Thinking of my quickly approaching first day of the RSN Certificate I began to wonder what exactly I would be doing from 10am till 4pm. There is no set project to work on, everything you stitch for the various modules has to be your own design. So besides learning how to dress a slate frame, which I sincerely hoped wouldn’t take from 10 till 4, whatever else I’d be doing it seemed unlikely it would be stitching. Discussing design ideas with the tutor, perhaps?

I decided to ask on the Mary Corbet FB group what my first day of the Jacobean crewelwork module was going to be like, as I knew the group boasts quite an impressive number of people with RSN Certificate experience. Although a lot of the reactions were enlightening, they did at times seem a little contradictory, with one person saying she hadn’t stitched at all until after her first class, while another had her frame set up, her design prick-and-pounce transferred, and her first stitches worked, all during that first meeting. Hari the Helpful Education Manager had told me that the programme was very much tailored to each individual, so that presumably accounts for some of the differences.

One piece of advice that came from almost all those who replied was, “Go well-prepared”. This was slightly unnerving, as I had by then not received any information about what to bring to the class and what, if anything, to do beforehand. Partly my own fault for jumping at the chance to start a month early, and consequently leaving the Education Team about two days until my first tutorial day, but even so distinctly unsettling.

Fortunately an email entitled “Joining Instructions” arrived this morning, so I am now a little better-informed; I have added a tape measure, small ruler, notebook and several other useful items to my project box as suggested, and printed and studied the design brief. I soon realised that the main challenge was going to be the restriction on colours: five shades each of two colours, plus two shades of an accent colour. Studying other people’s Certificate pieces online made it all to clear that there is virtually no colour combination that hasn’t been tried yet, but my own instinctive preference (influenced, no doubt, by the fact that Jacobean designs are generally plant/tree-based, albeit in quite a stylised way) clearly veered towards either green or brown as one of the main colours.

Unfortunately I do not have an Appleton shade card – well, only a digital one, and we all know how accurately colours are represented on a computer screen. So I decided to work by proxy, and choose a few colour combinations from my collection of DMC. I’d be unlikely to find exact equivalents in the Appleton range, but at least it would give my tutor (Angela Bishop, with whom I have taken several classes before) some idea of what I was aiming for. Having discarded green as too dominant (yes, I know there are subdued shades of green as well, but I felt it would still be in danger of taking over) I chose some muted browns, which I hope to combine either with not-too-bright turquoises or subdued pinks, with gingery/orangy shades for my accent colour.

What many helpful group members mentioned as well, was to go furnished with plenty of ideas and sketches. Well, that wasn’t likely to be a problem – if anything I probably have too many ideas for a design that has to be less than A4 size. I’ve even been sketching ideas for canvaswork, a module I’m not planning on doing! So I’ve gathered all my sketches and photos and scribbles and will bring them all along. We’ll see which bits survive the weeding-out process.

By the way, one of my sketches is of Lexi in her stretching-with-backside-and-tail-in-the-air pose, and I really want to include her. But the limitation on colours made me wonder whether that would be possible. Then my husband suggested I could use our previous cat, the lovely ginger Alfie, instead; it was partly this that led me to choose ginger/orange as my accent colour. I just hope it won’t put Lexi’s little pink nose out of joint!