult because I only have about 2 hours to go on 'Jeweled Tile'. I have a qute a bit more to do on 'Garden Tile' but finishing it is within reach.

But my plans are more ambitious than finishing my two geometrics. I am hoping to start 2 more, plus a small scissors case and needle case.

I'll be curious to see how I do and whether I can do it all. I will report again on Sunday Evening.

Meanwhile, I extend an invitation to everyone to come and stitch with me for a while, for as long as you have. Keep some company with your needle and share the time with my needle and me, and bask in all the lovely daylight hours.

Happy Summer Solstice and I hope to 'see' you tomorrow!
Gay Ann

Queendom Website's Milestones and a New Needlework Site

For a while now, as my Jane Austen Sale has wound down, I have been reflecting on the past year at Queendom Website and I've realized this month we will reach several milestones.

One milestone is the first anniversary of life in Our New Castle. Yes, as of June 18 MacSoph and I will have been using our new software for a year. I am happy to report that we have made the adjustment and we are settled here and comfortable and able to run Queendom Website uneventfully -- most of the time..

In looking back, I realize we are also approaching Queendom Website's 5th anniversary. It was in March, 2008 that MacSoph came into my life and I started going to Apple's One to One lessons. By late June 2008, with much help from my first tutor, Brian, I had designed Queendom Website and we first published it.

And now another milestone: Queendom Website is approaching a half-million hits. I think the counter will roll over to 500,000 likely in 3 or 4 more days.

I've been trying to decide how we might celebrate these milestones in our online life.

In reflecting on my 5-year journey at Apple University, perhaps the most fitting celebration is a new very small website.  As Queendom Website approaches its milestones, I would like to introduce www.MyNeedleworkBox.com

www.MyNeedleworkBox.com is an experiment, mostly just to see if I could do it, and like Queendom Website five years ago, I had a ton of help.

So what is different about MyNeedleworkBox.com? With very much help, I wrote the code for it.
Yes, I've been learning html and css and how a bunch of angle brackets and curly brackets and what fits between them add up to online images and text.

So Happy Anniversary to Queendom Website, to my MacSophs and to me. It's been a great journey and I look forward to seeing where we travel in next five years.

Gay Ann