Ornaments just for Stitchers

This Christmas Queendom Website has a surprise: little Country-Style wood ornaments all made by hand for us stitchers.

They are made by artist Ilisha Helfman and they feature drawings and sayings just for needlework.

I've been posting a different one every morning and today I posted the fourth which may be my favorite. It says 'Merry Stitches' and has a red border of Cross Stitches and Running Stitches.

To follow along, here is a quick reference:
www.GayAnnRogers.com

Merry Christmas, and enjoy!

Gay Ann

Saying Good Bye to E-Week 2014, My Once a Year Needlepoint Sale

E-Week my yearly sale came and now it is almost gone. Tonight it will vanish into history, and what will come next?

Usually MacSoph (my trusty little MacBookPro) and I have a finale to bid farewell to E-Week. One year we had sunsets, last year our eJet flew off into the sunset, and so forth.

This year is different: we have four finales.

The first: a couple of small things left from my Surprise Windows will be for sale tomorrow morning. Only two, to the first people who find and want them.

The second: sigh, I didn't want to start all over again, but I have. You will understand when you see it. Yes, starting all over again, just as we finished!

The third: all through Pre-Week, before E-Week started, we had visits from Mona Lisa in all sorts of garb. I loved all the Mona Lisas, but I saved my very favorite to say good bye to E-Week 2014.

The fourth: every year in the last Early Morning Surprise Window on Sunday of E-Week, I cast a glance to the future year. Two years ago, it was the year of Jane Austen, last year it was The Year of the Stitch and we all tried to work some of the projects languishing in our closets.

This year? The Year of the Romanovs, Opulence and Power. So our Fourth Finale is really the beginning of our year. Watch and see what surprises it brings in the form of a history lesson or two.

All this will unfold in the next few days on Queendom Website. I hope you will follow along:

For quick reference: www.GayAnnRogers.com.
www.QueendomWebsite works as well.

Thank you to all of you who came to E-Week this year. It was great fun!
Gay Ann

E-Week Eve: my biggest needlepoint sale of the year starts tomorrow morning

It is E-Week Eve. E-Week is the name of my biggest needlepoint sale of the year, and it starts tomorrow morning.

MacSoph and I are beginning to make Queendom Website's transition to E-Week.

Mona Lisa in a taxi cab has been on Queendom Website's home page all day long, but now she has started to fade, and behind her showing ever so faintly is the outline of my 'trophy piece' for this year's sale.

I stitched the trophy piece a while ago, but never taught it, in fact I just wrote the instructions for it last spring. I am proud of it, I must say, and of its unconventional use of a favorite technique.

MacSoph and I are burning the midnight oil tonight and it won't be long now till E-Week emerges.

Gay Ann Rogers
www.QueendomWebsite.com

Needlepoint Designs from My Past are on My Website This Morning

I can't believe how time has gotten away from me: I checked my blog this morning expecting it had been two weeks since I'd last posted. I discovered not two weeks but two months!

I am winding up to my once-a-year sale, this year starting on October 8. I've been asking my followers at Shining Needle Society to help choose designs from my past that I will bring back this year.

The sale seems to have evolved into two parts: the General Sale in which I post designs that are mostly new, or new to the internet. They are the designs I've stitched in the past year or so.

In the Early Morning Surprise Windows of Saturday October 11 and Sunday October 12, I will bring back designs from my past, and in the last couple of weeks I've been working on assembling them.

So far people have chosen two designs from last year's sale and two hearts. This morning I posted designs that people have requested throughout the past year or two and you will find on Queendom Website photos of eleven.

For quick reference: www.GayAnnRogers.com

I've been preparing this page for a couple of days now and it has been a trot down memory lane, that is for sure. The photos cover years, in some cases decades, of my life in needlework and there is at least one from each of the categories I design: samplers, figures, geometrics and a sewing case. Some of them I've brought back multiple times, others not so frequently.

