I’m having a bit of a thread orgy at the moment for various reasons. The first one you might call neutral – an order from West End Embroidery with threads I wanted to try out. These are mostly Threadworx hand-dyed perles, pairs of #5 and #8. I haven’t got particular projects in mind for them, except for one: the rather startlingly bright one on the right, called Bradley’s Balloons. I fancy that would work well on a sky-blue and white fabric for Windmills; it reminds me of the bright colours of those toy windmills you get at the seaside.

The second reason is rather sad: Margaret Roberts is closing down the Little Thread Shop for health reasons. This is of course first and foremost a blow for her and her family, but in a much smaller way it is also a loss for stitchers everywhere who benefited from her great customer service, helpfulness and competitive prices. As she is now clearing out her remining stock, I’m afraid I went a bit mad and placed a big order, then (encouraged, would you believe it, by my husband) another one, as this was a once in a lifetime chance to stock up on Caron threads without breaking the bank! The first half of the first order has arrived – two more parcels to look forward to …

And finally the very best reason of all for a stash acquisition! Sally, a wonderful fellow stitcher from Australia, sent me some gorgeous hand-dyed threads under the pretense that she wanted my help in identifying a thread from her grandmother’s sewing box. If I tell you that in the picture below the solitary pink thread on the right is what she wants my help with, and all the other threads are her very generous gift to me, you will see why I think she is a star, and a brightly shining one at that. There is a hand-dyed medium silk (the light turquoise one) from Jennifer Gail Threads, a perle #5 (pink/blue) and #8 (dark turquoise) from Jane van Keulen, Cottage Garden stranded cotton (red/green) and the absolute gem of the collection, a skein of Colour Stream’s Ophir silk perle (red/orange/yellow/purple). I have long wanted to try that one out, as I suspected it would be the same sort of lovely cord-like thread as Gloriana’s Princess Perle Petite and Treenway’s Fine Cord. I haven’t had time to try it yet, but I’ll let you know – it definitely feels delectable!