And then there were fourteen … and forty

Posted on 22nd November, 2013 by Flights of Fancy

OK, so I’m rather preoccupied with Floral Lace at the moment… As I was stitching one of the models, I thought of alternative for four-sided stitch, using pulled eyelets or Algerian eyes, so I charted a quickie using elements from existing designs to try out some time in the future. But then I noticed a daffodil that I’d charted but not used and played around with it a bit. Now don’t be silly, you can’t have a series of 13. What would you call it, Baker’s Dozen? But of course there are other flowers… daisy? Lily of the valley? Too difficult to see as they’re mostly white. Buttercup? Dandelion? But the daffodil is yellow, so better have a different colour for its partner. How about periwinkle? A quick dash to Google Images to refresh my memory about the shape of periwinkle petals, and now there are fourteen Floral Lace designs. As you could just about stitch each one in a day (if you don’t do much else) I might call them Floral Fortnight!

By the way, I made a very silly mistake in one of them. I fastened on behind a Kloster block to start the beading, turned the work over, and started – at the other end of the work. The result: a thread stretched right across the part of the design that’s going to be cut. And of course I didn’t notice until all the beading was done. In the end I carefully unpicked the fastening-on knot, rethreaded the tail and secured it behind Kloster blocks nearer the starting point. (The photograph also shows the reverse of diagonal four-sided stitch, which is double cable stitch!)

The other thing occupying me at the moment is the Christmas Craft Event, and especially the kits I’ll need for it. I set aside a fair part of yesterday to put together 40 of them. It was quite a production line I had going – 40 bags; bauble plus chart in each; add metallic thread and beads. Then on to the fabric and perle. To make sure the stitching process is going to be as smooth and enjoyable as possible for every child, I decided I’d do the waste knot and the first stitch for each one of them (then even if they can’t really read the chart, they can work from the length of the first stitch). After a while I got this down to a fine art (fuelled by lots of tea, see first picture…): count the number of ornaments in a particular colour. Count out the same number of the appropriate coloured perle. Count out the same number of needles. Thread each needle and knot the thread. Count out the same number of fabric squares. Find the middle of each fabric square, start the waste knot, do one stitch, don’t forget to stop after the first stitch! (it is easy to get carried away), add to kit, done .

Putting together the Christmas Craft Event kits

Oh, remember Katie my brilliant guinea pig? She is too old now to come as a participant, so I quickly claimed her as my assistant at the stitching table (with her full and enthusiastic consent, I hasten to say). Yay!

Incidentally, when I was stitching Floral Lace Fuchsia I noticed that the pink and purple of the flowers went remarkably well with my tights; how’s that for colour-coordinated stitching!

A new Dozen and more organza

Posted on 5th November, 2013 by Flights of Fancy

Last week, when I mentioned on the Cross Stitch Forum that I’d designed another two Floral Lace designs and someone suggested that it was growing into a new Dozen, I chuckled and said no, no, six was really as many as there were going to be.

There are now a dozen.

It’s true I like sets and series of things, and, well, I’m just enjoying these so much! Floral Lace is a bit like Round Dozen, I suppose, in that all twelve designs have a “skeleton” in common: in this case a small Kloster block diamond, surrounded by a four-sided stitch diamond, surrounded by a gold cross stitch square. Then they all have three more elements, a beaded diamond, floral cross stitch corner motifs and cutwork (bars & filling stitches), but each design has its own variation on these three.

Incidentally, it did at one point make me feel a bit like Oscar Wilde. Once, when asked what he’d been doing all day, he famously replied, “I was working on the proof of one of my poems all morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.” It isn’t quite that bad with me, but I did one evening find myself in the following scene: Attach beads according to chart. Half-way through, hold it at arm’s length and worry that it doesn’t look right. Decide to move the top bead in the four corner clusters up by one hole. Unpick. Re-stitch. Half-way through, hold it at arm’s length and worry that it doesn’t look right. Decide to move whole of corner clusters down by one hole. This brings the original top bead back where it started out. Unpick. Re-stitch. Sit back and enjoy the result, which now looks the way I intended it.

