Len's Birthday Present: June 2015

Everyone seems to like my needlebooks so I've done another for a much-loved member of our craft group, The  Yarnspinners. Len is turning 85 next week and he can outsew all of us, making masses of lovely quilts and giving them away for charity. He has a great sense of humour and, because he likes my needlebooks, he has been turning up at Yarnspinners with a raggedy piece of felt covered in needles. This he shows to me and says, "Don't you think I need a new needlebook?" Needless to say I had to take the hint. I chose a folksy picture, embroidered it in stemstitch and put his initials on it. I'm not an expert embroiderer and essentially stick to stemstitch and chainstitch with the odd foray into more complicated stitches. Basically I embroider so that my quilt labels look good.

Being a Pinterest addict I also thought I'd try one of those pincushions on top of a jar that I'd been pinning on my pincushion board. This did not go so well as I'm not the best at using glue guns. It was worth a try but I'd need to get much better at it to feel comfortable. I cut out a circle and embroidered "Have a nice lamington" on it.This is an in-joke in the Yarnspinners. Len recently was ill and had to go on anti-biotics. He ended pronouncing to us all that he thought lamingtons made much better anti-biotics than tablets and proceeded to hand them around for afternoon tea. To those of you who don't know what a lamington is, it's a 3" cube of spongecake covered in chocolate icing and then covered again in desiccated coconut. A great Australian staple for afternoon tea.