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Mouse TalesVol 7 - Issue 2 April 2008Contents
President's MessageSorry if I have not been as active as usual for the past six weeks, but my mother fell and broke her leg in late March. I drove to Atlanta to be there for the surgery and stayed through her hospitalization, not knowing how long I would be needed. About a week after she was transferred to a nursing home rehab unit, I had to drive back to Mississippi to sign our tax returns. I returned to Atlanta a week later and wisely brought along one dog for companionship. I spent the better part of April separated from my husband, my dogs and the internet! This experience has taught me many things, not the least of which is that I feel very isolated when I do not have a reliable internet connection and at least an hour a day to check on email. I wish I could say this was resolved, but my mother will be in the nursing home until at least early June. Right now, we are still not sure where she will be discharged, because she can not live alone or handle the stairs at her condo. Regardless, I know I will be going back to Atlanta for many more extended stays in the near future. Anyway, on to chapter business! The Artist Trading Cards have not been swapped, because I have been too busy to finish my part of the swap. That said, I plan to mail out the bulk of them before I leave for Russia. I have all but one card finished and already set the swap names, it is just a matter of sorting and placing everything into envelopes to be returned to the participants. I am sorry that it has taken me so long to finish this, but it has taken me longer than expected to replace the ATCs that were misplaced after an exhibit in a local library. I am still collecting for the basket to be donated to Share-A-Stitch, although it is pretty much done. If you are interested, there is a database of what has been contributed to date in the main CS Yahoo Group. If you still want to contribute something to go into the blue rolling needlework organizer I bought, just remember that it has to be to me before June 15th to be included in the basket. Rissa Peace Root Also, I wanted to let you know that Cynthia will be announcing the details of her Inchie Swap on the list during the May meeting. I hope that there is still plenty of interest in this project. I wish you all the best and appreciate your kind understanding. Rissa
Chapter NewsLani:As our own stitching friends, Lani, better known as ArmyTBoneGirl, heads off to Iraq let's all keep her, and her loving family here at home, in our thoughts and prayers. Our mailing address: A reminder, the mailing address for CyberStitchers is: In the CS Newsletter: For our new members, we have built in links to websites mentioned, and to emailing people you may need to contract. If you see a link mentioned and the letters are blue, click on that link and you will be taken there. You will note that I don't put folks' actual emails in the newsletter. If you click on their name in blue, you will be able to email them. If you have a problem, let me know! I also encourage members to share - if you found a great needlework book, took a great class with a great teacher, have some neat stitching tips to share - let me know so I can include it in the newsletter. Also, if there are some interesting needlework related events in your area, let me know so that I may add them onto the calendar. With the size of our membership, and the area we cover, chances are if there is something happening near you, some of our chapter may be interested in attending. Sue Sherburne Dues: National announced a dues increase of $3.00 starting January 1, 2008. Happily, the chapter has a little money that members have donated "for the good of the chapter". The Board has decided to these fund to benefit everyone, and will absorb the increase for the first year and not raise dues until 2009. Chapter Pins: Cyberstitchers is lucky to have our own Chapter Pin! You can see a picture of what this pin looks like in the files section of this yahoo group. Just go to the file section and look for "cyberstitchers pin". They really are a fun to wear especially when you are attending the National and Regional EGA Seminars. I just returned from the Great Lakes Regional Seminar (GLR) and I found myself looking for others who might be wearing one. True, the GLR is a different region than what Cyberstitchers is a member of, but you never know....... These pins are $7.00 and that includes the postage regardless of where we are mailing. If you are interested, you can pay via paypal at www.paypal.com or www.paypal.ca for our Canadian members. The payee is cyberstitchers@excite.com. Just be sure to identify "Chapter Pin" somewhere in the payment information. You can also send a check to me, payable to Cyberstitchers, just email me for my mailing address. Regardless, of how you purchase one, please email me (click on my name below) and give me YOUR mailing address and that you are wanting to purchase a chapter pin. As