Thanks, Sara, for reminding me that not everyone has been intensively thinking about her neighborhood round robin (RR) design for the past couple of months (big grin). You know how it is when you can no longer see the forest for the trees? Well, ever since Annemarie mentioned this idea to me, I've been a little bit obsessed with it and have lost sight of the fact that a lot of other people will have no idea what it is.

First off, in case anyone isn't sure what a round robin is (and I had very little idea till Annemarie explained it), it's when a group of cross stitchers decide to create a finished piece together. You can use one design, or have a theme made up of different designs (as is the case here). The members divide up their own pieces of fabric into the size and number of squares needed to complete the project and usually stitch their own contributions first. Then, at an appointed date, everyone delivers her piece of fabric to the next stitcher in the rotation, who then stitches her design. (For you male stitchers out there, please forgive me my use of the pronoun "her"! Obviously there are great male stitchers out there like Kim's husband, Greg.) So in our case, I will stitch the rest of my design, neatly block off the rest of the fabric in 100x100 blocks for everyone else's design, and send my in-progress neighborhood to Annemarie. Annemarie, meanwhile, will send her in-progress neighborhood to Su. After that, the WIPs will go on to the next people in the rotation, and so on. We are a group of seven stitchers, so each neighborhood will have at least seven designs. Some busy bees, like Su and Veronica, are stitching more designs to create a fuller neighborhood.

The work of art that sparked all this is the Dijon Round Robin Sampler, which can be seen at the cyberhome of another neighborhood sampler: Welcome To My Neighborhood.

Each of us has chosen a theme for our neighborhood, and we are all incredibly interested and curious about how they will all turn out. Each member gets three months to stitch her design and send it along to the next member, so our completed neighborhoods won't come home to us until September 2007! In the meantime, you are very welcome to view our progress and leave your comments at our new blog, Our Neighborhood of Make Believe.