Are introductions in order?

Hi Alice

I'm Margaret (Mag)

I live in Beaverton, Oregon which is near Portland. I started stitching 16 years ago. I stopped for a year and half or so after my DH lost his battle with cancer in 2001. But I am back as enthusiastically as ever.

I have a DS and I must say, two of the cutest GK's ever! I met one of my closest friends right here on RCTN. You just never know where it will lead and to what.

Keep Stitching, mag

Name: Michelle nick: cocoa (actually the dog's name :D) from: Minneapolis, MN

I've been stitching off & on for years, started again about 4 years ago. Current favorites are blackwork & Christian/Inspirational. Also a big TW fan, although I haven't yet attempted any of her stuff. I also collect free patterns from online - I have literally thousands from newsletters, websites, newsgroups, etc. Only the legal ones though - I have no interest in the ones that violate copyrights & such!

personal - married 8+ years, 2 daughters, 15 & 16, disabled veteran, 37, master's degree in Counseling Psychology.......and a dog (toy poodle) and a cat (rescued, probably at least part Maine Coon - weighs about 18 lb. & is about the size of a small cocker spaniel!)

did I miss anything?

Karen, born/raised in NY, 26 years in California

Divorced, no kids, 2 cats. Medically "retired" from paralegal work; reinvented myself as an editor/proofreader, which I can do lying down at home.

My grandmother put a needle in my hand when I was a toddler, which is (gack!) 45 years ago.

I'm a member of EGA, but rarely have it in me to go to meetings.

Hey Alice!

I'm Caryn, age 44, wife to Dude, mom to three girls 16, 15, and 10.

After doing the stay at home mom thing for 12 years I went back to work just over a year ago. I used to design, mostly fantasy stuff, but also some very silly cat pictures (real cats in fake costumes).

We also have two golden retrievers and 5 cats (having had the old man of the group put down last week).

Caryn

I would love to see a picture of your first place entry. We lived at Ft Ord for a while and if I had the money, Monterey is where we'd live.

D> I joined the group in October and have been posting since I discovered

I guess it's been a while since we did the introduction thing.

I'm Donna. Married - 22 years - one daughter who's a sophmore in college 452 miles away from me - one son who is a senior in HS

I've always done some form of needlework ever since my grandmother put a needle in my hand. But I came to cross stitch in 1986 in Germany courtesy of another Army wife.

Thanks to the Army, we have lived in many places. But retirement has brought us back to northern Virginia - stitching paradise for stashaholics.

I've got two cats - one black with white, one white with black - who like to contribute their furriness to whatever I'm working on.

I belong to my EGA chapter. And I still follow what the Internet Sampler Band is doing, though I only completed one project - The Newburyport Sampler from 1998.

Donna in Virginia

Caryn wrote:

Cheryl Isaak - southern New Hampshire Married, DS age 14, DD age 8. Spend most of my winters haunting hockey rinks as both play hockey for travel teams and DS has high school tryouts next week. Stretched a tad thin as DH is ailing at the moment.

Stitching - all sort of bits but really want to get back to Ladybug Gardeners. I have some knitting in the bag with me right now along with a canvas work ornament, a flower fairies card and couple of samplers.

Cheryl

I'm Frances. I turned 76 this year. Been stitching ever since my Mother decided I needed to know the "gentle arts" when I was 8 or 9. Got out of it once I hit my teens, and didn't get back to it until I was 19 or so and was bored sitting home all day.

Learned to tat when I was 45. Learned macrame when I was 40. I also do needlepoint, crochet and knit. But love counted cross stitch the most. Have enough SABLE (Stash Above and Beyond Life Expectancy) to last 3 lifetimes. My 16 yr old toy poodle likes to sit beside me as I stitch. Frances

Hi, Alice! Always nice to see new faces in the group.

I'm Elizabeth and I've been stitching since I was about 13. I actually started being interested in it when I was about 7 or 8 or so, but at the time, my motor skills weren't up to the visions in my head so I quit in frustration.

I'm 38, have a DH of 4 years, a 3-year-old daughter and an almost-1-year-old son, two cats, and a house full of DIY projects. I work at home as a medical transcriptionist, which I hope to not have to do for very many more years.

I live in a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri. I entered the state fair last year (adolescent wish fulfillment) and won 2 first-place and 2 second-place ribbons.

I don't knit. I can crochet, but don't like it much (though our recent conversation about Tunisian got me thinking about More Stuff To Do). I don't quilt if I can help it. I sew. I mostly do counted cross stitch with a good helping of surface work thrown in for good measure. I'm a budding handyman/carpenter, which would interest me more if I had the $$$ for the workshop. My favorite thing is to make pretty things with my hands or fix something that was broken.

