First Day of Fall

Even though it is as hot as summer, a wee bit of fall decorating is going on at the Williams house.  Like many of you we are more than ready for cooler temps.  I have two candles burning. . . . . . Frosted Pumpkin and Autumn Pumpkin.  Neither smells like pumpkin.  I'm out of my favorite, Autumn Harvest.  And why did Yankee Candle quit making Cinnamon?  They replaced it with Cinnamon Sticks but it just wasn't the same.

I also changed out a few cross stitch pieces on my walls. Right now I'm really wishing I had some smaller autumnal designs stitched for my cubby.  Maybe next year.  The colors of fall are my favorite for decorating and designing.  Now if the temperatures would just dip below 90 I'd be a lot happier!

Happy stitching,
Diane

September Releases

The newsletter is going up on our website today.  The new patterns we'll ship to our distributors at the end of the week are Little Miss Sunflower, Autumn Band Sampler, and the ornament, Joy and Peace.  I love fall so the two autumnal pieces are making me yearn for cooler temps, shorter days, and blue jeans!!!

This Week in September

Like so many of you, our days leading up to September 11th each year are spent remembering the horrible events of that awful day in history.  This year has been no different as we  pause to remember where we were when we heard the news, how we reacted with stunned silence and then tears when we saw the images and heard the terrible stories as they unfolded in front of our eyes.

We all know this is the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attack but our thoughts here are also with the family of a little girl born on 9/11 in Tucson who did not live to see her tenth birthday.  Christina-Taylor Green lost her life in the shooting back in January that seriously injured our Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and killed five others.  Christina was the hope for the future, the pride of her family, the reminder that out of something bad, good could come.

Let us never forget any of those who not only lost, but gave their lives that day.

We have a sampler that contains this verse:

Red for brave hearts that burn
With liberty,
White for the peace they earn
Making men free,
Stars for the Heaven above,—
Blue for the deep,
Where, in their country’s love,
Heroes shall sleep.

The first time I read it I was tearful and I thought of the lives from wars long forgotten to those more recent.  It was written by Wallace Rice and is titled "Under the Stars".  It seems fitting to post it this weekend.

Diane

Gracie

In my opinion there are two types of naughty. . . . . . naughty bad and naughty "that's kinda funny".  Gracie has never been a naughty/bad girl but she has done a few things over the year and a half we have had her that haven't been quite in keeping with the rules of the house.  Every once in a while I'll walk into the living room and see her laying on the ottoman, regal as a queen without a care in the world.   I don't have a good picture of that. . . . yet.  But I did capture something else last evening that never fails to put a smile on my face even though I should be scolding her to get off the patio furniture.  Take a look:

She's camera shy. . . hates looking directly at it.

 She maintains her footing perfectly. . . gets up and down as easily as a circus seal on a rubber ball.

Here she is trying to get cozy to lay down. . . . . . she gave up and went back to "perching" on the bench shortly after I took this one.

After her "performance" she cooled off in the grass for all of 60 seconds and wanted in the house.  

Me too. . . it was 107 here yesterday.

Happy Stitching,

Diane

Louisa's Roses

Louisa had an eye for roses.  As I am charting them I see she took a lot of care to provide shading to the petals with just three shades of the coral/pink silk.  Some of the roses appear  to be forming buds, others full buds and then of course the open rose.  The sampler was handed down through the family and was kept in a drawer which accounts for the condition it is in.

The fabric I am choosing is Vintage Buttercream from Lakeside Linens.  It is a perfect match to the sampler as I view it today.  If you are brave enough you might want to use a commercial product for adding instant age like "Distress It".  I like tea bags that are dampened and then "pounced" onto the fabric and thread.  There may be acids in one or both products which simply means it will break down thread and fabric over the next 100 years or so.

The sampler was probably made before 1850.  It is undated but I have Louisa's birth date and genealogy.  Here it is for those of you who are curious:

Louisa B. Snow, born 9 Aug 1841, Massachusetts
daughter of Elisha Snow (b. 1810) and Didama Kelley
granddaughter of Elisha Snow (b. 1776/78)
g-gd of Elisha Snow (b. 1745)
gg-gd of Elisha Snow (b. 1716)
ggg-gd of Ebenezer Snow (b. 1676)
gggg-gd of Stephen Snow
ggggg-gd of Nicholas Snow and Constance Hopkins (Mayflower passenger)

I'll post more genealogy information down the road a bit.