Most of the designs aren’t nearly so fraught, fortunately, although I did today make some last-minute changes to some filling stitches (Floral Lace will be the first ever design to include the Starburst stitch!). And they are lovely and relaxing to stitch, especially the recurring elements. I’ve also worked out that materials-wise it is quite a budget design: the cross stitch motifs need only very small amounts of stranded cotton, so if you’re happy to use odds and ends from your stash whenever you don’t happen to have a colour listed in the chart packs, then apart from that you can do the whole dozen with 1 skein of perle #5, 1 ball of perle #8, 1 skein of White stranded cotton, 1 card of Petite Treasure Braid and 1 pack of Mill Hill beads. And here the whole lot is in all its colourful glory:

I’ve already been able to re-use the Floral Lace “skeleton” – as a starting point for the Spring Knitting & Stitching workshop. Because of the emphasis of the show, they wanted something to do with soft furnishings or dress-making, so I decided on a patch for a bag or cushion. It combines elements from Floral Lace and Round Dozen, and we should manage to do the complicated bits during the workshop, although some of the cross stitch may have to be done later at home.

Adapted design for the K&S workshop

Remember that silk organza I got at last month’s K & S? My husband remarked how thin it was, and that you could see other fabric through it. I put it over some Lugana and he was absolutely right, it is so translucent that you can see the holes quite well. So by combining standard antique white Lugana with these hand-dyed squares of silk organza, you suddenly end up with a stitchable fabric in stunning jewel colours. you wouldn’t be able to cut it, really, so this required some non-cut designs. And what to call it? I toyed for a moment with Undercover or Salome, but eventually decided on Veiled Delight.

I’ve got my teeth into Floral Lace at the moment, and then it’s (finally!) the turn of Treasure Trove, but after that I may well start playing with these lovely fabrics.

Christmas Craft preparations

Posted on 31st October, 2013 by Flights of Fancy

It’s that time of year again – the annual Christmas Craft Event is nearly upon us! Well, it will be in three weeks on Saturday, so we’re all getting our materials ready. For those of you unfamiliar with this highlight of the Dunchurch calendar, it is an event organised by our Baptist church and open to all children from the village and the surrounding area. For a couple of hours on a November afternoon they come and do as many Christmas-themed crafts as they like (and can fit in), choosing from about a dozen different ones. They range from simple decorated cards for the little ones to painted glass jars, Christmas tree ornaments, decorated gingerbread men, Nativity scenes, stars, snowflakes and whatever else the volunteers have been able to dream up.

For the past six years or so I’ve been providing a stitchy craft, meant to be a slightly more challenging project for the older children. In practice I do get some of the 6-year-olds as well, and provided they bring a responsible adult I’m perfectly happy for them to have a go. It’s really rather endearing seeing a dedicated dad wrestling with his first-ever embroidery as his little daughter looks on encouragingly .

I could just about start recycling previous projects, as the children who did them are now too old to join in, but it’s much more fun thinking up something new. This time I teamed up foam baubles from Yellow Moon with a non-cut adaptation of the freebie stars. At first I thought it would be a good idea to use 20ct aida, as it is a bit stiffer and larger than my usual fabrics, but I found that one length of perle #5 was just too short for a star on 20ct, and it’s also relatively expensive to buy; whereas I have plenty of 22ct Hardanger in stock. So Hardanger it is, with DMC Variations (also from my stash) instead of the lovely Caron threads I used for the two models, plus a Madeira metallic I had lying around and some beads I got at the Knitting & Stitching Show.

Non-cut freebie star stitched in Caron thread on 20ct

Christmas Craft baubles with chosen materials

All I’m waiting for now is the needles, then I’ll cut the fabric squares, do a waste knot and come up in the first hole for each one of them, and kit them up with a large chart (I’m still working out what style would be clearest). Usually I don’t get a lot of time to take pictures when we’re in full swing, but I’ll do my best record some of the children’s efforts for posterity!

