Tuesday, June 8, 2010

African Folklore Embroidery and an ATC Challenge

In May my mom treated me to a lecture about African Folklore Embroidery. The lecturer was Leora Raikin, who is such an interesting speaker. She spent the morning taking us on a bit of a safari, sharing lots of information about animals, people groups and, of course, about the embroidery itself. She passed around so many beautiful examples of the work done by the various people groups and explained how they expressed something important in their culture or in the world around them. She also shared many examples of the work she and her cousin had done.
For the afternoon session we each chose a square of black fabric with whatever design took our fancy and some thread and then the fun began as Leora taught us some of the basic stitches used in the embroidery. What we learned was based on the chain stitch, so simple, and yet . . .

A few weeks later I saw an ATC challenge swap that would allow me to use the embroidery techniques on one of the three cards I would make for my partner. Couldn't resist signing up.
Here is the ATC that used the African embroidery using black card stock instead of black fabric:
One of the things that makes the embroidery so lovely is that the threads used are multi-colored, with the color changing very quickly. I didn't want to use the beautiful threads I had for my kit because I don't want to run out before I am done with that piece, so I used crochet cotton that I had on hand, some colored, but mostly white, and colored it myself with Sharpies. I don't know how well the Sharpie color would do in a situation where it was being washed frequently, but in this application that shouldn't be a problem.

Real Life Harlequin Romance

One of the websites I enjoy visiting is Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. Truthfully, I don't understand a lot of what goes on there, since they seem to love electronic books and I prefer paper. My two favorite features are their reviews, especially when a book gets a bad review, and HaBO.
I needed my daughter's help to figure out that HaBO means Help a Body Out (Not really, that's just how I like to say it in my mind. You should be able to figure out which word I changed from the name of the site.). What happens is that someone remembers a romance they read many years ago and wants to re-read it but can't remember the name or author. It is interesting to see what part of the story stuck in their mind. Then other people try to help them out.
A recent edition of HaBO seeking help finding a book about a rancher and a vegetarian, had a comment with a link to this true story about an actual rancher and a vegetarian. It is quite long, but I have been enjoying it so much and thought you might, too. Does it give the ending away to tell you that the story is posted in installments on her blog The Pioneer Woman?