50th post!!!!! Better late than never...

Well, I finally made it! My 50th post will be my answer to Lake Stitcher's July stitching question. I am so sorry that I have been such a bad blogger, but life does get in the way...

Since my teenage years I tended to be a loner. I had and still have a very different music taste than my friends and I also like(d) different movies. So I started to spend my spare time doing things I could do by myself: jigsaw puzzles, reading, sports etc. So when I discovered cross stitching I did it by myself. Of course living in Germany does not help. Cross stitch is not very popular over here. There are stitchers of course, but they are far away. I don't even have a LNS for literally hunderts of Kilometers around. Without the internet I would be doomed. I do envy all you gals out in blogworld that can drive to a store and actually look at stuff and touch it before buying. Stitching alone keeps my sane. It is my means of winding down after work. I can let my thoughts wander and rehash the day. Watching a movie or listening to my favorite music makes my needle move even faster. Stitching does not make me a loner. I do enjoy going out with friends although in the last couple of weeks that had gotten "kinda outta hand". I am so addicted to stitching that sometimes I rather not go out so I can stitch.

For the second part of the question: There was this group at our adult education place (VHS). It was not a stitching group but a crafts group. The initiator was a woman who taught bobbin lace. So people did what they wanted. I stitched, some knitted but most of them did bobbin lace. The age level was very old (50>). I was one of the youngest there. There was this old lady and not a meeting would go by without her telling about the war and how hard everything was (you know, walking to school through deep snow for hours on end and stuff like that. You get the idea). I finally stopped going because I couldn't listen to it any longer.

I am a member of the International Womens Club in Stuttgart. We just started a Stitch n' Bitch and had our first meeting in July. I know all the ladies, everybody is more or less in the same age group and we had a ball!!! It was a totally new experience for me. First of all I wasn't the only stitcher and what was much more important, the other stitchers are as crazy about it is I am (one lady called it being anal ;-) How true). So I am looking forward to the next meeting in August. The conversation was very interesting. Most of the ladies have been living in different countries for long periods of time so there was a lot to tell. I think I found my perfect group.

It has been a while...

... since I finished something. This month I managed to finish Nora Corbett's letter "S" Samantha. I enjoyed stitching her very much. It was my first experience with overdyed floss but I did like it. I already have the first two kits of Nora Corbett's new series in my stash: The Stitching Fairies. They are also stitched with overdyed floss. I was hoping to get a lot of stitching done because my boyfriend was gone for 8 weeks, but unfortunately the weather was much too hot to stitch. My apartment is right under the roof and hardly isolated. So you can imagine the kind of temperatures I had in my apartment when I got home after work. I think it would have been a lot cooler if I had gone to the sauna at my gym ;-).



I also managed to finish this bookmark kit from Textile Heritage or rather I finished stitching it but the actual finishing still needs to be done. I love stitching but I am not so great on the finishing front. I will see how it goes.