Thanks to all who sent messages of encouragement regarding my Mom. She's ok, going to be in the hospital longer than we thought (or she imagined) but things are going pretty well. I'm fairly well exhausted - dealing with family personalities as well as all of my regular stuff, but all in all things are pretty good.

I've started working on a really old project...really the first thing I started on my own:

This is the picture that inspired it...a picture off of an Australian calendar.

In order to get the effect I really want with the leaves, I'm using organdy ribbon and doing just a straight stitch with the ribbon all over. It's really time consuming, but gets the effect I was looking for. I'm pretty pleased with how it looks, just 5000 more leaves to go! LOL!

It's interesting that the few who left comments agree with me on blogging and having a "personal touch" to it...I think that's important and frankly makes the whole thing more interesting. I find balancing privacy and security with the camaraderie that you can find on the internet an interesting challenge. The world is changing and with it comes a whole assortment of new problems, but also new connections.

Anyway, thanks all of you for being there. I find this artistic relationship building to be surprisingly fulfilling!