Out & About

Remembering Leora

It was a sad day today, because we got the announcement at work that our colleague Leora Werner, had died. In early October, she had bacterial meningitis, and it caused multiple strokes. She never recovered.

Leora was the director of marketing for FLO Analytics and she was very good at her job. She was also the mother of two children, one of whom hadn’t even had his first birthday.

Aside from that, she was also a very kind person who looked for ways to connect with people, including me. I will miss her, and I can’t imagine what her family is going through right now.

Leora’s office is right across from where I usually sit when I go into work. She’s been working remotely since her son was born, and we never crossed paths in the office.

The “Don’t complain about the rain!” poster has always been in the background on video calls. I never got around to asking her about it.

One of my coworkers gathered together a few things she had in her office and made a little alter.

Last of the OOTS Notepad

Matt has had this Order of the Stick notepad for many years. He finally made it available for taking notes and we’ve come to the last sheet. Matt posed with it for posterity’s sake.

Placeholder Stove Cover

As mentioned before, the new stove has a cooktop I’m not looking forward to keep looking nice. I brainstormed with Graham and Julie about what type of cover would be best (Graham voted for butcher block and Julie voted for a nice thick plastic cutting-board type.) But then Julie pointed out that it was a fairly large space and I might find myself not putting the cover back on because it was too heavy and hard to move. She suggested having a placeholder for a while until I was sure I wanted to haul the cover back and forth.

Et voilia!

I asked my brother if he could cut me a scrap of plywood down to 32″ by 22″ did just that. It was also my birthday present.

He said it was scrap wood from The Emerson School, where I used to work. I wonder about that though, because TES didn’t celebrate holidays, so there wouldn’t have been an advent calendar section of shelving. But it might be left over from when the Montessori school was in the building.

#YearofStitch Sampler No. 7

I looked at the seventh sampler and thought, “There isn’t much to this one, maybe I should do four.” And so I did. (And that’s why I’m always behind.) The plan is to make them into napkins.

This was my first time using wash-away stabilizer that sticks to the fabric. That stuff is a wonder for working on dark fabrics. I traced the outline (four times) and got to work. It is hard to see how the colors actually look on the dark fabric, so fastidious people would probably want to do a test swatch.

It doesn’t feel as great as soft fabric does, but it does add a lot of sturdiness to the sewing experience.

The stitches this time are:

Sheaf stitch (Outermost sections of the cacti)
Pekinese stitch (Middle section of the cacti. Because this was going to be a napkin, I tacked them down)
Feather stitch (The other section of the cacti)
Woven picot (The cacti flowers, which were also tacked down.)
Herringbone stitch (The upper vase decoration)
Mountmellick stitch (The lower vase decoration.)

In addition, I outlined the cacti using couching, and the vase with whipped backstitch.

Whipped backstitch. Redeeming backstitch since January 2022, when I learned it. Uneven stitches become a swirly rope!

Overall, I loved mastering woven picot. I’m a fan of things that free stitching from the fabric. Because they were napkins, I tacked those flower petals down, but the could fly free. I found mountmellick to be a bit fussy.

For colors, I used the same two greens for the cacti and then picked colors from four different color palettes I keep on hand. The above is Stop in Santa Fe from Stitch Palettes. The one below is from the mix of colors that I got from Little Dear when I ordered my first embroidery kit. It was the summer blend. And since that blend was supplying the two greens to all four napkins, I was short on colors and added in the red and the yellow. I’m pretty sure those are two different yellows.

This is Chocolate Chip from Stitch Palettes.

This is Stitch Palettes’s Downtown Dubai.

As I was blocking the one with the bright colors, I noticed an unfortunate tear on the side that was going to make the napkin not very easy to stitch up. So that napkin stayed on the blocking device four about three weeks until I figured out the solution. Stay tuned!