A day of laughter, talk, stitching, and warm hearts.

I am just back from a stitch-in at Jane Moses’s house. This is our regular first Tuesday of the month stitch-in. Originally it had a name, but I have forgotten it. Today someone suggested a new name--the CYTT. And in case you don’t instantly know what that stands for, it is the Can You Top This. And we are not talking about stitching here. We are talking about stories from our long and varied lives.

At long last at over sixty I seem to fit in somewhere. I have always felt I was an oddball in any chapter meeting over the years. Maybe with age comes wisdom. And wisdom in my case is just letting myself fit in. I did feel like I fit in at the last national seminar I was at--the one in Louisville in 2008. In the evenings a group of us would meet in the hotel bar. We would eat and talk, and laugh all evening. It was a special group made up of Ann Erdmann, Carole Rinard, Jette and Roy Finlay, and a few others who would drop by. Those evenings and these daytime meeting here in New Mexico make my life, which is in a great deal of turmoil, bearable and more than bearable.

On top of all this, four of the people who were in my blackwork pilot were there, Jane Moses, Ellie Ames, Patricia Toulouse, and Bert Kroening. Bert had actually finished a small sampler based on the class! I was so proud. She took what I taught and turned it into her own work, adding color and her own personal panache.

Ellie was hard at work on her lighthouse sampler. It looked magnificent with the lighthouse and some of the surrounding stitching done. I do not doubt that this is a prize winner. And Jane, who is one of the busiest people I know, has worked on designing new stitches thoughtfully and carefully. She spoke design to me! I was so pleased.

So Intense Pattern is a success--just reaching one person in a class is an achievement, but these four have all been affected. There may be more out there (oh, I did receive a nice note from Peggy Matthews last week thanking me for a great class and saying that she was continuing to work in blackwork.) So for me the day was a Good Day.

I am still working on the visual aids for the color class, Pirate’s Gold. I teach that in less than two weeks. Teaching color is always an exciting proposition. I often learn more than the students.

I thank Jane, Patricia, Rita (for driving, too), Bert, Ellie, Angelica, Jerry, Debbie, and Dorothea for a day for hilarious hours, for warm fuzzies, and for just being there.