The Stitch Up

Smithsonian Stitch Class

Last month I found a whole new obsession - fiber art classes at the Smithsonian!  Most of the classes are given at the S. Dillon Ripley Center which is this tiny building next to the Smithsonian Castle.  When you enter the Ripley Center you basically just walk down a spiral staircase into a long hallway of classrooms underground - it's pretty cool!  

I took the Haute Couture Embroidery Class which was taught by Elizabeth Lay who is a Decorative Arts Historian currently working at Montgomery History Museum.  She gave an awesome presentation on designers who use embroidery in their haute couture designs.  She talked about a few designers I knew about like Poiret, Vionnet and Worth, but she introduced us to several designers I wasn't aware of like Guo Pei - whose designs are so beautiful and Iris Van Herpen who  partners with NASA and is moving embroidery into a whole new dimension with 3d printing.

After the presentation, we moved on to designing our own haute couture buttons with a fun array of fabric and beads to choose from.  I think my only complaint would be that I could have used a little more time for working on the buttons, but that was mostly because after the presentation I was fairly overloaded with inspiration and just couldn't focus on one thing.  

I loved the set up of this class - learning and getting inspiration from current and vintage designers and then spending some time creating in a cool location.  I recommend the Smithsonian classes and am on the lookout for my next class!

Return of the Mac

I'm back!  It's no excuse for missing so much blog time, but here's what I've been up to instead of blogging:

1.  Enjoying the beautiful Spring (and now Summer) weather outside with some gardening.

I planted a bee garden which is bringing so many happy honey bees to our yard!  I also planted a blackberry and a blueberry bush which are both doing great.  I don't think we'll have a lot of fruit this year, but hopefully I'll be in business for canning and jellies next summer.  The cat loves being outside with us.  She chases a stick like a puppy which is a crack up and in the evening runs after lightening bugs which is also adorable.  

2. I celebrated a couple of extremely important holidays.

I think St. Patricks Day and Cinco de Mayo might be the best holidays of the year.  No stress, not a lot of planning required, just some cocktails and awesome food!

3.  The Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival

There were so many cute sheep at this festival - plus I bought some beautiful yarn.  I posted more sheep pics on my flickr page if you love photos of adorable sheep like I do.  

4.  Family Time

One of our adorable nieces and her lovely mom came to visit.  We did a bunch of fun stuff including some sewing.  The niece is super crafty and I love getting into new projects with her.

5.  Book Signing

I got lucky and was able to meet Lyndsay Faye, an author I love, at a book signing at a local book store.  Her Gods of Gotham series is awesome if you're looking for a great summer read.

6.  Caught a ball game

It's that time of year - perfect weather for a ball game, and The Racing Presidents are always a little extra fun at the Nationals games.

7.  Finished My First Pair of Socks!

These took me a LONG time - but I'm excited to have the finished product.  I learned a lot and I think my next sock project will be much better.  Actually I think any knitting project I do next will be better since I know a little more about increasing, decreasing and working in the round.

So, a fairly fun and busy Spring and Summer so far.  I'm looking forward to what the rest of Summer will bring!

 

Christmas Trips

We've been getting around a bit to different spots around Virginia for Christmas celebrations.  My favorite every year is the Christmas weekend at Middleburg, VA.  Their Christmas parade begins with the Hunt parade: hunting dogs and horse and riders decked out to go chase some foxes.

In addition to the parade they had wagon rides around town.  In past years, I think they've done sleigh rides, but this year has been totally snow free.

These horses were so cute and all dressed up for Christmas.

Middleburg had a craft fair and lots of other activities - the whole town was festive!

Santa apparently likes the Hunt parade as well!

Another week we took a walk in Gulf Branch Nature Center in Arlington, VA.  The Blacksmith Guild of the Potomac was doing a presentation and had made a bunch of bells and candy canes for the holidays.

I loved watching the artisans at work.  They weren't selling anything, which was too bad as I think it would be cool to have an iron candy cane to decorate the house.

I think this last week before Christmas we'll be laying low, finishing the gift wrapping and chugging some egg nog.  I need to finish a few embroidery projects before the big day arrives and I'm cutting it close. Good luck to everyone with their last minute shopping and crafting!

Fredericksburg, VA

The husband and I took a little trip out to Fredericksburg last week for some antiquing and had a great day!

One of the things I love about Virginia is the number of little towns with so much history.  Like many towns around Virginia, Fredericksburg has a wealth of Civil War history and was the location for two major battles.  Fredericksburg is most well known for being the location of George Washington's childhood home.  You can visit the spot where he supposedly threw a penny across the Rappahannock River and chopped down the cherry tree.

However, the main reason we headed down to Fredericksburg?  Antiquing and a good meal!

