One down, two to go

The Connecticut postcard is finished! It's a good thing I'm stitching these designs by Denise DeRusha for myself, and not as a stitch guide--there were so many small details in the central scene that I lost track of how many different colors of floss I used!

I used a lot of basketweave, primarily because the areas were small. I would have loved to use French knots for the autumn foliage, for instance, but that would have overpowered the factory buildings in front of the foliage. I did use some textured stitches where I could--in the brown factory building, for instance, as well as the factory roofs, foundations and windows.

I easily recognized the different elements representative of the state: the foliage, the factories, the ship and even the stylized mountain laurel flowers in the bottom corners. But the hamburger frankly had me stymied! It took a lot of digging on the internet before I came up with an answer: the hamburger was introduced in 1900 in New Haven! A customer to Louis' Lunch wagon asked for a quick yet hot lunch, and Louis happened to have some ground beef on hand. He formed a patty, grilled it, and placed it between two slices of white bread, cutting the sandwich on the diagonal. Now 110 years later, and in a brick-and-mortar shop, Louis' Lunch still serves hamburgers this way!

On to the Texas postcard!