Diamond Jubilee

I'm not a die-hard Royal watcher, but after living in London for 5 years, I can't help but have some love for the Royal family.  I cried when the Queen Mum passed away, and I have a huge amount of respect for Queen Elizabeth.  From the ages of 10 to 15 I lived with her and Margaret Thatcher being my "leaders."  Yes, I was very lucky to have such strong females as my role models.

Americans sometimes have a hard time understanding the British dedication to such and old institution.  What tends to make it into the media over here is the stuff in the gossip magazines, and not the day to day activities of the royals, and all the good they do.  Not to mention, we're a very young country, and don't have the centuries of history Great Britain does.  Don't get me wrong, there have definitely been some crappy monarchs over the years, but the current ruling monarch is arguably one of the greatest, and here's my tribute to her.

A Valentine from me to you

I haven't been totally slacking the last 2 weeks.  I got the urge to stitch something small for Valentine's Day, and didn't have any Valentine charts in my abbreviated San Diego stash, so I designed something.

I even stitched it.

Twice.

Enjoy!

Hogmanay

I just love that word.  You're just not quite sure what to think when you hear it.

Wait a second, its Halloween right?  Then why am I posting a winter celebration design?  Because I'm getting ready for Becky's Ornament Challenge!

Hogmanay is actually a Scottish celebration of the new year.  The origins probably go back to the Norse celebration of the winter solstice, and also incorporating parts of the Gaelic New Year's celebration of Samhain. Symbolic gifts are given - salt, coal, shortbread, black bun, and of course whiskey (this is Scotland we're talking about), all mean to give good luck to the household in the coming year.

All of this is really interesting, but I had a good laugh when I read Wikipedia's sentence about the Shetland Islands.  The festival is referred to as the Yules, and is started on December 18, culminating on January 18 with the last tradition - a troll chasing ritual!  Is this one of those times when Wikipedia is wrong?

No troll in this design, but feel free to add one if you want!

This will be my first ornament as part of the great 2011 Christmas Ornament Challenge.  Does everyone else have a project ready to start working on?

Planning, yeah, that's what I'll call it

It seems like I'm running half a season ahead of schedule.  Halfway through summer, I was ready for Autumn.  Now Autumn just barely started, and I'm thinking winter.  No idea why, its been in the upper 80s with near-record high temperatures.  You'll almost think it was still summer, other than its actually been getting cool at night.  Maybe I'll blame it on the JCS ornament issue, or Brenda, with her sneak peak at the next Sampler of the Season - Winter.

I'm going to write it off as planning.  Stitching isn't a hobby that gets finished at the snap of the fingers (unless you're one of those turbo stitchers, yeah, you know who you are), so we need to think ahead and not start stitching our Halloween ornaments on Oct 15, or wait to start on Christmas ornaments/gifts until after Thanksgiving.

What's driving this is I started playing with my design software again and came up with a couple of small pieces, and have the research and plans for a third.  I've always been fascinated by mythology, folklore and alternative religions.  I'm extremely tolerant and open-minded, up until someone tries to convert me or tell me my soul is damned for all eternity because I don't follow their particular brand of religion.  Yes, that actually has happened to me.  The common theme of these designs are how other cultures celebrate the Winter Solstice.  Not every culture focuses on Dec 25, and not everyone calls the winter gift-giver Santa Claus.  As the world becomes smaller due to the internet and mass media, a lot of the regional beliefs are forgotten, or just not followed.

Over the next couple of weeks I'll post the designs for people to do with as they please.  There's a bit of paganism, a splash of folklore, and a dollop of prim in all of them.  I'm not sure what I enjoyed more, playing with colored dots on the software, or doing the research for the background information.

Enjoy Feast of St. Nicholas!

Lagniappe

Lagniappe :  a small gift given by a merchant at the time of purchase; broadly : something given or obtained gratuitously or by way of good measure

I designed this as part of the Samplermakers Autumn Challenge and thought I'd share it.  You can see my finish of it here.  As an added incentive to stitch this, I'll do a small give-away for anyone that stitches this before Oct 1.  If I don't have any takers before Oct 1, it will be to the first 5 people.  Either e-mail me a picture, or post a picture on your blog and provide the link as a comment to this post.