While Fredericksburg is quite an old town, most of the buildings in the historic section had more of a 1950s than a colonial feel.  

Every other store in the old town section was an antique store and there were some great finds!  I bought a couple of vintage scarves, but the furniture in the stores was what caught my eye the most and I think we might have to go back with a truck.  Or a moving van.

After an exhausting day of antiquing we hit up the Blue and Grey Brewing Company for some great local beer and food.  I actually haven't found too many good microbrews around Northern Virginia, so this place was a nice surprise.  The husband also got us a quick tour of the Bowman Brothers Brewery.  It's on the banks of the Rappahannock River and the bourbon tasting was straight up smooth Virginia whiskey!

 
We will definitely be returning to Fredericksburg for more shopping and maybe to include a few of the historic high points.  We brought some Bowman Brothers Bourbon home with us though, so we will be enjoying a taste of Fredericksburg (I know - corny!) for a little while to come.

Middleburg, Virginia

We managed to make it through the snow storm with no permanent damage.  We did have huge branch fall.  It took down some wires, but it turned out that was not the cause of any power loss.  (Thank goodness.  I would have been embarrassed to have been the cause of the whole neighborhood losing power.)  It turns out the wires that came down were just old telephone lines but it sounded and looked pretty damaging:

Wild, huh?  The husband chopped up the limb and took care of business and looking around the neighborhood there were quite a few people who had downed tree limbs.  

We spent a lot of time at Starbucks and hitting some restaurants over the few days that the electricity was off.  It was cold in the house and we are also sadly addicted to internet access.  

I was thinking about writing Starbucks a thank you note when I was sitting there warm, snuggly, full of vanilla latte and perusing my favorite craft blogs with their free wireless.  But then I remembered that Starbucks has been getting PLENTY of my cash over the years so I figure we're even.

Once the electricity was back on and things had settled back to normal the Hubby and I decided to take an outing.  We've been out to Middleburg, Virginia several times.  It's one of those cute towns in Virginia horse country with a lot of history, beautiful old buildings and adorable shops.  They have a great Christmas parade that also signals the start of fox hunting season so the parade begins with hunting dogs and horses and riders who take part in the hunt.  I think because this is such a big part of the Middleburg social scene, the unofficial mascot of the town is the fox:

We in fact had lunch at The Red Fox Inn.  It's a restaurant and hotel that was originally built in 1728 and according to their web site, this was how Middleburg got it's name.  It was the half way point between Winchester and Alexandria Virginia, and where travelers would stop on their trip to spend the night.  The Inn has lots of history - of course as with most places in Virginia, that history includes the Confederacy during the Civil War.  General Jeb Stuart and Colonel John Mosby (who is insanely popular here btw, everything is named after Mosby!) met there and it was used as Confederate headquarters and a hospital during the war.  John Kennedy also gave a press conference here and they say that Jackie Kennedy stayed at the Inn during fox hunting season.  More importantly - Elizabeth Taylor used to kick it in the Tap Room at the Inn when she was married to Senator John Warner.  

The Inn is beautiful as well as historically interesting and the food is great:

After lunch we strolled around the shops and buildings in Middleburg.  

My favorite shop in Middleburg is The Christmas Sleigh which carries Christmas ornaments and decorations from Germany:

I bought this adorable smoker:

I think he matches the Santa Claus table runner kit I bought in Berlin and embroidered.  I can't wait for next Christmas!

I've got some progress on knitting and embroidery to post soon.  We're expecting more snow tonight so keep your fingers crossed that it's a small storm.  I'm looking forward to heading into Spring.

Wilkommen zum Oktoberfest!

Despite the fact that summer reared it's hot and sweaty head again here in Virginia, the Hubby and I found some fall activities to enjoy this weekend.

In our continuing effort to visit every tiny town in the Northern Virginia area, we made a bee line for Lovettsville, VA for their annual Oktoberfest party.  Lovettsville was apparently originally settled by German immigrants in the 1730s.  It's a cute little town that is very proud of it's German heritage.  Our first stop was the food and beer tent of course.  There was bratwurst, knackwurst, and bauernwurst with sauerkraut, potato salad, pretzels, strudel and of course beer!  The food was delicious - as good as anything we had while in Berlin.

(I just want to make it clear that the two sausage platter belonged to the Hubby!)

After grubbing, we took a walk to the main tent where they had German dancers and music.  Everyone was having a lot of fun.  

We also took a walk around the town center.  They had a mini market with even MORE food on offer, but we were too stuffed.  I even had to turn down funnel cake which pretty much never happens.  The town itself had some pretty buildings.

I thought the painting on this shed looked like a quilt block.

