Rainy Days

This is the third day in a row when the chance of rain is well over 50%. Here that means you are in for many, many hours of thunderstroms that flood yards, roads and, sometime, homes plus very muddy puppies. As an example, about 45 minutes ago the dogs and I went for a long walk with partly cloudy skies and dry streets. It is now pouring again with only a few rumbles of thunder and we are now stuck at home until it clears again. Oh, I forgot to mention, that when we gets rains like this your windshield wipers cannot keep your view clear so it becomes very unsafe to drive in these downpours. What's a girl to do?


In between naps with the puppies and sporadic attempts to keep up with the muddy paw prints, I have been working on embellishing a tea towel for a swap with 19 other folk. My original concept was to stencil one. That quickly morphed into stenciling and the addition of bright trims and baubles. That idea moved into making a German roller towel with a linen ground and Schwalm embroidery. Then I remembered how much fun it was to do Swedish Weaving on Huck toweling. That idea stuck for a few moments so I went JoAnn's to see if I could find some Huck toweling. They did have Huck towels but there was an Aida panel woven into the toweling for embroidery. Here is what I did with it:


Using an acid green DMC embroidery floss I did a Blackwork diaper pattern in the Aida portion of the towel. The challenge with Blackwork is to complete it so that the front looks just as good as the back of the piece so that it is fully reversable. I wasn't as perfect as I would have liked to have been but it must be pretty good as, at one point, I had a hard time figuring out which side was the working side. And, if the threads fray and untangle a little, then it can look well loved and used is my partner's kitchen. The lower potion of the towel is done in a Swedish weaving pattern I adapted from a web site. Huck embroidery is normally done in multiple colors but I loved the acid green so much I did it in one color. It extends to both side borders. I hope my swap partner enjoys it as much as I enjoyed making it. This towel project really illustrates why I like doing swaps. I would never have embroidered a towel with this much time invested in it unless pushed by the need to get it done for someone else. Although the swap rules only ask for one tea towel I will probably add some Bigelow teas that I enjoy like Constant Comment or Earl Grey or both.

Lest you think all of us n the rain belt are depressed by the rains, here are two advantages. My Brazilian Roses are in full bloom and







the Angel's trumpet Tree is also begining to bloom. Both of these plants love the rain.

Tomorrow morning its off early to have my vocal cords fixed. I'll let you know how it goes.