Again, welcome to the group!

It is nice to get to know all of you.

A bit more about me.

I married into the Army and spent 22 years with my active duty husband (he was in for 24). Then we retired from the Army and opened a periodontal practice in Salt Lake City. We sold the practice after almost 10 years and retired to skiing in the winter, hiking and fly fishing in the summer with some camping thrown in.

We have two Lakeland Terriers and had lost our 16 year old miniature Schnauzer last year.

Our youngest son in now in the Army and is the one getting married next month. Oldest son is in grad school in the Bay Area and is going to be a clinical psychologist.

I started cross stitching when I was pregnant with oldest son and could rest my hands on him while I stitched. I needed something small as he was big.

I hope to learn how to use my DH's digital camera so I can then learn how to post photos of my work so you all can see what I have done for some of my designs.

I am glad to have found this group as you all are so friendly and encouraging to all the members of the group.

Thanks for sharing about yourselves.

Nice to see other Army wives are here.

Donna, where were you and your DH stationed?

Alice

Hi Frances,

I'm Jere -- but my first name is actually Frances, I was named for my mom.

I'm 61, live in Louisiana, have two grown daughters, and 3 grandchildren.

I've been cross stitching since 1977, but before that I did some crochet and surface embroidery.

Now I stitch all sorts of things, and have started recently using lots of beads.

I've been married 41 years, and the furbabies we have at home are: 3 dachsunds, and one golden retriever -- Hilde, Willy, Toby, and Comet.

OK, just how does one get set up in a position like this? I've seen plenty of ads about it but don't know how to sort out the legitimate opportunities from the fly-by-night schemes.

You graduate from one of two online schools:

or else is either fly-by-night or not well known enough to put your resume on the top of employers' piles. Most folks in this industry work at home, and there's a long list of reputable companies who hire newbies. So while it seems like a too-good-to-be-true gig, it's not, but it is hard and sometimes the pay is just not what it should be and every year we're told the death of the MT as an occupation is imminent.

However, it's done well for me, continues to do well for me--I'm just tired of transcribing for a living since I've been doing it (mostly legal) since I was 16 years old.

You have to have excellent grammar and spelling skills (which obviously you do). The rest can be taught fairly easily if you have the language skills.

Hi! I'm Brenda, 38, in NE Ohio. Have a 4-year-old daughter and a Sheltie who moonlights as a Hobbit. Currently a stay-at-home Mom who spends a lot of time as a volunteer proofreader (now mentoring newcomers) at the site listed below.

I've been stitching since age 8 or 9--wow 30 years! Mostly counted thread embroidery with occasional dabblings in crochet and latch hook. Had a huge latch hook burst at the beginning of the year but have done very little since then. Goal is to eventually make TW's "The Castle" for a very good friend even though all I've done so far is gather materials and make working copies of the chart. Diagnosed with fibromyalgia this spring after several years of testing and much head-scratching by docs.

Pat Porter, near Felixstowe, Suffolk, UK - three grown-up kids, 2 daughters aged 49 and 46, one son aged 42, 6 almost all grown-up grandsons. Husband, John, plus Cavalier K.C. Spaniel , Maggie.

Been stitching for about 14 years, and do some designing of local scenes, although have been lazy about that lately!

Great to meet you, Alice. We do have a session of "Who we are" every so often but I`m glad you started this one off as we don`t seem to have had one lately. Do you have a website?

Pat P

We got married while he was a senior in college so I did one year of ROTC with him. But I made the ROTC ball all 4 years. Then it was (in order) - Ft Belvoir, Hanau Germany, Ft Belvoir, Ft Devens, NH while he did grad school, Ft Ord, Sacramento (Corps of Engineers), Ft Carson, Washington D.C.(Engineer Headquarters), West Point, and that was it. All told there were 13 moves by the gov't. Yikes.

How many moves did you have?

Donna in Virginia

Geez.... I've moved 10x within California and the government wasn't involved in any of them. (We owned a landscape company and went through a phase where a series of landlords repeatedly sold the house out from under us as soon as we had prettied up the yard.)

My name is Fran, and I live in Winston-Salem, NC. I've been stitching since my Mom taught me as a child. I do Xstitch, Japanese Embroidery, am working on getting my Master Craftsman certification in Canvas Embroidery from EGA (passed test #1 & 2, cogitating on test #3), hate knitting and crocheting, and do some quilting. I garden (i've landscaped my entire yard), and am a compulsive reader.

I have 2 furrbabies: Sir Fuss and Miss Furry (aka Jabba and Scarlett). He is black with a bit of white, she's a calico.