Wedgwood, cross stitch and unexpected designs

Posted on 26th October, 2013 by Flights of Fancy

You may remember my two cream/white on green and blue Round Dozen variations which gave me an idea for some Wedgwood-inspired idea, although really I should call them Jasper, as that type of Wedgwood is known as jasperware. The two variations were stitched on 28ct Jobelan, and I wanted to stitch the new designs on my usual 25ct Lugana. Unfortunately, being made by two different manufacturers they don’t come in the same colours, and all I could find was a rather paler moss green, and a rather brighter blue. Lugana does come in a shade called Wedgwood Blue, but that is lighter than I had in mind, and when I looked into jasperware a bit more I found that the Lugana shades I’d picked were actually closer to the pottery than the Jobelan used for the variations!

Fabrics considered for the Wedgwood designs

Wedgwood pale blue and sage green jasperware

So I started designing and at the end of the afternoon somehow ended up with three instead of two designs. Fortunately there is pink jasperware too .

Floral Lace is coming along nicely, but I wasn’t absolutely sure that some of the small cross stitch motifs would work as charted, so I tried them out on a spare piece of material for shape and colour. This turned out to be quite useful as it showed me that the alternatives I’d charted for my corner tulip didn’t look nearly so nice as the first draft (I’d worried that the top of the tulip looked rather flat as originally charted. It didn’t.) and also that the colours of the tulips were far too dark. I eventually went with pinks that were much brighter than I at first intended, but in real life they just look a lot better.

Trying out the cross stitch motifs for Floral Lace

Some things, however, you can’t tell even from a trial piece because it’s not the individual motifs but the way they work together that is the probem. In the picture above there are two identically-shaped smaller blue motifs, one with more dark blue and one with more light blue. My first draft used the darker version, but after stitching it I felt it looked a bit too dark. I re-charted and stitched a lighter version next to it. It looked much nicer so I decided to go with that one. I stitched all the larger blue corner motifs first, then the dark-blue centers of the smaller motifs, and then I completed them with light blue.

When I’d completed one corner of the design, both my husband and I felt that it looked too cluttered and chunky, whereas the unfinished corners with their small bits of dark blue actually looked rather more elegant. But I didn’t like the shape and distribution of them. What if I made them smaller still, and added a third in the middle so that they formed a shallow arch curving in the opposite direction of the beads in that quarter? The picture shows the original corner (top left), two corners with the dark blue of the original motifs (top right and bottom left) and the new design with three tiny dark blue flowers arching around the corner motif (bottom right). It took a lot of unpicking, but all corners now use that last version and I think the design looks much lighter for it. But you’ll have to wait and see what the final result looks like!

Floral Lace 2 gets a make-over

Designing doesn’t always happen intentionally. Floral Lace started out as a set of three designs but rather unexpectedly acquired a fourth when I thought of a small cross stitch pansy design. I charted a diagonal corner design and an upright one, which was going to be used on either side of the corner pansy. But I soon realised, even on paper, that it would suffer from the same cluttered feeling as the blue Floral Lace, so I designed a teeny-weeny pansy (at six stitches in total it’s so small it’s hardly recognisable as a flower, but it uses some of the same colours) and hope that that will look more balanced. Watch this space…

The Knitting & Stitching Show at Ally Pally

Posted on 15th October, 2013 by Flights of Fancy

Last week was my annual jaunt to the Knitting & Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace – with a slight difference this year in that I was teaching for the first time! It was great fun to do, quite a few people finished or near-finished the needlebook, and two ladies stayed behind and told me how much they’d appreciated the workshop, which was such a relief to hear . One lady who said she hadn’t done much stitching before did find it a bit of a challenge, though, and I’m wondering whether next time I ought to say something like “suitable for beginners at Hardanger with some general stitching experience”. I haven’t quite worked out the right wording, and any suggestions will be gratefully received.

Besides the workshop there was lots of time to look round all the stands. I love looking at the Guild ones, like the Spinners, Weavers & Dyers (did you know that buddleia flowers produce a vivid yellow dye?) and the Braiders and Embroiderers and Lacemakers and all the other techniques. Most of them I will never do myself, but it is very interesting to see. As was Jean Littlejohn’s exhibition A Timeline of Crewel Work; it was great to see a project that I had just read about in Stitch magazine in real life, and study the stitches in close-up.

