Thank you Jenny!

Checking out my spam folder the other day, I received a wonderful surprise!  Jenny at One Stitch Closer to Nirvana has chosen me to receive the Liebster Blog Award.  First, of course, I had to recover from my embarrassment in the delay of learning of this lovely honor.  Thank you, Jenny, for thinking of me and my little blog!  I am very honored!

I'm shamelessly copying the following info from Jenny's blog to detail what's involved here:  "Liebster is a German word meaning favorite, dearest, or beloved.  The Liebster is awarded by bloggers to other new bloggers who have fewer than 200 followers, to help spread the word about their blogs and to help them gain wider recognition.

The Liebster award comes with four conditions that each recipient must satisfy when accepting: 

1.  Choose five up-and-coming blogs with fewer than 200 followers to award the Liebster to,
2.  Show your thanks to the blogger who gave you the award by linking back to them,
3.  Post the award on your blog.  List the bloggers you are giving the award to with links to their sites.  Leave comments on their blogs so they know about the award, and
4.  Share five random facts about yourself that people don't know about you."

So working through the list, thank you again Jenny.  I know Jenny in person as well as on the web. . .from our local sampler guild.  Be sure to check out her blog.  She always has beautiful stitching underway plus a lot of other fun things to share. 

Award proudly posted above!  I am happy to pass the award on to the following blogs that I regularly follow:

1.  Baroque Embellishments showcases the stunning work of Kim Servello, embroiderer and designer.  I was lucky to meet Kim -- and see a lot of her pieces -- in person at the Plymoth Jacket Symposium at Winterthur last year.  Can't wait to see what she stitches next.

2.  Life, Needlework, and Everything is authored by another stitcher I've met in person. . . first working on the Plymoth jacket. . . and more recently in the Lion and Mermaid classes in Williamsburg.  Unlike yours truly, Margaret finishes things QUICKLY.  And she's a member of Blogging without Obligation (great concept!) . . so only posts when inspired.  But each post is well worth waiting for.

3. I haven't met the author of La Soffita del Temps Perdu, but would be happy to travel to Rome to do so.  Here's her description of her blog's title:  The attic of the lost time is there, in the mind and dreams, where is possible to recover the hopes and the expectations, where what you want is what you can and everything becomes possible, where fantasy and creativity are not strangled from the rhythms of a frenetic life and time flows slowly, where the mind flies free with no restrictions, where finally one is free of being and can refuge in and take a breath.  Ah.....and the attic is filled with beautiful embroidery.

4.  My road trip might continue to visit Janet of Janet Granger's Blog in England.  Janet designs and sells kits for miniature needlework for doll houses, but she also does stunning work in other forms.  I've been loving following her progress on her Elizabethan sweet bag.  Gorgeous!. 

5.  While in England, I'd certainly visit Beth Lea of Blue Bell Wood.  Not only is Beth Lea one of my first cyber friends, but she's very into the technical details of the 17th century stitches.  I have bunches of her posts marked to try out myself. . . as soon as I have an extra day or two to experiment. 

Last, and hardest, here are five random facts about me that most people don't know about:

1.  Like Jenny, I love opera.  For an amateur, I'm a reasonably proficient lyric soprano. . .although my hat off to Jenny being able to sing the Queen of the Night. . . I never had above a high E flat.

2.  I had been around the world twice before the age of 10.  Maybe that explains my love of traveling that persists until today!

3.  I'm a scuba diver with over 300 lifetime dives.  I always get a super big kick when people think this qualifies me as an athlete or adventurous soul.  (I prefer that any adventure be done from the base of a comfy hotel.)

4.  My graduate major was medieval literature. . . not what you might expect given my current job as medical writer.

5.  Later this year, DH and I are going on safari!  Yes. . . safari. . . in South Africa!  Can't wait!

Thanks all my cyber friends.  This blog has been a lot of fun and I've "met" a lot of people across the world.  I'm so looking forward to what all of you will post next.