Happy Fourth of July! Even if you’re not in the US, you can celebrate the fourth of July – we all have it on our calendars, after all. Just pick any reason to celebrate, and you’re good to go!

Independence Day here is the quintessential small-town-USA summer holiday, but since most interesting things don’t get underway until closer to evening, I’ll be spending most of the day in front of the computer, taking care of loose ends that have been piling up. No stitching! *Sigh*

But even though I’m not stitching today, that doesn’t mean you can’t! And to help you along, it strikes me as a great day for a Christmas sale.

Even if it is 100 degrees out…

Since Christmas is barely six months away, I thought I’d offer a little Christmas in July sale, just for the fun of it!

On Monday, we chatted about setting up this slate frame for a goldwork embroidery project that I’m starting.

The project is quite simple in concept, as you can see below. Once the frame was set up, I gathered supplies so I could jump to the fun part as quickly as possible!

These are the supplies I gathered, although I’m not sure I’ll be using them all. Let’s look at the supplies, chat about them a bit, and then discuss my quandary. I just can’t seem to make a decision on part of the frame!

I’ll also share resources with you, so you can find some of the supplies I’m using in your own country.

I had a terrific time tackling my Needlework To-Do List this weekend!

Let’s see… there were twelve things on it. I managed two.

On the bright side, one of the Managed Things was the set-up for a project that’s been simmering on the back burner for a while – namely, the frame for this salvaged piece of figure embroidery.

I’ll be working this salvage job in two major steps. The first step will be the goldwork frame. And to get to the point of actually doing the goldwork, I had to set up a slate frame with a piece of fine linen as the ground fabric.

I went about setting up the ground fabric and frame a little differently, but that’s the nice thing about embroidery. There’s no set rule that says you must do This or That (in this case, setting up the slate frame) one way or another. As long as the system works, then you’re good!