Thank you for the blog posts and emails.  It helped me to make up my mind to reproduce it as you see it and provide a darker alternative to those who wish to stitch it differently.  I have a goal to get it out this fall or winter instead of waiting until 2012.  Let's hope!

Happy Stitching,

Diane

SNOW Sampler

I'll bet you thought (or wished) I was talking about snow flakes!  It's so hot and humid this summer, I know.  But the SNOW I was referring to was the sampler by a young girl named Louisa B. Snow, a direct descendant of Nicholas Snow and Constance Hopkins.  Everything about the sampler is a bit unusual.  To start with it wasn't stitched on the customary American linen we are used to seeing.  It was stitched on a fabric called Penelope linen that was first made in Germany and then here in the states.

The next striking element of the design are these large and simply gorgeous cabbage styled roses.  I looked through all of my books on antique samplers and didn't find anything like this.  They run in a trail across the bottom of the sampler.

Another aspect of the sampler that I fell in love with is all of the stitched virtues that Louisa included. . . . Friendship, Hope, Charity, Love and Cherish Truth.  The verse itself reads: 

Count that day lost whose low descending sun,

Derives from my hand no worthy action done.

After hinting that I had a Mayflower descendant sampler a while back I received quite a few emails.  It took me a while to figure out the genealogy but with some help from the family who sold it to me I was able to connect the dots.  Louisa was also a descendant of William Brewster.  Another sweet bonus.  I would like to hear from you here on this blog or in personal emails regarding the idea of stitching such an unusual sampler.  It will be no easy task to chart the roses but I'm excited to do it.  I will chart it for 28 count linen (exactly like Louisa's) but how do you feel about the pink roses?  Keep them or go for a more antique look?  Darker??  Help me decide!  I will faithfully reproduce the stitches in the design but the color is up in the air.  I could always stitch it in deeper colors but also provide the original colors for those wishing to stitch it exactly as Louisa did.  Let me hear your thoughts on the sampler, colors, or your Mayflower connection!

Happy Stitching,

Diane

Winner of "My Dwelling Place"

First let me say I LOVED reading your comments!  Many of you said the pattern reminded you of your own homes.  I'm so happy the design made you feel something.  I did mention that the design is not our actual 100th pattern. . . . it is the 100th in the full sized line.  We have all of those patterns in small packaging to choose from too!

Our winner using the random number generator is Marilyn who wrote the following:
Congrats on your 100th design!
I like everything about it.
The house, tree, crow, flowers.
It all "fits"!
And the stars on the frame add a lot.
Marilyn 

Please email me at littlehouseneedleworks@msn.com with your address and we'll mail your pattern out right away!

Have a nice weekend. . . . . and as always,
HAPPY STITCHING!

Diane

New Release Update and Giveaway

Hooray. . .  .the web site is updated with the supply info for the two new releases this month.  They ship today to distributors so you'll start seeing them in shops next week some time.  If you haven't already read the new newsletter, be sure to see it on the LHN web site.  You'll always see a snippet of a new design that will release the next month.

My Dwelling Place

This design, My Dwelling Place, is marked pattern #100 in the full size version of our designs.  It is not actually our 100th pattern as we have many others in different lines such as the ornaments and a line called Simple Samplers.  But a friend had asked if I was planning anything special for pattern #100 and I said no.  However the more I thought about it the more I thought I should.  So I switched this one from September to August and labeled it with the magic number.  Hopefully it will have a special meaning for you as it did for me when I designed it.  Leave me a comment and I will use the random number generator to choose a winner for this chart on Friday morning.  Just leave a comment that has anything to do with the design and how it makes you feel or what it means to you (or something like that!).

Happy Stitching,
Diane

Antique Shopping

I took a few photos from a trip out to see antiques.  Lots of beautiful things!  The pretties I would have liked to have come home with were a bit too big for the house. Ron says we are officially out of room for anything new.  Not sure I want to remember that he said that!

Have a nice weekend everyone!
Diane

My Dwelling Place

In just a bit I will be posting the August newsletter to the LHN main web site.  In the meantime I thought I'd tease you with a rather large snippet view of the new design "My Dwelling Place" that ships next week. 

 This design and the ornament are the two releases we have this month.  The LHN web site will be updated with supplies next week.

If you haven't already seen Nikki's two new releases coming out next week, visit her blog to view the photos.  They are adorable!!!!  I am crazy about the apple design.

Happy Stitching,

Diane