Here are more pictures from Friday. The first two show the transformation of the laundry room into a lunch room.

Remember how Beth said that some embroiderers knit? Here’s Rosemary with her first stocking (for us). She’s already knit two pairs of gloves, one larger and one smaller (the smaller ones fit me perfectly). This is the leg of a stocking and represents 17 hours of knitting.

I think I mentioned how there was so much going on. Everywhere you looked, someone was busy working. Wendy was sitting at one end of the room. She was using the sunlight from the window to finish that pansy on the back of the jacket.

Behind Rosemary you can see Penny and Shaina working. They’re at the opposite end of the room from Wendy. Shaina’s working on entering the contact info for the last couple of dozen people who ordered embroidery or lace kits. Penny is mending some of the knitted items in preparation for the museum opening in just three weeks.

We’ve had an amazing response to the request for volunteer knitters. We’re now getting a couple finished items in the mail every week. We’re up to 13 pairs of stockings and 8 pairs of gloves. A few interpreters have come in to pick up their period clothing in preparation for opening, and have had the opportunity to choose a brand new pair of stockings and/or gloves to use for the season. It’s hard to explain just how happy a new pair of woolly stockings makes an interpreter, but there is a “happy stocking dance” that spontaneously happens when we take the lid off the stocking storage bin. Thank you to everyone who has been helping to make the happy stocking dance possible.

Yesterday was the first day of a new embroidery session. This time we’re in the Wardrobe office; Accomack is being renovated. So much happened yesterday that it seemed like several days, and it will probably take me several days to tell you all about it.

For now, here’s a picture of Tricia getting everyone up to speed with the stitching manuals and the data collection sheets. We had two returning embroiderers (Rosemary and Melanie Anne) and four new ones. That’s our intern Alex in the front. She’s been practicing the embroidery stitches for several weeks, and yesterday was moved to the real jacket. She stitched a fine pea pod, and was justifiably proud of it.

In the middle of the day I asked her how it was going, working on the jacket after stitching on a doodle cloth, and she said that at first when Tricia said it was time for her to move to the jacket she thought – wait! don’t I need to practice some more? I think it’s like that for most people the first time they stitch on the real piece.

We had so many people working yesterday that Penny, Shaina and Kelley had to rearrange the office and set up two long tables to accommodate everyone. It kind of looks like a sweat shop, doesn’t it?

One of the many things that happened yesterday was a productive meeting of the spangle questers. More on that, with photos, soon.