A little bird told me

Well, my grandmother seems to be doing better. She went home on Monday, and they're adujusting her medicine in hopes that she won't get weak again. They've also given her a walker just in case and a list of foods to eat and avoid. Our short-term plan is to call very often and go check on her once a week. The long-term plan is to get her relocated either closer to us (she lives a little under an hour a way and sees the doctor here) or my aunt (who lives in Atlanta). We'll see how that conversation ends up.

I am in the mood for a little more cheeriness, though, so I thought I'd share my second embroidery project, completed on a sick day right after my first. It's supposed to be a swallow, I reckon, but mine is much more, ahem, colorful. I wanted to try out the satin stitch, so here's the result.

I haven't decided what word to put in the little banner. I decided "love" was too obvious. Any suggestions? I'm happy with the progress I've been making in my embroidery, but the backs of my pieces are still a bit messier than I'd like. See what I mean?

I'll have more goodies to show you all soon, I hope!

Stitchin'!

I may have mentioned here before that I wanted to learn embroidery. Last night, I took my first foray into this aspect of fiber arts. I stumbled across the Stitch-It Kit created by none other than Jenny Hart of Sublime Stitching while checking out Books-A-Million yesterday with my love. The kit has everything you need to start off except the tiny scissors and an iron, so I snatched it up. After finishing the day's chores, read through the booklet, and about an hour later, I was stitching my first pattern. Behold the Eiffel Tower:

I put the pattern down for comparison. Not to toot my own horn too loudly, but I was quite proud of myself given my totally novice starting point. I decided that the Eiffel Tower was not enough all alone on the big tea towel, so I added a fluorish:
Believe it or not, I thought these were much harder. I'm still happy with the end result, though. It makes me want to put our new Let's Go Europe 2009 guide to good use and run off to The Continent for a bit.

I plan to stitch some more tonight, so I will have more pictures to share soon.