Of course the things I am most on the lookout for are threads and fabrics, with a sprinkling of beads and other embellishments. This time, in fact, I took two bobbins of DMC to the show to find the right colour beads for Treasure Trove – and did I find any? No. three, four, lots of bead stands, and I still couldn’t find the right shade. I wonder whether it was partly because actually the light in there isn’t very good for comparing colours. Oh well, I’ll just have to keep looking! Fortunately there were plenty of stands with with lovely threads, variegated, hand-dyed, cotton, silk, the lot! I did get several but as they are for an exchange I won’t show them here, in case the intended recipient reads this blog…

I did notice that there was rather more wool and fabric around this year – a definite emphasis on knitting/crochet and sewing/quilting/patchwork, plus a surprising number of stands with felt and felting kits. There was really only one seller of counted fabrics, and I sorely missed Kate from Sparklies who wasn’t at the show this year. It makes such a difference when you can see hand-dyed fabrics in real life (even under the far-from-ideal lighting at Alexandra Palace).

And did I end up buying anything? Well, yes, I did, and I managed to stay well within my budget while getting some really exciting materials! Below are my purchases of the day (including some useful beads for the next Christmas Craft Event).

One of the stands sold lovely ceramic buttons, and although they were rather expensive I couldn’t resist getting two of them; I think they’ll make a lovely focal point in the centre of a small Hardanger design. Unfortunately I can’t remember who I got them from, so I will have to use them for private projects rather than Mabel’s Fancies designs which need to be replicable.

This year I was especially inspired by 21st Century Yarnswith their hand-dyed silks, felt and silk organza. The felt squares may be used as backing, or I may just do some free embroidery on them and use them as patches on a bag. The silk organza squares are dyed in gloriously rich jewel colours, and have led to a set of new designs which I’ve decided to call Extravorganza. I’ll admit it – I like puns, and I’m not afraid to use them .

Unexpected inspiration came from the two small projects I had taken with me to stitch on the train and in the evenings. Combine the Systematic Round Dozen chart, two pieces of coloured 28ct Jobelan, some cream and white perle cotton and hey presto, two rather elegant little squares. They gave me an idea for another pair of designs, to be named Wedgwood – can you guess why?

PS My husband calculated that the Systematic Round Dozen chart will, in theory, yield several hundred thousand variations. Don’t worry; I don’t intend to try them all.

Choices, choices

Posted on 7th October, 2013 by Flights of Fancy

Last Monday I went to my weekly Embroidery Circle (although Stitch & Chat would probably be more accurate), and I’d taken October to finish. That wasn’t going to take the full two hours, however, in spite of the usual amount of chatting, so I also took a couple of bits of fabric and a selection of threads to do a few freebie stars in different colours. But when I got round to them, could I find my chart? No, I couldn’t. (The mysterious thing is that it wasn’t in my chart folder at home either; did my husband go off with it for a bit of stitch therapy in the garage?) Never mind, they are quite simple designs after all so surely I could do them without a chart. Well, I could – but I couldn’t quite remember how the pointed bits went. There were two obvious ways, and as it turned out I picked the one I hadn’t originally charted. It also turned out I actually prefer the way I did them at the stitching group! So I re-charted them, and here are the new-look stars. Don’t worry if you downloaded the original charts and can’t see the difference, it’s really very small .

That choice was hardly a choice at all seeing that the two alternatives were so alike; merely a vague preference for one pointed shape over another. But I am still working my way through a more difficult choice: which variation of Treasure Trove to do. I’ve been doing lots of small designs recently, so I thought it was time for a slightly larger one, and Treasure Trove has been calling me for a while because it contains a few firsts for me – my first use of Jessica stitch (which I work a little differently from most people), and my first use of metallic kid. That’s leather, not spray-painted off-spring, by the way. In fact, the Jessica stitch will be used to frame the padded leather.