This church was originally the St. James Evangelical and Reformed Church established in 1733.  It's now the St. James United Church of Christ and still seems to be very active.

After Oktoberfest we headed out for a little antique shopping at the Antiques Heydey Fall Market in Virginia.  It was sort of...meh.  It was advertised as four buildings full of amazing antiques, but really it ended up being about one and a half buildings filled with pretty average stuff I'd seen before.  Despite the somewhat meager offerings, the antique market was at the Loudon County 4-H fairgrounds and it was kind of fun to walk through the buildings that normally house cows, pigs and chickens and see vintage china and furniture instead.

Our first, fun, Fall outing of the season.  As soon as the weather catches up with the season, things will be perfect here in Virginia!  

End of Summer

This has been a hectic summer for so many reasons, but we did find some time over the last weekend to head to Lucketts, VA to do some antique shopping and hit the local fair.  It was the perfect end to the summer.

Lucketts has a ton of cute antique stores.  They're packed with fun finds .  The only thing stopping me from shopping like crazy was the fact we were driving the mustang.  Not quite enough trunk space for a sofa or table.  Next time!

I'm considering taking up croquet just because that set is so vintage cool!

I know that iron headboard set would be a lot of work to fix up, but it could be a fun project!

I love embroidered linens!  Between the ones I make, the ones I've collected from family members and the ones I buy - I could put something embroidered on every surface of the house.

After our sweep through the antique stores we wandered over to the fair.  

There was a ton of yummy fair food.  The husband had a delicious crab cake sandwich and I had a bowl of fresh churned blackberry ice cream.  

There was also a petting zoo, which I always find adorable.

This little guy was ready to come home with me.  There was also a very pretty cow and her baby.  I tried to get a good pic of the calf but she was too sleepy to pose.

So cute!

There were some really great bluegrass bands playing at the fair as well and I found out that the old school house in Lucketts hosts regular blue grass concerts.  http://www.luckettsbluegrass.com/  I think we might have to make another trip out to Lucketts soon.

 

 

 

Annapolis

We took a little day trip recently to Annapolis to meet up with a friend for lunch and to see the city.  It was my first time in Annapolis and I had a great time.  Annapolis is - as I'm sure most of you know - the home of the U.S. Naval Academy.  So in addition to being a pretty town you have the added benefit of lots of eye candy in the form of young naval officers running around town.  Kidding!  (sort of)  It's also the state capital of Maryland and a city with a ton of history which means lots of pretty buildings and interesting sites.

We were there over a weekend so we couldn't really tour any of the state buildings and I had to photograph the Naval Academy buildings from afar as they understandably don't let just anyone on campus but I can give you a flavor of the town.  First the Capitol building:

This is the dome of what I believe is the chapel on the Naval Academy campus:

And of course I took a bunch of photos of pretty houses as we walked around the town:

We ate brunch at a cool place in the middle of town and had a nice view of the marina.  To be honest as it was a buffet brunch I didn't look at much but my plate and the buffet table - but it was still nice:

It's such a short distance from DC that I hope we'll be back often.  It's a nice location for a day trip and I didn't shop even a quarter of the cute shops they have downtown!  

S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y (clap) NIGHT!

A big outing for those of us at The Stitch Up house on Saturday: we headed into DC - which is unheard of generally for non-work purposes - and went to a hockey game and dinner.  DC has a lot to offer but the hassle of finding parking, dealing with traffic etc. usually keeps us in the 'burbs.  Once in a while though we get crazy and actually venture into the heart of the city.  

The Capitals - DC's hockey team - are actually doing really well this season.  The last time we went to a hockey game in DC was about 4 years ago and if I recall correctly, the team was not doing too well, the arena was half empty and the Capitals lost the game.  This year - things were different:

The place was packed with people dressed in red (the team color) and going crazy rooting for their team.  It was a pretty exciting game - it tied up at 4 to 4, went into overtime and then into a shootout with the Capitals pulling it out at the very end.  VERY EXCITING.  

After that we hit up a near by restaurant that is so yummy and fun.  Zengo serves Asian/Mexican fusion food.  It sounds crazy but it's really good: won ton tacos, empanadas with a wasabi dipping sauce - they have a great mix of dishes.  They have small plates - kind of a tapas menu - that lets you try a little bit of everything.  In addition to having great food (and great margaritas!) it's a pretty stylish restaurant:

That's another Iphone photo so it's a little hard to get the complete "vibe" but it's got a great, kind of "organic" decor.  I actually felt somewhat cool while I shoveled dinner down my craw and got loopy on margaritas.  

We've actually left the house a few times over the last week - PLUS - I've made some progress on my crocheted hat, so I have a lot to blog about over the next week!  Exciting!