soon as I see payment, I will get your pin out to you. Your Chapter Pin volunteer, Share-a-Stitch basket: The Region's Share-a-Stitch regional seminar is in June 2008. CyberStitchers will join other chapters in having a 'basket' to donate to the Tea Cup Auction fundraiser. As Rissa says, she will be collecting until the end of May. Please make sure you mark the package SAS, or something to let Rissa know what is in her mail. Rissa's database of donations to date is tinyurl.com/2grmhf . Special Interest Groups: Check out our SIGs - Special Interest Groups. Different stitchers have gotten together for specific interests and stitch-a-longs: Beading, stitching a Christmas ornament each month, Victoria Sampler/Lavendar & Lace designs, Brag Book, "Heart of My Heart" pattern stitch-a-long, Inspirations Magazine projects, the Dragonboat class, and of course, a UFO (Unfinished Fiber Object) group for members to encourage each other to finish GCC and EGA class pieces. Go to SIGs on our website to see what is going on. 50th Anniversary Stitching Challenges: Challenge #1: Stitch a 50th anniversary piece of your own design. Use the number 50, EGA blue and gold, 50 symbols, 50 threads or whatever you would like to creatively celebrate our anniversary through stitches. Send it in as a special gift/fund-raising/auction item for seminar week. For the last few years we have had a wonderful selection of needle art on display and for sale at seminar through both live and silent auctions. Challenge #2: Participate in National Stitch in Public Day, Wednesday, September 3, 2008. This date was chosen so that as many seminar participants as possible could stitch and demonstrate in the downtown Louisville area. Chapters and MALs can get the stitch vibe going along side seminar participants by doing the same in your local area. Stitch on your lunch break at the office or at school, stitch in libraries or book stores, stitch in you local parks or other downtown public areas. Elise Lampton, Ruth Whalen, and Mary Julia Kuhn will chair the event and work with staff members Laura Olah and Brad Cape to combine challenges 2 and 3. The committee will share ideas for your participation. Challenge #3: Participate in a public installation of fiber art. EGA will join with other groups in the Louisville area in a public installation of fiber art. We hope to entice local and international groups to stitch and bond with us. To participate in this event, send a 12 inch by 12 inch two dimensional embroidery to EGA headquarters by July 20, 2008. The ground fabric edges must be flat finished in some way (bound or hemmed) and no piece should be framed. These items will not be returned to you, but will become part of a permanent collection. This will be an excellent way to expose the public to our celebration in stitches in an outdoor setting. We invite you to send both basic and unusual pieces as an expression of different ideas and techniques to show the varied expertise of EGA members. EGA will sponsor a "people's choice award" and give a year's membership to the top three winners. Challenge #4: EGA challenges you to share us your unique ideas for celebrating our Golden Anniversary! Send them to presega@egausa.org . I look forward to hearing from you!
Education ReportThe education committee, composed of Anne Long, Ellen Hartman, and Rissa Peace Root presents the following report.... Hi all, Here are your BEE5 classes for 2008: The BEE5 schedule is as follows: 3rd quarter classes (register during July-September): 4th quarter classes (register during October-December): For our new members, the "BEE benefit" is an education program that CyberStitchers has been pleased to offer for 5 years! The chapter voted at the beginning of the year and selected 11 GCCs for the BEE benefit. The benefit part is that the chapter picks up your course fee and postage for this class! Each member is allowed to select 1 BEE class. You can join a BEE class as a non-BEE student, but you are responsible for a share of the course fee and the postage - this is $19.50 for US students, $23 for students outside the US. Now for a caveat.....if you request a BEE class, let's say at the beginning of the year, but that class doesn't register until October, you must be a member of CyberStitchers in October when I send out payment info. So if you let your membership lapse in September, I remove your name from the class roster. If you renew late, I can add you back IF there are still spots in the class. The BEE classes have been extremely popular and many have waiting lists so failing to renew on time could result in losing a coveted spot in a popular GCC. Once names are removed from a class list due to failure to renew membership in CyberStitchers, I offer up the spot to the next person on the list. It's only fair; I don't know if a person has forgotten to renew, or is leaving the chapter. I don't hold spots in classes on the off chance that someone is renewing late. Also, if you do renew late, I will add you to the bottom of the waiting list for