I charted the design in two colourways: red/gold and blue/silver. And as I was getting the materials together, I realised I liked them both equally! The pictures below aren’t quite accurate, by the way – I charted the light blue as DMC 799 only to find that I don’t actually have that in my stash… Also, I am not entirely happy with the red and blue beads; they need to match the dark shade in the design, and it’s very difficult to work out from online pictures which beads do. I have a conversion list which gives DMC equivalents for Mill Hill beads, but it isn’t always as accurate as I would like. So I’ve packed two bobbins of DMC stranded cotton to take to London later this week, when I’ll be able to see various brands of beads at the Knitting & Stitching Show and compare them with the the DMC colours side by side. Choice postponed.

Remember the Round Dozen Hybrid charts? Purely for my own amusement (don’t expect them for sale on the website) I’ve charted the Systematic Mix & Match Round Dozen. It consists of a basic chart with four “sub-charts” that you use to fill in the gaps in the basic chart, if that makes sense. So the basic chart has four empty triangles – go to the corner motif sub-chart and choose one; the basic chart has a border of empty squares – go to the border sub-chart and pick a border stitch. And so on. How’s that for choices!

Round Dozen Mix & Match borders and uncut fillings

Round Dozen Mix & Match bars and filling stitches

Incidentally if you don’t like cutting you could leave some of the variations uncut – you might want to add a little embellishment to what would otherwise be cut, but I think it looks quite effective as it is. As a matter of fact I did eventually do the cutting on this one, but it took some time to decide what the filling stitch was going to be…

Cadbury’s Hardanger and other matters of colour

Posted on 20th September, 2013 by Flights of Fancy

I know they say chocolate and stitching don’t mix, but I’m not so sure. Last week a friend gave us a box of Cadbury’s Milk Tray (and no, he didn’t scale our walls action-hero style to deliver it), and it just happened to sit on the coffee table when I put down the last Guildhouse model that I was stitching. Don’t they make a pretty picture together?

I have sinced finished the model (and the Milk Tray, but let’s not dwell on that), and although the course unfortunately will not run this term I’m very pleased with how the design came out; the solid off-white thread works well with that deep purple hand-dyed fabric, I think. I had to play around a bit with the beads to find the right number per square filet – 12 seems to fit best on Hardanger fabric.

My week has been rather colourful in other ways as well. For one thing I was trying to find a combination of Caron Wildflowers and beads that I could use for Double Cross 1 (previously known as Guildhouse course 2b). I used fairly bright green for Double Cross 2, and wanted something a bit more pastel for its counterpart. Eventually I settled on Caron Orchid with Mill Hill Shimmering Lilac.

And then there was the decision about a card for an aunt (not the one who irons, this one is my husband’s) whose 80th birthday we will be celebrating tomorrow. She is a lady of character and does not do old-lady beige or wishy-washy pastels (although let me hasten to add that I actually like both beige and pastels; they’re just not something I’d choose for her!), so I picked a Round Dozen variation I stitched some time ago in a variegated thread that combined mauves and purples with small splashes of bright fuchsia pink. But what colour card would go with that? I toyed for a moment with silver, but that made it look rather washed out; and then I tried one in Cross Stitch Heaven’s Raspberry shade which picked up the bright pink in the thread.

Unfortunately it didn’t look very good behind the cut areas, where it seemed to clash with the filling stitches. Now if you ever run into a similar problem, there are several options. One is to place a square of paper or felt behind your stitching in a colour which shows off the cut areas better than the colour of the card you are mounting it in. This has the advantage that paper and felt come in lots of colours, so plenty of choice. But if you want either white or black behind the cut areas, I’d recommend Vilene (or iron-on interfacing, or whatever it is called generically). Some time ago I got a large piece of very thin black Vilene to use with coasters, and I’ve found it invaluable in cases like these. Here is the result with the Raspberry card:

The last colour issue to crop up this week was what colour Soft Cotton to get for friendship bracelets. Somehow I seem to have volunteered for tonight’s Youth Group, because “you do things with threads and would you know an easy way for them to make friendship bracelets?” I carelessly let it slip that I knew how to do (make? work?) a finger cord, which needs no equipment apart from, well, fingers, and was asked to come and demonstrate this to the young people rather than simply teach it beforehand to the people who normally lead Youth Group. How did I get myself into this?

