All right, it’s still not stitching on the actual canvas, but at least I have sampled the large green bud as it will eventually look. I changed the single strand of red from a burgundy cotton to a slightly more orangy silk, threaded five needles with various combinations of green perles, and Had A Go. And I must say I like the effect! The only slightly mysterious thing is that my charted version, whose shape was taken from an earlier sample which used the proper design outline, now doesn’t seem to completely fill the design outline (blue arrow). Still, inexplicable though it is, if it turns out to show this behaviour on the real project as well I can easily fill in the missing bit with the darkest shade. I will find this out at my fourth class tomorrow, where I hope to put in this bud and perhaps the pink tulip. Even so, I fear this module may take rather more than the usual eight classes…

By the way, earlier this month we finally made it to the Netherlands for the first time in two and a half years and saw lots of family and friends, and slightly more relevant to this blog, the Keukenhof – that incredible garden where growers show off their flower bulbs for two months every year, and which was the inspiration for my Canvaswork design. The flowers change every year, I mean they don’t plant the same ones in the same places, and the photograph I’m working from must have been taken while the park was closed as there are no people in it, but I managed to find pretty nearly the right spot!

In my usual spirit of optimism I took three embroidery projects with me, but only one of them was ever taken out of my stitching bag, and even then I didn’t do an awful lot. Still, Do-Pea now has the stem stitch part of his wing done, plus all the laid-and-couched work in his tail circle.

The blue I needed to outline his tail and fill in the rest of the wing was waiting for me when I got home, together with some other shades. I’m beginning to get quite a collection of Renaissance Dyeing wool! And today a parcel arrived from America with some lovely Splendor silks, some to add to my collection and some (the ones at the bottom) specifically for the Quatrefoil kit. The beads were on offer so I stocked up on some of my favourite shades to make the most of the postage .

Going back to the blue wool needed for outlining, on the Bayeux tapestry this is done using outline stitch rather than its mirror twin stem stitch (it is also done before the laid work, which has the advantage of not covering up internal design lines but which does add a degree of fiddliness I am not prepared to subject myself to). As the wool they used was a normal S-twist, this means the stitches blend into each other more and the resulting line has a less rope-like look than with stem stitch.

Having read about this while I was on holiday the outline/stem issue was obviously still lingering in my mind when I was deciding on stitches for a small project earlier this week. I wanted to stitch the small Hope rainbow but didn’t want to use the three different textures of stem stitch, chain stitch and French knots. On the other hand, stem stitch only seemed a little dull. So I opted for alternating stem and outline stitch, with their subtly different looks, and I’m quite pleased with how that turned out.

Small embroidery projects like these are great for making cards and ornaments for special occasions. Any embroidery project is also a guaranteed method for Finding A Cat. Just place the embroidery in the brightest spot of the house to photograph it, and a cat will magically appear…