the class. :-( So I guess I'm saying, don't forget to renew your membership! For those of you who voted for a class that did not get selected for the BEE5, please contact me offlist with the class you would like to take instead (from the classes listed above). Poll results are still available in this yahoogroup, so if you're not sure what you voted for, you can check the polls or email me offlist. If you voted for a class that is split into 2 sections, please let me know if you have a preference as to which section you are in. Otherwise, I will just assign people to a section. :-) BTW, 155 people voted for classes this year. Don't forget to check and see which classes are being offered online by EGA National. There are 2 classes offered every 2 months, and this is another option for taking GCCs. The May - June offerings from National are More Options...in Hardanger and Mariposa. Respectfully submitted, Most Successful Programs: The latest piece in our Petite Projects file is Mixed Media cards from
Knoxville. You can access this file at the URL: BAM: BAM is Bead-a-Month and grew out of a SAM, Stitch-a-Month, program we purchased for several years. Our own Rissa picked up with BAM when SAM ran out of new files. The current SAM/BAM stitch is the Lazy Stitch. All diagrams are maintained in the CS-Stitch-A-Month yahoogroup. Look in the Files section in the Folder labeled "Files for BAM". If you are not a member of the CS-Stitch-A-Month group but would like to be, send an email to: CS-Stitch-a-Month-subscribe@yahoogroups.com Stitch-a-long: We have a few stitch-a-long groups going now such as the ornament group and a bead group. Please let me know if there is an interest in a group stitchalong, a small meeting stitchalong, or any other similar ideas you might have. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email me. Dragonboats Class: The Dragonboats class is still up and running on yahoogroups. People still continue to join - especially some of our new members. If you are interested in making one of these cute little ornaments, the class is free for all members. Go to yahoogroups.com and sign up for CSDragonboats, or email Sue for an invitation. Please address Education Committee questions to:
Outreach ProjectsStar Pillows This project is still in full swing. Extra special this time is that our chapter sent pillows to one of our own, Lani, and her unit as they head off to Iraq for 15 monthes. There are still troops deploying around the world so if you are interested in stitching a pillow, please use the cross stitch pattern provided by the chapter. You will be stitching a small design on a 6x6 inch square of 14ct. white Aida and then mail it to our Chapter Project Coordinator. The stitched squares will then be assembled into small pillows with similarly-themed backing fabrics. A pillow is given to a soldier before shipping out to kiss the pillow and give it to his or her child as a keepsake that will hopefully comfort the child during the separation from their parent. The pattern may be found here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cyberstitchers_ega/files/KISSING%20PILLOWS%20pattern/ as a PDF document (or, go into the Files section in this group, and click on the folder Kissing Pillows Pattern); if you need technical assistance, please contact Lynn via e-mail. This is a simple and quick stitch. Meg is our Project Coordinator for the Kissing Pillows Chapter Project. She is the chapter member you will mail your stitched design to, and she will be sure that the squares are assembled into mini-pillows and sent on to their final distribution point. Contact Meg via email for her mailing address. We hope that many chapter members will find this project to their liking and that Meg will receive many stitched squares! Just a few items to bring to your attention: Yes there is a Canadian version of this project for Canadian service folks. Lynne D., one of our Canadian members is coordinating this in her f2f chapter in Ontario. Contact Lynne D. by email to get the pattern and information for the Canadian version of this project. Bookmarks For Literacy Judi continues to accept handmade bookmarks for the chapter's Bookmarks
for Literacy project. The requirements are as follows: Outreach for One Our "Outreach for One" folder is still there to provide members with other ideas for outreach. Go to our cyberstitchers_ega Yahoo! group. Click on "Links", then on "Outreach for One" folder. Maintenance of this list now rests with the chapter members. We encourage members to post other links to charities you know of that need assistance, or you can send the information to our Outreach Chair, Lynn, and the committee will see that it gets posted. The committee always welcomes any ideas for chapter projects (either from the membership or the committee). As usual, it's a bit difficult to find something a chapter like ours can do. Any ideas will be gratefully accepted, and will be fully investigated by the committee. Please share your ideas with our Outreach Chair, Lynn.
