Atarah and Town Meeting tie for finish.

I'm sitting here in the kitchen, hot! I'm sooooooo glad to be hot! I spent the winter freezing. I was always cold, Abe was in short sleeves, temp was 67 or 68 and I would be wearing a long sleeved shirt and at least 2 sweaters, wool slippers, and I'd still be cold. Today I'm hot because I was virtuous. Abe, the boys and I took our bikes to the rail trail and rode from Bedford to Lexington and back...with ice cream in the middle. It was a nice ride. I helped some teen fix his chain. It was really tangled, and he was walking the bike home, so I fixed it for him, I think embarrassing him, because I did it easily, but it was very tangled, I'm just pretty good at untangling yarn, very practiced at that, and chains are similar to yarn. Teddy loves his new bike, and he would ride off for a while, turn and ride back to us, then go on again. That way he got a lot more miles in than I did.

Now, as for the embroidery.

The atarah got blocked. I soaked it thoroughly, then it needed to be hung, over something without edges, to drip dry. I didn't want to use the regular rack, because it's not clean enough, so I rigged this up in my sewing room. It was pretty stable, but I didn't trust the cats, so I taped it in place.



It's dripping into that bowl.

Here's a close up:



You can see the fancy support system I rigged up. It worked, it didn't budge until I took it down!

I'm really pleased with this, it's just coming out so pretty!

At the last night of town meeting, I started sewing it on.


See? You can tell it's at Town Meeting, because we have our voting slips on the table. Town Meeting is a pain, but I love it, too. We are the legislative body in the town, all the adults who care to register and show up. There is such a long tradition of doing this, I just love being part of that.

The corners make me happy.

They aren't that hard to do, as long as you do it right...you have to snip off the extra across the corner, so that you only have 1/4 inch beyond the point, then fold that in, crease it, then fold in the edges, and match the folds to the middle, and then the tricky part is keeping it that way until you stitch it! Basting the wrong side folds together would work best, but I usually just use two pins, carefully, and tweak it with my needle when I get there. Nice sharp points make me happy.

Sewn on:


Isn't DONE nice?



I finished stitching the atarah on as the the Head Teller and Town Clerk were adding up and checking the results of our last vote, which needed to be counted (most votes are just "hold up your ballots" and if it's not absolutely clear, we do a "standing, counted vote" where the Tellers go up and down and count every row/table and right it down. This takes a while. I like that, too, since I am a teller, and walking around counting is fun. You do it in pairs, and have to be very careful To Get It RIGHT! We have lots of tellers, from as many different areas of town, age groups and political leanings as possible, so that we get it right!