I am looking forward to seeing what people choose. It was interesting to see which hearts were the most popular among my followers. Interesting, but not too surprising, as I review the choices. The choices from my last year's sale surprised me more. Now I'm on my way to look again at the choices on my home page this morning and see if I can guess which ones I will bring back.

It is such a busy time of year for me. Fun but too much to do! I have my fingers crossed that I get it all together by October 8.

Gay Ann

Blog Stitching on Queendom Website

When exactly do the dog days of summer start? I think of them as August, but this year it seems like August has come early. These days are hot and muggy now, typical August weather.

A couple of days ago I cut up a square of gray 18-mesh canvas, mounted it on stretcher bars, chose a turquoise pearl cotton and started a new little geometric. I was just fiddling.

I like the turquoise start so I went in search of some more threads, organized some thoughts about the small geometric and decided to while away the dog days of summer on Queendom Website by 'blog stitching'.

To watch my progress, follow along by clicking on www.GayAnnRogers.com.
Or www.QueendomWebsite.com will work also.

I like the start, with the turquoise on gray. Now I'll see if I like how the other threads work as well.

Nice way to while away the days.
Gay Ann

One last look at our beautiful CampStitch

A fantasy trip into the wilderness is over. We were at CampStitch for a little more than 2 months and I am hoping people used the trip wisely to accomplish Stash Reduction.

I did quite well! I worked on several new designs for E-Week, my biggest sale of the year, in mid-October.

Actually it will be a bit earlier this year. I just checked the calendar and marked the date: October 8, bright and early, my yearly E-Week sale will begin. This year I will have all new designs, except for one. The oldie will come back in a supporting role to show where two new ones came from, much the same way that I brought back my oldest geometric, Santa Fe Square, last year.

I'm going to have to buckle down and stitch some long hours to finish in time, but it seems to me like I will be able to do it. Only weeks left, so I hope to continue making the most of them.

Meanwhile, stop by Queendom Website to take one last look at our beautiful CampStitch.
For quick reference: www.GayAnnRogers.com.

Gay Ann

CampStitch, Swatches of Colors and Shopping for Needlepoint Threads

For nearly two months now my website has been in the wilderness at CampStitch with the hope of stitching through some of our stash.  I figured we would accomplish more if we were away from the pressures of home with little else to do but take nature walks, eat and stitch.

I don't like to camp. I know many people extoll its virtues and I have a sister-in-law who would rather sleep on the ground and hike in the wilderness than be anywhere else, but not me.

So our Campsite has had rooms unlike any I've ever seen at another campsite.

During our stay at CampStitch I tiled the colors of each of our extraordinary rooms and reduced the tiles of each room to five color swatches. I posted the five color swatches on my homepage and asked people from Shining Needle Society to vote for their favorite ones.

I thought the results were most interesting: there was a race between two of the swatches and the other four were left behind in the dust. Ultimately one prevailed but not by many votes.

People who liked the most popular choice wrote that they liked the soothing colors; people who liked the also ran thought the winner was boring. Soothing or boring? See what you think.

For quick reference: www.GayAnnRogers.com

After people at Shining Needle Society chose their favorite, I went to the needlepoint shop and chose some threads to echo the swatches. I plan to post a photo of my choices bright and early tomorrow morning on my home page. When I was choosing the threads yesterday, several people in the needlepoint shop said, ooo, what pretty colors! I thought they were pretty also.

Soothing or boring?
Up to you to tell me tomorrow morning.

Gay Ann

CampStitch in the Wilderness

We are e-traveling and have landed in the wilderness where we are camping. The purpose of our trip is to settle down and finish some of our projects without any distractions. My recommendation to my followers is to set aside a few minutes each day and 'travel' to CampStitch with needles in their hands.

I am anxious to hear whether people are accomplishing much in this The Year of the Stitch. I know I have. I've finished six projects since the first of the year and am embarking tonight or tomorrow on two more.