CyberStitchers' Inchies SwapInspired by Virginie's enthusiasm for this format. Swap items shall be created by the participants using the embroidery technique(s) or combination of techniques of their choice. Individual Inchies or a collection of Inchies finished as a single item may be submitted. This swap will be Like-for-Like; that is, if you send an individual Inchie, you'll receive back an individual Inchie; if you send six individual Inchies, you'll receive back six individual Inchies; if you send, for example a finished item with a collection of Inchies, you'll received as similar an item as possible in the swap - in essence, there are two types of swap here: one of individual Inchies, and another of finished items made from Inchies. In order not to congest the Chat4CyberStitchers@yahoo.com list, please join the http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cs_inchieswap/ list. Ask questions, post links to Inchie eye-candy(photos), online articles, patterns, tutorials, etc., on this list. You can add photos to the photo albums, but it is more fun to keep your swap creations a surprise. After the swap, SwapMom will post photos of all the submissions for everyone to see. o Sign up for swap by sending an email to Cynthia. o Include your name, email, mailing address and phone number. o Sign up will end May 31, 2008. When you send your swap item(s), you MUST include adequate return postage and insurance (if desired) - Neither CyberStitchers Chapter or SwapMom will be responsible for items not received if you choose not to insure. o Items for swap must be received by June 30, 2008.
Natsu no Take:This is the second of a series of 4 small, simple projects based on the 4 seasons, to run in the newsletter throughout the year. The designs are influenced by Japanese embroidery, but go off on my own wanderings - I knew my limits when I took a class in Japanese embroidery. I am stitching my designs on 24 ct. congress cloth, but you may choose to use a different ground. Some of the more adventerous of you may treat this as a crewel or surface embroidery, and play with different stitches. I will list the fibers and stitches I used, but you can certainly experiment with the design. Embroidery floss is an easy substitute for folks who don't have easy access to many different fibers. This time we are looking at Summer. In Japanese, 'Natsu no Take' (nah-tsoo noh tah-kay) means 'Summer Bamboo'. 'Natsu' is the Japanese word for 'Summer'. It is pronounced 'nah-tsoo' - t and s sounds merge together.. 'Take' means 'bamboo', and is pronounced 'tah-kay'. Bamboo in the wild is not the Lucky Bamboo we buy in the stores here, and grow in little pebbles. The first time I went to Japan to visit the sister city of the town where I teach, our group flew into Kansai Airport and we were picked up by a few folks from our sister city with one of the town buses. As we left the airport, which is on a man-made island (Kansai is an amazing engineering feat and Wikipedia has a great article about it. Discovery Channel once featured it on MegaStructures.), I saw on the mainland what looked rather like a hillside of green feathers. I asked what that was and was amazed to hear that it was all bamboo! Ok, now it is 5-11-08 - check back in a couple days - I am finishing up the stitching. I'll have photos of real bamboo, and photos of the stitching for you! Sorry for the delay!
Calendar:CyberStitchers Meetings: May 8-13, 2008:General meeting of CyberStitchers from 9PM (ET) Thursday, May 8 through 9PM (ET) Tuesday, May 13. June 12-17, 2008:Board meeting of CyberStitchers from 9PM (ET) Thursday, June 12 through 9PM (ET) Tuesday, June 17. July 10-15, 2008:General meeting of CyberStitchers from 9PM (ET) Thursday, July10 through 9PM (ET) Tuesday, July 15. August 14-19, 2008:Board meeting of CyberStitchers from 9PM (ET) Thursday, August 14 through 9PM (ET) Tuesday, August 19.