Anyway, I decided on half pastel and half bold shades so that the young people can all choose colours that suit them. Unfortunately I didn’t get any yellow, which with hindsight I think would have been a good idea, but these eight colours should give them a fair range of choice. The second picture shows “one I made earlier” to time the process (about 15 minutes for a 20cm length of braid). I’ll try and get some pictures tonight of the bracelets they make for themselves!

Ironing and a couple of freebies

Posted on 19th September, 2013 by Flights of Fancy

I have an aunt who enjoys ironing. No, really. She and my mother have a pact – Mum does the all washing for the two of them, and Aunt does all the ironing. Having worked my way through a pile of hankies, shirts and summer dresses (why oh why do I keep wearing long flowing skirts?) I can say without a hint of doubt that I do not take after my aunt. But there was more to be ironed: 56 squares of Hardanger fabric for the Mini Kits.

Sometimes I feel tempted not to bother, but then I remember opening kits myself and finding a piece of fabric with sharp creases right across the bit where I will be stitching, and having to get it ironed first when what I really want to do is get it into a hoop and start stitching! Which brings me to another thing – why are the pieces of fabric provided in kits (especially for small projects) often only just big enough for the project? I know that not everyone uses a hoop, but many people do, and it would be nice if the fabric were big enough to get it into a hoop that in turn is big enough to contain the whole design. True, adding an extra inch or so adds to the cost, but I think it is probably worth it in customer satisfaction. Being what they are, the Mini Kits are likely to be the stitcher’s first piece of hardanger, and I want to make it an experience they’d like to repeat, not put them off for life!

Having “hooped up” one of the pieces of fabric to try it out for size I didn’t really want to take it out and iron it again, so I’ll use it for a small project. Sally, a dear friend from the Cross Stitch Forum, asked me something about small designs for Christmas cards and I suddenly remembered two tiny stars I did a few years ago, so I charted them and made them available as freebies. When I first stitched them I used very light blue and lilac to go with two blue and purple metallic cards I had (you can’t see the metallic-ness very well in the picture, but it looked quite striking in real life!), but writing to Sally I suggested they would look rather nice in Anchor metallic perle (which has a gold or silver strand running through it) or Caron Snow with its lovely sparkle, and of course because of their small size they’re ideal for using up odds and ends of hand-dyed and variegated threads. Thinking of that, and having a small piece of fabric sitting there ready-hooped, I decided to stitch them again myself; I’ve picked the materials and beads, and as soon as Double Cross is finished I’ll give these a go.

The original stars on their metallic cards

The best laid plans…

Posted on 12th August, 2013 by Flights of Fancy

… of mice and men gang oft agley, and you can add stitchers’ plans to that. Two of mine did this week (plans go agley, that is), although fortunately I also got some useful work done.

My first plan concerned Windmills, which is fast beginning to get identified with Blake’s dark satanic mills in my mind. Well, it’s not that bad really. But having started on the beading I found that it was far too dense and heavy, and almost overpowered the stitching (which in itself is quite a feat with stitching this bright!). I’m trying a different pattern in the second sail before unpicking the first one, so I’ll be able to compare them.

Then there was the question of the central filling stitches. I charted them in black but Serinde, neatly voicing a silent niggle in my own mind, commented that it might be too stark. From my stash I gathered a navy blue and a dark brown perle #8 to see which would go best with Bradley’s Balloons; I felt a dark grey would probably be better (as it is meant to represent the nail that holds the windmill to its stick), but I didn’t have one dark enough. When I mentioned this on the Cross Stitch Forum I was soon convinced that this was not a problem, but a great opportunity to acquire some more thread! As I was actually in the process of placing an order with Sew & So anyway, I succumbed and added a ball of perle #8 413.

Sew & So lived up to their usual standard, and the next day I had my parcel. Below is a photograph of its contents. Spot the snag.

