I’ve had an embarrassing number of lovely parcels arrive on my doorstep in the course of March and April – another book from the same series as the Lizzy Pye goldwork one, Crewelwork Embroidery by Becky Quine; floche from Needle in a Haystack in the US (a special treat as you can’t easily get it here in the UK, but unfortunately paid for just when the pound was at its weakest); coton à broder from Spinning Jenny; doodle canvas and some Splendor silks from West End Embroidery (who got it to me the very next day, with second class postage!); Heathway Milano crewel wool from Catkin Crown Textile Studio, whose dangerous website went live two weeks ago today; a lovely goldwork monogram kit (now discontinued, I bagged one of the last two) by Lizzy Pye of Laurelin; and (courtesy of my mother-in-law’s birthday present) two crewel kits from Melbury Hill. Now these are things to keep your spirits up!

I spent some happy hours bobbinating my new threads and rearranging some of my storage boxes to take the new acquisistions – aren’t they like beautiful jewel caskets?

As for the kits, taking a peek inside the plain, unmarked box from Laurelin Embroidery was a treat in itself. A beautifully presented instruction booklet, full skeins of DMC and bobbins of sewing thread as well as plenty of goldwork materials, and the fabric with its calico backing neatly wrapped in tissue paper. As for the colours, Lizzy had very kindly substituted a turquoise for the usual green to match the colours of the Mabel’s Fancies logo; and would you believe it, in my stash I happened to have a wire check in a light turquoise that goes with it perfectly! I’ll enjoy working out where to incorporate it into that gloriously blingy and colourful M.

The Melbury Hill kits, though understandably a bit short on the sparkly wow-factor by comparison and with a little less in the way of instructions, are nevertheless very enjoyable to open and explore. The first is Strawberry Fair – the picture on their website shows it with the strawberry sticking up, but I think it looks more natural (in as far as Jacobean-style crewelwork ever does) with the fruit hanging down. By the way, I love the way they use the Bayeux couching stitches to represent the strawberry pips – I wish I’d thought of that!

The second kit is the Heritage Cat & Tulip Tile. Now I would not normally have bought this – for one thing it includes a hoop I don’t need, but more importantly it uses a single stitch throughout in a monochrome design and is therefore unlikely to “stretch” me. However, a few things made me reconsider. To start with the most altruistic of my reasons, in this time of lockdown I try to support independent businesses and designers. The second reason is that with the present situation being so unpredictable, unsettling and worrying I really like the thought of a relaxing project; sometimes you don’t need stretching, you need soothing! Thirdly, my mother-in-law had given me a birthday present and it felt right to spend this on something that was not necessarily useful to Mabel’s Fancies but just fun. And finally, I am a Dutch ex-pat who loves cats. How could I not buy a blue & white tile with a cat and a tulip on it? The perfect project for Koningsdag (the Dutch King’s birthday, on 27th April)!

And I haven’t finished last year’s Queen’s Silks yet, or even started on 30s Revisited…