Tag Archives: Lana

More stash, more students, a cross and a petal

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As I was putting kits together for the course at Rugby’s Percival Guildhouse, I noticed I was getting a little low on some of the shades of Madeira Lana needed for the No Place Like Home project. There was plenty left for the class kits, but I have plans for this little house (watch this space…) so off I went to my two suppliers, only to find that one of them, from whom I got the larger reels of variegated Lana, no longer carries this thread! Fortunately most of the shades required were solids, and I didn’t need that much of them, so Sarah Homfray and her 25m skeins came to the rescue!

Madeira Lana for kits

One of the things I try to do in the course is to introduce different types of thread, and this wool/acrylic blend is one of them. It made its appearance in week 2. Which brings me to the students using the thread (who, in spite of the title of this FoF, are in fact the same students as the ones I mentioned last time, but “more students’ work” was a bit cumbersome). Here is how they got on with No Place Like Home (class plus some homework) and Butterfly Wreath (in-class progress). I’m really proud of how well they are doing!

Students' versions of No Place Like Home Students' versions of the Butterfly Wreath

When I manage to do some “free stitching” (that is to say not for future publication, or at least with no deadline for publication) I grab one of the many projects lying around that are awaiting completion. Some are fairly recent, like the hourglass stitched with Paintbox Threads materials (update soon), others were started as far back as early 2019, like Hengest and Llandrindod. Hengest is still languishing, but I’m getting on with the pretty jewelled cross. At the moment I’m working on the dark gold that surrounds the gems, and when that is done there is just the subtle bling to be added to the stones, plus possibly some decoration along the light gold circle. But for now I have to decide what to do when the split stitch of the gold frame doesn’t quite match up with the split stitch of the gems. Sometimes it’s a matter of simply filling in the gaps with more gold (orange arrow) – but should I perhaps make the gem corners a bit sharper by adding a few stitches in red (blue arrows)?

Gaps in Llandrindod

Perhaps I’ll work on something else while mulling that over… One thing which I hope to get to grips with in the not too distant future is silk shading or needle painting. You may remember that lovely book I got a while ago which has some exercises in it to try before starting on the full-blown projects – more about that in a future FoF, but another inspiration presented itself from quite a different corner recently. While we were having some pruning done in the garden a late rose got cut, and we put it in the kitchen in one of those tall narrow vases. It’s a lovely dark orange when in bud, but it goes progressively paler when it opens, and when it started to drop its petals I had a close look at one. Not only would the colours make for a lovely silk shading project, it looks like the stitch direction lines have already been pencilled in by the Creator smiley.

Our orange rose A petal with ready-painted lines for silk shading

Poland to the rescue!

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Last month I wrote about the stitched models I’d been producing for the No Place Like Home workshop, and I mentioned that one of the shades of Lana I was using in them has been discontinued by Madeira. When Barnyarns told me this I went on a quest to find a shop that had one or two spools left. One spool will do me 200 kits, so no need to go overboard. Unfortunately it soon became clear that my only option in the UK was an eBay Buy It Now offer of five spools at a cost of about £21. Other shops who still showed the colour on their website usually wrote back immediately to say they didn’t actually have any left; one shop which, like Barnyarns, allowed the order to be processed, cancelled it after a few days and when I rang (as their email said it had been cancelled at my request) that they’d never stocked the variegated Madeira Lana at all, so they were at a loss why it was shown on their website.

A post on the Mary Corbet Facebook group brought a fair few suggestions, but mostly from shops which I’d already found and rejected because they were in the US or Australia or New Zealand – with the postage that these countries charge for sending anything to the UK, let alone something as bulky as spools of threads, and considering that anything over £15 attracts VAT plus Royal Mail’s frankly criminal £8 handling fee, it would simply be too expensive.

So as we are, for the moment, still part of the EU, I looked for shops in Europe. I found three, all of which confirmed that they did have at least two spools of the variegated red in stock, and as they had all been equally helpful by email I went for the cheapest one, a Polish company called Haftix Pasmanteria. I put two spools of red in the shopping basket, and then added a few others to see if that would change the postage. It didn’t so I got a light green which Barnyarns didn’t have any more, plus the brown and sandy orange which are also used in the kits. Including postage they set me back only 35p more than the set of five reds would have been.

And here they are, less than a week after I ordered them – three cheers for Haftix Pasmanteria!

My Poland-to-the-rescue spools of Madeira Lana