Sewist or sewer, which do you prefer or do you care? Or perhaps you avoid the name and call yourself a stitcher as I usually do. Maybe we should just all settle on what we really truely are...sewaholics. Sewist (which incorporates artist) seems a little new-fangled to me but at least it won't get confused for a word of a completely different meaning like sewer is. But whatever we call or have called ourselves, we have been represented in art for as long as time. There are so many lovely images of women with their bit of handwork. I can't help but think it must have been extremely meaningful to them to have their portrait painted doing a little sewing. I wonder did the artists themselves have any clue as to which kind of sewing they were painting. Woman Sewing In A Garden, 1881 by Berthe Morisot This is a free pdf file of the portrait to colour or stitch from the wonderful Nadene at her blog Practical Pages. Nadene covers a range of topics in her posts and has very interesting home schooling material. I love her emphasis on art in children's curriculum in particular and the Art Era Timelines are fun to look through. I am thankful as well that Nadene led me to Charlotte Mason and her life's work improving school experiences for all children. New to me and very interesting reading. This photo appeared on my Facebook page via Melly Sews. As you can imagine there were many comments. Someone said this is like the opposite of an airbag! Definitely an ardent sewist! She's not going to get behind on her quilting, vacation or not. Rex at the start of the Hawthorn Grove last April I've mentioned that we have a hawthorn grove behind the house and our walking trail weaves through it. I was telling you about how thorny these bushes are and how sharp the thorns are. Well I was reading that thorns of the Hawthorn tree were used as needles in ancient times and they are strong enough to pierce leather. Here is a photo of Hawthorn needles I found on the internet. By my reckoning I would have had more than enough thorns to supply needles for the whole country's sewists, sewers, stitchers, whichever, just from my back yard.