The August square of the Once Upon a Time Sampler covered "The Musicians of Bremen," a fairy tale about a group of farm animals that saves the day. Not very many people I've talked to have heard of this one, but I know there was a Muppet special about it.
I never did post a final picture of my polar bear, so here he is. By now, I have gotten him framed and he is sitting on a shelf in my living room. (If you would like to learn this shading technique, Nicole has another class starting in September!)
Mysterious Halloween Town now has a haunted house.
At some point, I felt like I needed a change from backstitch and cross-stitch, so I whipped up Dropcloth Sampler of the Month's feather stitch sampler.
And to top it off, I am making progress on the Torah mantle. After completing this name plate, all I need to do is one more lion before I stitch the patches onto the cover.
You must be wondering how I find the time to do all of this. I've been stitching for at least 3 hours a day, barring some other event. Most of this is just cutting into time that I would have spent noodling around the internet, or watching TV. (Of course, I still watch TV, but now it's productive! The Simpsons marathon has been an awesome time to catch up on projects.) I think it's really helped my peace of mind to keep my hands busy, and the satisfaction of completing a project lifts my spirit.
I have also been thinking about this Cracked list on ways we sabotage our lives without knowing it. One of the points the author makes is that your life will be better in the future by way of you magically becoming someone else. We all have ideas about what we want to do or be in the future. "In 10 years, I want to have higher-paying job in IT." "In 5 years, I want to be fluent in French." And yet, we tend to not spend any time during the day actually working towards these goals. We just think it will happen, somehow. If a goal is important to you, start working on it TODAY. I have a vague idea that I want to get better at embroidery and do something significant with it. Start a business? Put my work on display? Teach classes? Whatever this goal turns out to be, I know it will require me to keep improving my skills, and I'll move closer towards that goal with every stitch I make today.
I have heard of the Bremen Town Musicians. And I have, as far as I know, always hated it. It came up several times in elementary school.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was trying to tell the story to my husband, he kept poking holes in the story. Still, the square is cute!
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