It’s Mabel’s Fancies’ birthday! Hard to believe I first opened the website on Easter Monday 2011 (and by the way, I hope you all had a lovely Easter). Even harder to believe that it was less than 18 months after I’d first tried my hand at Hardanger. But here we are, and a birthday calls for a celebration, so this week we have a special Three for Two offer: order any two charts from one section (except Sets & Series) and choose a third one for free.

Here is a colourful recent acquisition of mine: 30 foam notebooks. You may recognise them from the Gallery, where there are two embellished with designs from Snippets and Three of Diamonds. But what do you do with thirty of them? Why, make them into kits!

I try not to stock too many “physical” items; so far I’ve limited myself to squissors, mini matchbook kits for beginners and acrylic coasters to display finished projects. But as a small-project stitcher myself I felt that there might be a demand for more small Hardanger kits, this time for people who are not quite beginners. As I had embellished one of my own notebooks with a Snippet design, it seemed a natural decision to use that for the kit as well. A possible reason not to was the fact that Snippets have an unusual and slightly more difficult cutting pattern; should I re-chart it to be a bit more standard? In the end I decided to stick with the original design, but to provide much more detailed instructions than in the Snippets chart pack, so that the kit offers a manageable challenge.

One of the challenges in the design is to get from one stitch to another without trailing the thread behind parts that will be cut. But, I wondered, would it be possible to trail the thread behind parts that would be wrapped? So I tried. And it is. The thread does not interfere with the cutting, and afterwards gets incorporated into the wrapped bars. It’s really rather neat and I’m quite proud of the idea !

And just for a bit more cheerful colour, here are the threads I’ve chosen to go with the six notebook shades: