Projects Past and Future: Our 2nd Anniversary Post

On February 12, 2015, we began our third year of this blog. We had an interesting and rewarding second year and we hope this year will be even better. The most delightful result, from my point of view, is knowing that the postings have been viewed all the way around the world, reaching every continent except Antarctica. Here, in alphabetical order, are your (our visitors') homelands:

Albania • Argentina • Australia • Austria • Barbados • Belgium • Bolivia • Brazil • Bulgaria • Cambodia • Canada • Chile • Colombia • Costa Rica • Croatia • Cyprus • Czech Republic • Denmark • Dominica • France • Germany • Greece • Guam • Hong Kong • Hungary • Iceland • India • Indonesia • Ireland • Israel • Italy • Jamaica • Japan • Jersey • Jordan • Kuwait • Latvia • Lithuania • Luxembourg • Macedonia (FYROM) • Malaysia • Malta • Mexico • Moldova • Namibia • Netherlands • New Zealand • Nicaragua • Norway • Peru • Philippines • Poland • Portugal • Puerto Rico • Qatar • Romania • Russia • Saudi Arabia • Singapore • Slovakia • South Africa • South Korea • Spain • Sri Lanka • Sweden • Switzerland • Taiwan • Tanzania • Turkey • Ukraine • United Arab Emirates • United Kingdom • United States • Uruguay • Venezuela • Vietnam • Zimbabwe

 Boy and Girl Penguin Puppets

And for all those penguins in Antarctica that we haven't heard from yet, here's a greeting from two of our friendly puppets.

Welcome, everyone, to Annake's Garden. My warmest wishes go out to all of you.

In our previous anniversary posting we showed pictures of some finished projects that were shown in progress or which were not shown at all in that year's posts. This year, again, we showed a number of needlework items in progress or finished but not yet framed. Here are a couple of them once they were mounted and framed.

"Colorful Onion Domes" Holbein embroidery and "Purple Iris" needlepoint

At the bottom of the 1st anniversary post we showed three photos of new projects for this past year. I must apologize that we did not get to cover Swedish huck weaving during the year. I realized that there were a number of techniques that should be covered first to lay the groundwork for that project. We have begun that process by introducing needleweaving, as well as some surface weaving in the folk embroidery topics. We will continue to follow those paths. I promise that we will arrive at Swedish huck weaving this year. Thank you for your patience.

I have continued to design and make crocheted afghans. This one is a favorite of mine. I call it “Mariachi Music” because that was the kind of music that I heard in my mind the entire time that I was working on it.

Crocheted afghan,  "Mariachi Music"

We continue to try to improve these posts, using more pictures and close-up photography of stitches. (In case you haven't tried it: if you click on a stitch sampler, you will get an enlarged picture.) I am very visually-oriented and learn stitches better by seeing the real thing – especially in color – than by following the diagrams in needlework books. I hope you find these examples helpful and that you will experiment with stitches and patterns of your own devising.

We provided more patterns for viewers to download last year than we did during our first year. We hope to provide both a greater number and a greater variety this year.

I will continue to revisit needlepoint, especially bargello, with more four-way designs, optical illusions, and – perhaps – I may get brave enough to attempt an eight-way design. (No promises.) I will also talk about some non-needlework projects involving painting, dyeing, and lettering. As always, I will try to present projects that are simple to do, that require a minimum of equipment, and that are economical. I also plan to discuss sources for design ideas and ways to adapt designs from one kind of needlework or craft to another. At the bottom of this post you will see three photos related to this coming year's projects. We hope you will visit this site often and enjoy the activities we present here.

Until next month,

Pictures from upcoming posts; any guesses?

  
This post by Annake's Garden is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.