Regional and National:May 15-18, 2008 A World of StitchesAn exhibit by the New York Capital District Chapter of EGA. Exhibit will highlight ethnic embroideries from around the world and include a boutique, invitational needlework and daily demonstrations. Pruyn House, 207 Old Niskayuna Rd, Newtonville, NY (near Albany, NY). 10-8 Th/10-4 Fr-Su. Adults $3, Children 12 & under free. SASE to NYCDCEGA, PO Box 443, Slingerlands, NY 12159. Contact: 518-475-1483, or gardengal345@yahoo.com June 6-8, 2008 Stitchin' on the Ridge 2008 Carolinas Region Seminar, Ridgecrest Conference Center, Ridgecrest, NC. Contact Katrina Lawrimore, or call 843-546-5438. June 10-15, 2008 Fiesta de Colores South Central Region Seminar hosted by San Antonio Needlework Guild, San Antonio, TX. Contact Diane Williams, Seminar Chairman. June 13-19, 2008 Stitchers Ottersea Greater Pacific Region, Asilomar, CA. Contact gwlane. June 20 - June 22, 2008 SAS XXVII Stitchin' in Memphis Tennessee Valley Region Seminar, Memphis, TN. Contact Susan Cohn, Seminar Registrar. June 27-July 25, 2008 Flights of Fancy Needle arts exhibit hosted by the Chautauqua Region Embroiderers' Guild at the James Prendergast Library, Jamestown, NY 14701. An opening reception will be held Friday, June 27, 2008 from 6:30-8 pm.Contact Allene Hooper; 716-969-0567 July 9-12, 2008 Rocky Mountain Region Seminar The 2008 seminar of the Rocky Mountain Region will be held at the DoubleTree Hotel in Denver, CO. Teachers who would like proposal information should contact Ann Pinfield. August 25 - November 26, 2008 19th National Exhibit EGA Headquarters, Louisville, KY August 28-30, 2008 International Embroidery Conference The Brown Hotel, Louisville, KY August 30, 2008 19th National Exhibit - Opening Receptions EGA Headquarters, Louisville, KY August 31- September 5, 2008 Golden Gala 50th Anniversary Celebration National Seminar hosted by EGA National Board, Hyatt Regency Louisville, KY. Contact: Armida Taylor or 208-890-2694 September 5-12, 2008 ANG National Seminar Hyatt Grand Champion Resort and Spa, Indian Wells, CA October 2-5, 2008 39th Annual Stitchery Showcase Hosted by the Stan Hywet Needlework Guild at Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens, 714 N Portage Path, Akron, OH. Mail entries accepted. Contact Betty Jo Scurei, Chairman, or Kathy Olex, Co-Chair. October 17-18, 2008 Fall Festival of Stitches Youngstown Area EGA Chapter, Youngstown, OH.. Contact Todd Murdock. November 13-16,2008 Stumpwork with Marsha Papay Gamola A 2008 Extended Study Program at the Embroidery Museum and Resource Center, Louisville, KY. Contact Laura Olah or call 502-589-6956. Other Events of Interest: Through May 25, 2008 Transformers Reverberations May 29, 2008 Another View: 19th Century Samplers & Silk Needlwork June 6-15, 2008 24th National Counted Cross Stitch Show June 6 - July 27, 2008 Material Guys August 29- September 1, 2008 Thimble Collectors International 16th Biennial Convention At the Sheraton Society Hill Hotel in Downtown Philadelphia. Great programs, including a huge Sales Mall, a Beginner's Seminar, an auction and the "Thimble Road Show" where you ask the experts. TCI activities encompass all needlework tools. For more information, visit www.thimblecollectors.com or send an email to info@thimblecollectors.com October 2-4, 2008 Stitching Jubilee Stoney Creek Colletion presents classes and exhibitions at the Valley Forge Convention Center, King of Prussia, PA. Check their website at www.stitchingjubilee.com. Check the EGA website for other interesting event listings. If anyone knows of other events that should be included here. Please let me know. We cover a wide-spread geographic area, and with summer vacation, people will also be traveling, and may want to check out other things that I have missed. Sue - your friendly cyber neighborhood newsletter editor. Please put CS in the subject line.
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