Spending time with needle and hoop---

Lately, as I've been out touring in Blogland, I have visited several blogs that feature hand embroidery. It brought back memories of my "hand embroidery days" way back when. I remembered how much I loved the feel of the needle in my hand and the peacefulness I felt as I stitched designs with thread and floss.

I checked out some books from the library and just knew I was going to have to do some embroidery.

You can find these book at Amazon as well. I may have to buy them for my collection.

I love to stop by and visit  with Carina at Carina's Craftblog, where I always find beautiful embroidery and lots of inspiration. When she mentioned a stichalong over at feeling stitchy , I thought I'd drop by and see what it was all about. And that's when I decided to join in.

This is the pattern that was being used--

So......I rummaged through some drawers in my craft room and found--

a hoop, a needle and a sweet crocheted egg to use as a pin cushion.

After a little more searching I found--

some leftover cotton craft thread from a long ago project.



Now what to stitch on--

I have lots of scraps left over from projects--so I though this brown piece might go well with the thread colors that I had.

I enlarged the design, photo-copied it,  transferred it to my material using some tracing paper, and started stitching--

I spent the afternoon on Sunday, sitting in my rocking chair in my craft room with the windows open, listening to the birds singing, and embroidered.

It was a wonderful, peaceful way to spend an afternoon.

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Here is the finished product. I'm a little rusty with the tension and stitches. I just used three stitches, a couple of different versions of the daisy stitch, french knots and the stem stitch

I'm thinking of making this into a pillow.

Thank-you to all my new "hand-embroidery" friends, for re-introducing me to this wonderful past-time. I will be spending many more peaceful afternoons in my rocking chair--stitching away.