Writing about My Needlepoint Portrait of Catherine the Great

For some time now on my website, I have been writing lessons for beginners, intermediates and advancing students of needlepoint. The beginners' lessons and the intermediates have been more or less predictable sorts of lessons, particularly for beginners.

Then I arrived at the lessons for advancing students. There's so much I could write but I chose to write about the decisions I've made for stitching my needlepoint portraits. In some ways these lessons are so basic in that they refer to very basic stitches. That's too true, but what I do with those basic stitches has taken a bit more thought and the lessons aren't quite so basic. It's been an interesting exercise.

Now I am almost to the end of the series for the time being. I have the penultimate lesson called, of all things, 'Advanced Continental Stitch. I posted it this morning, it will stay up for tomorrow and then I will post my last lesson for now, called 'Painterly Needlepoint'. It is for me my most interesting lesson because it explains how I arrived at the way I decided to do portraits.

If you would like to read the lessons, here's a quick reference:
www.GayAnnRogers.com

After 'Painterly Needlepoint' it will be time to close down lessons and start preparing Queendom Website for the arrival of my portrait of Catherine the Great. In doing so I've enlisted the help of my husband and he's been writing short articles on Catherine the Great. If you follow along you will find a new one every other morning once my lessons end.

In addition, I've been writing my own snippets called 'Factoids about My Catherine'. Essentially they tell some tales about my stitching Catherine, how large she is, how many pearls she has, and in a few days I will start posting photos and descriptions of the kit contents.

Catherine will arrive on Saturday morning, May 2. Actually she will arrive as close to midnight on May 1 as MacSoph and I can stay awake.

I hope you will join us for the festivities celebrating the arrival of this piece which has been my most industrious undertaking in the last 5 to 6 years.

Gay Ann

Gay Ann Rogers Needlepoint on Facebook

Well, I took the plunge and I joined Facebook.

I have both a profile page and a business page. My business page is all about my needlepoint and its inspirations and here's the URL:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Gay-Ann-Rogers/860462527326471

I began it by posting my Elizabethan projects. I began with Echoes of Elizabeth and Echoes Sewing Case and this afternoon I posted my most popular ever heart, Heart of Elizabeth. I have some projects to post in the next few days that I've not shown often and some inspirations, trivia, and well, whatever strikes me as useful or amusing.

As the month goes on and the time becomes closer to the arrival of my portrait of Catherine the Great on Queendom Website, I will transition to the Romanovs and in particular some clothes and of course large jewels. What would the Romanovs be without very large jewels!

At first I couldn't see why I would keep up this blog plus my website, plus Facebook pages; it seemed at first that it would all be redundant. I had a few days to find my sea legs where it was all quiet and I could find out a bit about Facebook. I think it is different, it is certainly very different visually, and in some ways more casual.

Then this morning someone learned about my Facebook page and I had a flurry of visits and likes and offers to Friend.

Early on (I mean, how early is that considering my pages are about a week old), I decided to keep my profile page for tech stuff, so I haven't replied to the friend offers. There's no needlepoint on my profile page and I thought for now I would keep the two separate.

So far it is great fun -- and a very different experience from my website. We'll see how it goes, a new adventure.

I'm very new at all this but I will find my way, and if you have any suggestions for me, please let me know: GayAnnRogers@me.com.

Gay Ann