That’s right. No grey. The invoice came with a polite note saying the perle #8 413 was out of stock and would follow shortly. Usually that wouldn’t really be a problem, but I’d been hoping to get Windmills ready for the Counted Wishes Festival, which is now unlikely (unless “shortly” means “today”). Oh well, no worries – it simply means I’ll only have one new design there, the two bookmarks of Windows on the World. The larger of the two is now finished (though I haven’t cut around the buttonhole edge yet), and I’m making good progress on the smaller one. This uses one of DMC’s Variations for the perle #5 buttonhole edge, and I needed a coloured perle #8 to go with it. Some time ago a fellow stitcher sent me a useful list which shows the DMC shades that make up the Variations, so I thought if I used one of the component shades I couldn’t go wrong. Unfortunately the shade I wanted doesn’t actually exist in perle #8, so I ordered the nearest one, which was two shades darker.

The one I ordered especially for this project is on the left in the picture above, and although it’s not quite so noticeable in the photograph, it really is quite bright, and quite a lot darker than the perle #5. On the other hand one of the other perle #8 in the order does seem to tone quite well with the orange in the perle #5. So of my two plans with perle #8, one is on hold because the colour is out of stock, and the other probably won’t use the colour I specifically got for it!

Quite a tale of adversity, but actually I had a very good weekend otherwise. There was time to sit on the lawn with a magazine, and watch our marigolds and dwarf dahlias buzzing with insects. Ably assisted by my husband I managed to take all the photographs for the second August SAL blog and for the first September blog. And at our local fabric shop I found just the right colours of felt for a new batch of Mini Kits.

I don’t make up the kits until they are ordered, but I do a lot of preparatory work so that the final process is quite quick. I’ve got a box which contains the photographs that go on the front of the kits, pre-cut lengths of perle #5 and #8, two sizes of gold-plated needles, pieces of felt cut to size, and pre-cut and pre-scored pieces of patterned card. I was about to run out of the last two, but with the purchase of some new double-sided card and various colours of felt I am now well stocked again. The satisfaction of a job done, and (incomprehensible to anyone who doesn’t have a colourful hobby, I suppose) of simply seeing all those pretty colours together. I seriously believe playing with stash should be considered a hobby in its own right!

A loss, a change of plan and a future project

Posted on 2nd August, 2013 by Flights of Fancy

The past few days have been sad ones for us; after several days of uncertainty, we found out last Tuesday that our lovely ginger cat Alfie had died. The kind gardener who found him had given him a decent burial, which we really appreciate although it meant that we could not say goodbye to him. We’ll miss our Alfie.

As I get used to being able to stitch without an affectionate but very heavy feline presence leaning on my arm, I find myself fighting an ever so slight panic. The Counted Wishes Festival is nearly upon us – the deadline for submitting my “booth” of designs is in less than two weeks’ time – and the design I had intended for it is nowhere near completion; it’s not merely that the stitched model isn’t finished, it hasn’t even been started! Beadazzled, a sampler of beaded stitches, has been charted but I’m not happy with some of the stitches, and have since thought of some others which I would like to include. So for the time being, Beadazzled will remain a DIP (Design In Progress), and I’ve picked another design from the Planned page to take its place at the Festival. There will be a lot of frantic stitching over the next week or so.

Yesterday I received another stash parcel, this time from Cross Stitch Heaven. I rely on them for cards with larger than usual apertures – their 6″ cards are just right for my small designs like Round Dozen and the Song of the Weather SAL. The cards in this parcel, however, are not just for the odd project here and there, they have a particular purpose! Yes, the decision has been made: I will do another Stitch-Along in 2015. Here my grandfather would have said “zo de Here wil en wij leven” – “if the Lord wishes it and we live”; and I quite agree with him that of course I have no idea what will happen between now and then. But all things being well, on 1st January 2015 you should be able to start on the Round in Circles SAL! There will be a dedicated 2015 SAL page nearer the time.

Flights of Fancy

Mabel's musings on anything stitchy

Category Archives: Materials & Equipment