Happy New Year from Carriage House Samplings!

Our best to you in 2012. We hope you have time for fun and stitching! We'll have three new releases later this month... a sneak peek at one of them:

Marty

The Annual Pony Swim

One year we were lucky enough to see the annual pony swim where "salt water" cowboys herd about 150 horses and ponies from Assateague Island to Chincoteague Island for a parade and auction... The adult horses are led back to Assateague to live in the wild for another year.

A sneak peek at Chincoteague

Shopping is one of the many things I love about Chincoteague Island, Virginia! There are galleries, bookstores, collectibles and a Chincoteague tradition: waterfowl carvings and decoys. I hear that there's a decoy and arts festival every Easter, though I've yet to go.

Here's a sneak peek at a portion of our new design... Julie Murawski did a beautiful job stitching the model (Needlepoint Silk on 35 count Weeks Dye Works Putty)... and Valley House Primitives is busy creating a frame.

Thanks!
Marty

Hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving!

Kathy joined us in Silver Spring and we fine-tuned a few cross stitch designs in between cooking.... Chincoteague was beautifully stitched by Julie Murawski and it should be available before the new year (I'll give you a sneak peak later this week).... And I heard from Gail Kilian, who stitched The Shores of Hawk Run Hollow on silk gauze, over one thread. The finished, framed piece is above. Gorgeous! Congratulations, Gail!

Your Opinion, Please!

We'd love to hear from you about a few things:

Gail Kilian stitched The Shores of Hawk Run Hollow on silk gauze, over one thread. It is gorgeous! She is thinking about filling in the background of each square with one or more colors but is unsure about which color(s) since it's not easy to remove stitches from this fabric. She's concerned that the stars, moon and some of the sea creatures are getting lost as is. Alternatively, she's considering choosing a mat color to offset the piece. What would you do? It's challenging to judge from a photo, but she would appreciate your input.

Also, here at Carriage House, we've been debating whether it's wise to base a design on a place that's probably unknown to most of the country. One of my favorite places on earth is Chincoteague and Assateague Island off of Virginia's coast. It has a colorful history, wild horses (was home to the pony Misty who was featured in the 1947 book by Marguerite Henry), amazing great blue herons and snowy egrets (unfortunately, the official bird of Chincoteague is the mosquito!) and a beautiful coastline. Julie Murawski is stitching my design now but we're curious: would YOU stitch a design featuring a village that might not be familiar to you? 

And finally, with the 150th anniversary of the civil war, are you interested in seeing more Americana designs?


Thanks for your feedback!!
Marty

Scenes from the Baltimore Market

Thanks to Kathy for sharing her photos!

 Here's a wall of Kathy's designs! They NEVER go out-of-style!

 

The Farms of Hawk Run Hollow + The Tree Speaks 

Here's a project under way: pincushions and wooden chickens reproduced from an antique chicken spool holder that I gave Kathy as a wedding gift 16 years ago.

 

Kathy's jewelry looked great!!

 

 The girls had a good time, too!

And the winner is...

Thanks to everyone who participated in The Farms of Hawk Run Hollow contest. We received over 50 insightful, eloquent and clever responses that show just how familiar you are with Kathy’s work and perceptive you are to design styles. You have a long history with Kathy’s work and I am truly humbled that you plan to stitch such a huge project designed by someone so new to the needlework arts. Or should I say mostly designed by someone new.

On to the 2 1/2 blocks that were Kathy’s work: The bottom half of Block #1 including the sunflowers, crows and fence; Block #5 with the prowling cats, the wonderful weeping willow tree, graceful swans and amazing moths! Block #9 Fishing Friday! I love all the action in this block: the surprising snake, the worm on the ground, the birds and that twisted tree!!

There were five of you who chose this combination and the person with the best explanation was Donna Lemos. She recognized many of Kathy’s motifs including the black birds, swans, barn, weeping willow tree and snake. She wrote of the composition of Block 5 and the dimension in Block 9 and observed that I tend to use more checkered areas, as in the hill with the cows in Block 1. Donna compared the many details that Kathy includes in her designs with the more sparse look of mine.

Congratulations to Donna Lemos! And thanks to everyone for participating!