The other night I had some stitching time in the evening. But *gasp* I did not stitch. Or not all the time, anyway. Instead I indulged in one of my other favourite needlework pastimes: playing with stash! Well, not playing really – re-arranging so that they are logically distributed among the various storage boxes. Useful, and very enjoyable at the same time. Not only that, but handling the threads and looking at them is a great way of getting ideas for their use.

I did get some stitching done, starting on another Kelly Fletcher flower. Bloomin’ Marvellous #7 this time. For the centre I wanted padded satin stitch, but with something else added. Having considered a few options I decided not to do a split stitch outline first, but work the satin stitch by eye, staying inside the pencil line of the central circle, and then outline it afterwards in stem stitch in a lighter colour using four strands. On the whole, I’m pleased with the effect, although I think I’ll have to fit in a retrospective satin stitch where the orange arrow is in the second picture.

But for now, this project is on hold. It seems a bit silly to put something this small on hold – after all, how long can it take to finish? But something else came up: a wedding! Next Thursday! Well, yes, I’ll admit I knew about it a while ago, but I hadn’t really thought of anything to stitch. Until last night. The bride is my husband’s niece, and she is a wiz with fabrics and interior decorating and all that. She also makes adorable cuddly elephants, all sewn by hand and each one unique. Elephants. Now, there is something about elephants not forgetting, or in other words, remembering… Some furious scribbling later I had a small elephant with initials, a date, a motto or saying, colour suggestions (purple, green and yellow) and ideas for a filling pattern (lattice work with lazy daisy flowers). I like my Wedding Elephant!

Now all I need to do is stitch it .