Thanksgiving at our house was all about the food or just relaxing in front of the television. Nothing fancy but everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. It was just nice to have everyone together as we won't all be together for Christmas or New Years.
With Thanksgiving being late this year Christmas really is just around the corner! The first holiday luncheon is this Thursday and lots of holiday boutiques are scheduled for this weekend.....so it's time for me to get with it and bring out those holiday decorations.
I have had several requests for the Bargello/Beginning Needlepoint Instruction Book and will finally begin writing the instructions this week and plan to have it completed by early next week. In addition to making the directions half-size (5-1/2 X 8-1/2) instead of the normal page size, I am trying to decide on the final binding. I want these instructions to be very portable and compact.....for an easy take-along project. Anyway....look for it soon on the website.
This weekend I worked on the sketch for the mini project for the Stitchers Retreat. It will be only 3" X 6" and I plan to watercolor the canvas except for the bird and flower ground foliage, which will be the main stitched elements. The bird is an Avocet wearing its breeding colors. This is one of several shorebirds which are very familiar along the California coast from Monterey Bay to San Francisco.
My other stitching over this past week has been on next year's In Stitches column in NeedlePointer. As I have been doing so much research into tile and brick patterns for the Mediterranean Squares, I thought to begin an intermittent series on small tile patterns. Right now I am focusing on the design elements of the Mediterranean rim....which are very extensive....but later hope to expand to other areas. I am having a great time with these projects.
Needless to say I didn't get to my painting of the knitting yarn but that must happen next week as I begin work on the overall design. Nothing like an ironclad deadline to get one going.
No matter how busy it gets this month, it good to fit in some personal time. I've actually started an actual appointment of 2 hours personal time a week. Have a great week.
Monday, January 18, 2010 at 02:41PM 
In the process of writing the instructions I have been creating stitch diagrams and graphs and have been reviewing all that I have previously created using buttonhole stitches. And there it was.......my very first "In Stitches" column in the May 2007 issue of Needle Pointers magazine. The sample I stitched for it has lots of examples of various used for buttonhole so I thought it might be fun to show them again here. And here are the basic stitch diagrams for reference. I hope you get some ideas you're able to use in your projects. Buttonhole stitches add lots of texture as you can see. 
