My first Give Away

Dear Friends,

Here it is a little over two years since I started blogging, there are 120 followers, and over 3300 comments. I am a rather shy person, so did not know what to expect when I started blogging. I was timid to say the least, but just started sharing pictures and bits of our daily life.

You all have encouraged me in more ways than I can count. Your blogs have inspired me in so many ways from cooking, crafts, gardening and plain old 'living life'.

As a THANK YOU, this little give away is an embroidered piece that I just finished. The inspiration was from the book 'Embroidery for all Seasons' by Diana Lampe. I have two of her books on my wishlist and look forward to owning them. The book I have at the moment is a library book, which will be returned shortly.

I love working with thread and my first experience with it was when I was 10 years old when the lady next door to us taught me to knit. My stitches were too tight, and I also dropped a lot of them, but that is where this love started. My step grandmother taught me to crochet when I was 15. I also started embroidering around this time.

Over the years my love of working with threads has continued, even though sporadic at times. Recently I've gotten into embroidering once again and love it.

In this little piece there will be a little bit of DH too, as he is the one who showed me how to do a bouillon stitch. I was having a hard time and just couldn't get it. He has never embroidered but he does like to figure things out and asked me for a threaded needle and I gave him a piece of fabric in a hoop, and we read the directions and looked at pictures. It was while reading the directions out loud that I saw where I had made my mistake. I was taking the thread to the left instead of the right. He made a little bouillon stitch and I am happy to give him credit for teaching me this stitch. He has encouraged me many times in our life of over 40 years together for which I am eternally thankful, he is my love, my soulmate.

So, here is the deal, all you have to do is comment in this post, to be entered into the give away. I will number each comment from the first to the last, then I will use random.org as the number generator.

I will make and post a list of every commenter and attach a number. When the deadline is over I will post the list, so that you all can see it and the number you've been given, and hopefully I will get it right. DH and I will go over the list several times to make sure it is correct, but will give you all a chance to see that it is right. Then I will post the number of comments to the number generator, and someone will be the winner. Let me know how I can contact you.

For a closer view click on the picture. The overall size of this piece is 3 3/4 inches by 5 inches. The size of the embroidery is 1 3/4 inches by 3 inches.
DH made the frame from molding left over from our picture framing days.
The fabric is ecru/cream colored with flecks of darker threads here and there.

The bouillon stitch is the outer stitch of the sunflower petals. You wrap the thread around the needle so many times then pull the thread through and go into the back of the fabric. I am happy to have learned a new stitch with this project.

The deadline for entering is a week from today,
20 October 2010,
midnight Eastern Standard time.
I will post my list of numbered commenters the next day,
and on the 22, will put the number into ramdom.orgs generator.

Thank you all for visiting my blog and for your comments.
I do appreciate your time and thoughts.

Zone 10 ~ s.e. FL