just for fun before summer's done

It feels like Summer is on it's way out the door with all the 'back to school' sale flyers and the way July turns to August in the blink of an eye. We did manage to squeeze in a particularly amazing evening of firefly catching not long ago. I was lamenting to friends how I had spoiled the evening by insisting we try to take a photo of the jar of fireflies - you know to preserve that magic evening forever and all that. Well, all I ended up doing was bringing the fun to a screeching halt as I fumbled with camera settings and wandered the yard looking for the perfect spot to take the picture. We never did get a good photo.

I concluded that one should stick with what they know so I made an embroidery pattern instead. It's up for grabs here. It's just a tiny little thing - just right for a 4 inch hoop. Here's the fun part though - I used DMC's 'light effects' fluorescent floss for the bugs and holy smokes folks - is that stuff ever bright! It is a little tricky to work with because it is so slick and the threads seem to want to come apart but since I wasn't using very much of it, it didn't drive me too batty. I noticed DMC also sells a glow in the dark floss - how much fun would that be for this?

I used a navy blue linen for the fabric and used a stem stitch for everything but the bugs. For those I used a satin stitch for the bodies and a one little chain stitch for each wing.

So there you have it. Here's to keeping a little bit of Summer all year long.