Have Your Say

Peggy Kimble & Nancy Fisher

Many of you will remember Peggy Kimble and Nancy Fisher who we first met when they were stitching together on World Embroidery Day back in 2015. Peggy and Nancy live in Ontario, Canada and it seems that nothing and no one can prevent them from getting their needles out and stitching!

Since 2015, we’ve been thrilled by Peggy’s messages displaying her beautiful work and putting many of us (who are just a little bit younger than this inspirational woman) to shame.

While in Australia we’ve been experiencing record heat and devastating bushfires, we received yet another heartfelt message from Peggy and Nancy, who wanted to share their opposite extreme weather to us.

‘Just a little note to let you know that we’re thinking about everyone enduring the bushfires in Australia and hope that everything settles back to normal very soon. Here are some pictures of how very different things are around here after an ice storm.

There is beauty even in damage.

Perhaps some interesting embroidery will come of Mother Nature’s rage.’

Inspiration really is everywhere, even in the most extreme weather. If you’ve found yourself inspired by the majesty of nature or awestruck by the severity of the seasons and have put needle to fabric in response, we’d love to see it.

Cathy Lysnes

In keeping with our celebration of men who stitch, a while back we had a great email from Cathy Lysnes. Cathy proudly introduced us to her brother-in-law, Steve Black:

‘Steve is a very well-rounded man with many interests. He sings, he’s an antique oil can collector, he does 1/12 scale miniatures AND he does wonderful cross stitch!’

‘He started cross stitching before he retired as a stress reliever and to have something in common with his wife (my sister) and her needlework. Steve has done numerous pieces and generously gives away many of his completed projects.

As a surprise for me and my sisters, he gave us each a framed piece that spoke of our own hobbies.

I have attached the needlework piece he did for me, the quilting piece for one sister and the sewing piece for my other sister. He has also stitched our coat of arms for one sister as well as a Canadian Airforce Insignia piece for our brother.’

His biggest challenge to date was the framed picture of the Tuscany area of Italy that he did for his sister. It was a memory of happy times she spent there with her husband.’

Thank you for sharing that wonderful story Cathy – you’ll be pleased to know we also heard from Steve himself, who was thrilled to be featured in the newsletter. We hope he will be yet another inspiration for any man who wants to take up needlework.

And, in keeping with another recent article on enormous cross stitch projects, Steve was proud to report that his picture of Tuscany took him approximately 680 hours to complete!