Oct 11, 2015

Card Party for a Stitcher

A fellow stitching sister, Deborah Markham http://dmarkham.blogspot.com/, was hospitalized last week after having a silent heart attack and is in CCU.  She's a fighter, but has other health issues so the hospital doesn't want her going home without some help.  Today, I am going to visit her.

I thought it would be nice if we threw her a card party.  If you would like to give her a 'get well' or 'thinking of you' card, I'd be happy to collect them all and get them to her in one big bunch.  I am sure she would love that. 
 
If interested, email me at mearitaira@yahoo.com and I'll send you my address.

Oct 5, 2015

Marvelous Monday Update 10/5/15

THEATRE
Over the weekend, I went to see The Crucible at a local community theater.  The actors and actresses were fantastic.  The young actress who played Betty was a bit fidgety while in a coma.  She kept rubbing her eyes and running her tongue over her teeth, LOL.

The 1953 play by Arthur Miller dramatized and partially fictionalized the story of the the Salem witch trials.  A small group of teen girls in Salem, Massachusetts were caught dancing and conjuring with a slave girl in the woods.  To avoid being punished, the girls tell lies that Satan had invaded them and forced them to participate in the rites.  It quickly escalates into witchcraft accusations of upstanding members of the community.  Thrown into the mix are greedy preachers, landowners trying to steal others' land, and one young woman infatuated with a married man and determined to get rid of his innocent wife. Arthur Miller wrote the events and the subsequent trials where those who demanded their innocence were executed, those who would not name names were incarcerated and tortured, and those who admitted their guilt were immediately freed.  The play was written as a parable of the Congressional Communist witch hunts led by Senator Joe McCarthy in 1950's America.

DIY
Since my parent's estate auction was an epic disappointment, we decided not to sell the house until after we've done some work on it.  My brothers have done a great job putting a new steel roof.  We can now repair the plaster in the living room where the months and months AND months of rain caused a collapse two days before the auction. 

Since there's a lot of walls to be painted, I invested in a Wagner Sidekick.  Years ago, I had a Wagner Power Roller -- the Sidekick is the newest version.  I've finished painting one of the bedrooms using it.  It makes the job go a lot faster.

This room was turquoise/cobalt blue!
 I've started to scrape the peeling paint off the walls in my old bedroom.  It's a messy, messy job!
Not sure why the paint was peeling in the room, but all the walls looked like this.

East Wall - Scraping in process!
South Wall - More Scraping
STITCHY STUFF
This was a quick stitch, but a bit fiddly to put together.  Several years ago, Glenda in MT sent me a RAK of gold DMC memory thread.  This design called for brown memory thread, so I improvised and spray painted it with expresso I had left over from ABC Lessons.

Design:  Heads Up
Designer:  Cherrywood Design Studio
Magazine: 2012 Just Cross Stitch Ornament issue
Fabric:  28ct White Linen
Fibers:  DMC
Embellishments:  Handmade cording, 
DMC memory thread arms, fabric scarf