first hand-painted ornament

Here's a close-up of one of the ornaments on our tree this year which holds special sentimental value to me. It's the first hand-painted canvas I ever purchased - and completed (yes, I have plenty of unfinished projects to last well into my retirement, whenever that occurs!).

I found a wonderful needlepoint store shortly after I moved to the Flint MI area back in '83. Alma H ran the shop; methinks her DH Ralph joined her after his retirement to provide custom framing services within the shop, but he was there when I first became a regular customer. When I moved here, I signed up for a couple adult enrichment classes at the local high school - beginning classes in needlepoint and in stained glass. The needlepoint hobby stuck with me and I only made a couple projects in stained glass tho' I enjoyed that as well.

My anal retentive nature really came to the surface with my first project. I learned the most frequently-used needlepoint stitch as well - the frog stitch (can you say, "rip it!"?), as I was unhappy with both the basket's handle and the gold outline around the ornament. They weren't drawn perfectly symmetrical, but therein lives one of the beauties of needlepoint. IF you're completely filling in the background, as I did here, you can fix those imperfections!

Thanx for joining me in my trip down Memory Lane!