I haven’t blogged three out of the last four nights because I simply can’t think of anything to say. Nothing new has happened since about 10 days ago when Carolyn and Robbin worked on the real lace. I’ve been taking this project one bite at a time for over a year (remember the old joke about how to eat an elephant? One bite at a time…) and right now there just isn’t another bite on the fork.

Don’t mistake me – there’s plenty left to do. More silk embroidery (more trefoils!) more GST embroidery, more lace (WAY more lace!). And there are more things to figure out – how to manage the gold work, how to marshall the legions who’d like to sew on sequins, and don’t even mention the whole putting-it-together part (no, really, DON’T mention it!). And then when it’s finally done, there’ll be the creating an exhibit to go with it.

But right now, this week, no decisions or choices are in the offing. We’ve got an embroidery session starting on Friday, the first one with embroiderers AND lace makers working at the same time. That’ll be exciting. And hopefully some of them will bring some show & tell that I can then share with you. But right now…..

So, if you have any wonderments, anything you wish I’d explain, anything I explained so long ago you don’t remember where we’re coming from, anything at all, let me know.

To make up for assigning you the blog for the next couple of days, I’ll leave you with a picture. This is a detail of a gorgeous 17th century raised-work embroidery which belongs to Joanna Hill, a textile conservator and friend of Tricia’s. Joanna so kindly brought this embroidery to a couple of sessions last summer and let us all get really close to it and take lots of pictures. It’s the only real 17th century artifact I can actually post pictures of here. I love that the bird has a bug in its beak. Ewww.