Goldwork 101 School is Open

So the book on goldwork arrived, and I studied it all excited and found it was just as good as I remembered from briefly seeing it on the convent trip recently.  So I cut out a nice piece of Belgian linen from a thrift store blouse,  framed it up, and made my design (I used a fine point Pilot pen, which didn't bleed, this is good), and found that my embroidery guild's stash has, so exciting again, a variety of gold threads,members for the use of.

Lovely time at stitch in meeting last night,exploring the stash and choosing a few likely thread candidates, and drawing my design on the framed up linen.  Then today I'm all about getting under way with learning to do this stuff.  This is a small piece, so that I can try out a number of approaches and threads, but still hope to create a decent artwork.

Meanwhile, there are men on the roof doing something very loud and disturbing to our Sandy damaged chimneys, so this is a calming activity, more or less, despite seeing debris being hurled down onto the patio from two floors up.

Oh the other picture is of a wonderful cloth, silk on silk, Chinese embroidery, perfect on the back as well as the front, from the family of Carol P., whose daughter is going to receive it when she marries this summer.  Lucky daughter.  It's an amazing piece of work to see and handle. Carol brought it in last evening for us to admire.