Two of mine are large projects, four are small, and now I plan to start two ornaments for my E-Week Sale in October. That's what I am doing in CampStitch: working on E-Week. Less than 6 months now and E-Week will be here and all that scrambling and hard work.

But for now it is kick back, enjoy life at CampStitch and keep company with my needle.

I hope you will join us and stitch away on whatever projects you wish.
Happy stitching and may you accomplish a lot.
Gay Ann

Traveling toward our Needlepoint Destination

We have been on our e-Jet for 2 days now and we are headed to pick up more needlefriends, then we will head toward our destination. We will land on Wednesday morning bright and early.

It has been five years since MacSoph and I flew our e-Jet on a month-long trip. We embarked on that trip so that I could have forced daily practice doing PhotoShop. As I look back on that journey I realize how primitive and new my PhotoShop skills were then. I'm happy to say I've come a long way in five years, but what I know is just how far I still have to go. Does anybody ever know a lot about PhotoShop?

For several years I've been monkeying around with animation and this year I've done better. Always hindered by file size (way too large for what I've done in the past) I've finally learned a new animation program that has made everything easier and my file sizes smaller, so that the file size of my plane flying across so many images is very very small. Yay! Now I'm hoping our month-long trip will give me a chance to improve both PhotoShop and animation skills.

So what will we do on our trip?

That will unfold in the next few days as we arrive at our destination.

Back to work picking up our needlefriends as we continue our journey.
Gay Ann

e-Traveling Soon on a Needlework Trip

Five years ago we e-traveled on my website and a year later we took a short weekend e-trip to shop in London. We haven't traveled anywhere since then. Life on my computer became simply too hectic for anything other than changing web software and learning my new program.

But MacSoph (my trusty little laptop) and I are well settled in our new software now, and I must say, Adobe has done a great job of improving the program. I've followed it since it was in beta, and it is now quite wonderful!

The travel bug has bitten both MacSoph and me and we are ready to go. Soon our private e-Jet called 'Queen's Flight'  (which is actually a flying needlepoint shop) will be ready for take off and we fly off into the sunset.

Where are we going? This trip is a long-held dream of mine, an idea I thought up almost five years ago, shortly after our trip in 2009 ended. I hope you will follow along as we begin packing projects and taking off, for this trip is all about stitching our stashed projects. It is the reason for The Year of the Stitch and hopefully we will return home again with a good number of projects completed.

So visit my website, www.GayAnnRogers.com, and choose your Birkin bag and let's start to pack.

Our adventure is almost set to begin.
Gay Ann

Transitions for MyNeedleworkBox.com

I see that I have not written a post on my blog for 3 months, the last one being a post at the end of last year.

So what have I been doing for the past 3 months?
Managing Queendom Website, stitching, learning a new computer program and cleaning up.

I've also been working on transitions for MyNeedleworkBox.com.

When I first started working on MyNeedleworkBox.com, my idea was a 5-page website where I would change the content frequently. As it has evolved, I have developed grander plans for it and I have been working on the structure behind the scenes to accommodate my grander plans.

I have tried a number of plans for organizing the site, one after another, and finally, months later, I think I have found a way to set up the navigation system. Finally!

Now I have finished one path (yes, only one path so far) and I would like to ask for your help. Would you click around on my completed path and let me know if you find it easy to navigate?

Here's how to find the path:

Go to www.MyNeedleworkBox.com
Click on 'Whitework' on the navigation bar
Click on 'Dresden' from the whitework thumbnails

Then click around and let me know if you find it difficult or easy and if you have any suggestions for me.

This is kind of my version of a 'beta' test.

As soon as I settle on a navigation system, I will start adding the content for what promises to be a much larger site than I first envisioned. In fact, scattered all over my house right now are varied piles of whitework, lace and needlework tools, all my trifles waiting for me to photograph and write about them.

It won't be too long  till the site starts growing. It has been a long time in the making and I am eager to see how it evolves.

Gay Ann