Incoherent Scribblings

The Bookshelf

Last weekend, I stumbled upon the website for The Bookshelf: Munich’s English Language Lending Library. Even though they have a 40 Euro a year membership fee, that in and of itself was just about enough to make me wet my pants. An English-language library here in Munich? Oh, you bet I will be visiting there!

Then I saw at the bottom of their webpage that they are always looking for volunteers. Sure, volunteer means no money, but it isn’t like I am making any money sitting around the house blogging and cross stitching anyway, so I sent them email offering my services and (not-so-discreetly) mentioned that I am a librarian with an ALA (American Library Association) accredited MLS (Master of Library Science) in the process.

This evening I got an answer back from the director inviting me to stop by on Friday afternoon and check the place out! Whee Ha! I am so excited! I have been looking for something else to do with my time and who knows? Volunteering is a great way to network, so maybe I might get lucky and someday get a job too!

Playing Favorites

Normally, I use Anchor floss because it is the easiest to find here in Germany, but today I stopped into my LNS to pick up some DMC floss because the ladies in my Round Robin specified that they wanted DMC used on their pieces. No problem! Besides I hadn’t been to that shop for a while and I always enjoy going there because they truly have the widest selection of charts in town.

While I was browsing through the charts I noticed they had quite a few Paula Vaughn designs. Recently I bought a Paula Vaughn design, so I was excited to see these. Unfortunately none of them really tripped my trigger. There were, however, quite a few other names that I recognized and of course I left with a chart or two!

On my way out of the store I realized that since I started my stitching blog and have been regularly visiting stitching bulletin boards I have become quite familiar with a wide variety of designers. There are so many designers out there who do such beautiful work; but even if I was a cat with nine lives, I don’t think I could ever stitch even half of what I would like to stitch!

Perhaps I have not been stitching long enough or maybe I just do a large variety of pieces, but I don’t think I have ever stitched more than one or two designs by any designer. I have lots of patterns from the designers that I really like (Ellen Maurer-Stroh, Pamela Kellogg, Ursula Michael, Dragon Dreams), but stitching all of those charts is another matter all together! And as I thought about it, while I like all of those designers a lot, I am not sure if I would really consider them my favorite designers. In fact, I am not sure if I even have a favorite designer.

However, I wonder about the rest of you and of course, this brings me to… The Stitching Blogger’s Question!

Do you have a favorite designer (or designers)? If so, who is it and why is he or she your favorite?