Mini-Samplers

I took advantage of being together with all my TFA friends and colleagues last weekend to make mini-samplers for two of my teammates/friends. I like making tiny hoop samplers (this is still one my all-time favorite projects), although at first glance these both seem pretty weird:

Let me explain. First, Shannon:

She lives in New Mexico, which explains the red and yellow sun symbol at the top. Her favorite NM food is green chiles (she even gave me a green chile candle once), and she also really likes beer and brewing, hence the beer and chiles at the bottom. She lived in Baltimore for five years, and her favorite Baltimore thing was eating crabs, which is where the little crabs come from. Lastly, our team mascot for reasons that predate me and I don't fully understand is the hedgehog, so I added them in to round everything out.

Now Stevie:

First and foremost, I know that monkey at the top looks crazy, but I swear it's a real thing! Specifically, it's a red-shanked douc, aka the monkey Stevie is studying for the anthropology PhD she is working on part-time, and it really does look like that:

She also loves Star Wars, hence R2D2 and Chewbacca, and has two dogs that I tried to portray at the bottom. I made her hedgehogs purple to add some color, because there was so much brown from the monkey, Chewie, and the dogs.

Now back to my never-ending list of wedding samplers!