An item - of questionable use?

I have three of these in my possession and I'm wondering if anyone happens to know what they might have been used for.  The other two are currently wrapped in a fine yarn (definitely now rotten from age and unusable).

It has a hole through the entire inside and measures 9" in length.  I'm wondering if it could be used in some form of weaving and Irene wonders if perhaps it might be a drop spindle of sorts.

Any ideas?

 

Stitching progress - and a celebration of sorts

First of all - I finally had some time to sit down and do some stitching on the recycled denim purse I'm working on...

- - - - - - - -

The celebration part of this post is because I'm doing a happy dance because I just today completed typing Volume One of the diary written by my ancestor dating back to the early 1920's.  Over a year and half of work equaling 489 pages is all done but the final editing, which won't take place until I finish doing Volume Two - which is likely to take every bit as long as the first one and also be at least as many pages of transcript.  I really do hate to think about how much it's going to end up costing to have them published!  

But never mind, today I'm celebrating!

I'm a lucky gal!

I recently was extremely lucky and won a couple of wonderful giveaways.  

First of all, I really lucked out and 

won this book from Mary Ann (yes, another one!)...

It's an absolutely delightful book filled with wonderful patterns that
I know I will love stitching.

The book even comes with a little envie of

cross stitch supplies in the back!
SPECS:  'What Delilah Did Presents Storyland Cross Stitch', 

published by Collins & Brown;  

ISBN:  978-1-908449-39-9,  c2013

Victoria Adams Brown of Ribbonsmyth
also held a giveaway that I was lucky enough
to win.  

Just look at the wonderous supply of

stitching goodies I received!

 

There is a great supply of hand-dyed silk ribbon,

along with some pieces of my absolute favourte 

fabric (dupioni) and many other treasures.

THANK YOU SO MUCH VICKI AND MARY ANN!!

short mumble

Obviously the great clean up of Chez Richardson is continuing and there's been absolutely NO creativity going on here (unless you can call moving furniture, cleaning and getting rid of 'stuff' as being creative).  I will return with something of the needle work sort before too long!

Hi ho, hi ho, a shoveling we will go....

Yesterday we took our cat, Cosmo, to live with our #1 son and d-i-l.    DH has developed allergies and, with the carpet we are required to have in the apartment, of course it just holds the cat hair and compounds the problems.  The kids very nicely offered to take Cosmo so we delivered him to his new home where he and the already-resident Ella (cat) will be duking it out for who will be top cat.  I can say with pretty much 100% certainty that it will be Ella because Cosmo is a lover, not a fighter. 

So now the huge clean-up at Chez Magpie begins....every piece of furniture must be moved (and cleaned thoroughly) in quest of the ever-elusive fur bunnies that seem to be able to manage to worm their way into everything. 

Needless to say there will be several garbage bags filled with 'stuff' we no longer want/need/and wonder why we had in the first place that will have to be donated somewhere, along with more bags filled with just plain junk.  Yikes, we haven't even been here for two years yet -how does 'stuff' manage to multiply so much??

The worst will be my studio.  Having to move all the furniture that's in here to vacuum behind it is a daunting task.  If you don't hear from me for a week.....send reinforcements.....

Latest stitching - of two sorts....

I got a bit more done on the denim purse over the weekend as you can see...

I did a row of web stitches, that look like little flowers.

Below is another of the seam treatments from Pam Kellogg's book,

with some beads added.

Four more from Pam's books...  

the seam on the right (with additional beads);

the green on the left, and the two blue

motifs.

 And, please meet Hobbes

(from the comic strip 'Calvin and Hobbes')...

Hobbes is crocheted and comes from

a free pattern available HERE.

and here's more...

Here's a few more of the seam treatments I did today...

The seam above is done with the Square Boss stitch, from the 'Embroidery Stitches' book by Mary Webb.

The one below is actually the beginning of a web stitch and I changed my mind in the middle of it and created something else.  Not sure if this has a name!!

Below is another ' I dunno the name of it' stitch.  Basically just two rows of off-set back stitch and woven with another thread.  Looks a little bit like braid. 

TUSAL and stitching

I'm a couple of days late with my TUSAL post for this month (what else is new!!).  The really eagle-eyed amongst you might have noticed that I didn't do one last month at all.  Well - that was because there wasn't even one little ORT in my monthly pile.  Yikes....a whole month without stitching...what's this world coming to?  To be fair though, I was away for two of those weeks.

Here's what I accumulated last month...

Below is one of the seams I stitched this afternoon. 

It's two rows of 'Eskimo Edging Stitch'

and I found the instructions in the book

'Embroidery Stitches' by Mary Webb.

The seam below is pretty simple - a double row of buttonhole

stitch, which I laced with another colour of thread and 

then added french knots.

The button is pretty self-explanatory!

Progress on the denim purse....

Last week something fun arrived in the mail and I've done a little playing.  SharonB has wonderful plastic stencils on offer which make marking out seams for crazy quilting a breeze.  They also come with an extensive 'book' of seam suggestions, but of course you can do your own 'thing'.  Here's what one of her stencils looks like...

Go HERE to find out more about these, and

purchase your own!!
I'm certainly glad I did.

Now for some pictures of what I've been creating...

In the above picture, I have used one of Sharon's stencils to create the
scroll pattern on the left.  You can also see two of Pam Kellogg's
seam treatments from her 'Elegant Crazy Quilt Seam Treatments' books, in this case the motif
on the right and the seam at the bottom.

Above you can see another use of Sharon's stencils to create the
seam on the upper left.  There's two more of Pam's seams as well
(the motif in the middle and the seam on the right).

Above is another of Pam's seams on the bottom.

and above are two more of Pam's treatments...
the motif in the middle and the seam on the right.

p.s. I have no affiliation with either of these artists, but highly recommend you check them out and discover the many talents they possess.