Unusual source of fabric

I bought this linen stole from TradeMe for NZ$7.20 including postage, its far too starchy, long and 'natural' coloured to be worn so now its being cut up for cross stitch! It's 283cm by 36cm so I'm sure it will take a long time to use. It's got a very natural colour and the usual irregularity of threads with linen fabric. It's got approximately 28 threads per inch, so is a equivalent to 14 count aida when stitching over two.

It was a bit scary to start chopping up something that looks like a garment but I soldiered on and hopefully I will one day have the guts to harvest a sweater for yarn.

It's my sister's birthday soon and she likes the animal- beavers so I wanted to make a beaver cross stitch card for her. I did a big search and I didn't find any patterns so I went to another thing that she's associated with, the banana.

I wanted something I could do quickly so this pattern from Shona's Place was just perfect:


I did this with a brown outline on Anchor 382 and bright yellow that came in a kit but wasn't used by the pattern, I think its DMC 742. I hope she likes it.

Noodling

If you did this wearing gloves and a longer noodles you could cast off, creating a pixel and use it as a cool garnish for your next diner party (preferably of knitters, they'll think its less weird).

Dem rib bones

There are lots of how to knit videos out there but all the other ones I tried confused me. After watching this one and cutting my number of stitches to rib from 20 to 6 I managed to get a ribbed piece. I'm going to try to make it into a T for my name so I'm looking for a video on adding stitches both at the start and end of my current stitches.

I'm a new knitter!

When I was young our neighbour taught me to knit. I was truly truly awful, I just couldn't get my hands to do it. I'd drop stitches, make tangles and create a lopsided piece. I couldn't get the tension in my hands right so it would always turn out uneven both in the sense that I got a parallelogram that was lumpy! I only learnt 'knit' knitting rather than 'pearl' knitting so I thought that knitting was ugly as it always had those tell-tale horizontal lines. I ended up with a 10 stitch wide long scarf which I sewed up into a sleeping bag with arm holes for my owl toy and a 30 stitch wide scarf with 20 stitch long sections of mutant wool. So frankly I thought I would never knit again.

But now that I've got into cross stitch and other needle crafts it makes sense to make something with my hands that is useful, not just decorative. So I decided to knit again! I went to a Beginners Knit class at Nancy's Embroidery Shop and learnt how to cast-on, knit, pearl, pick up dropped stitches and cast-off in the two hours. I managed everything except picking up the dropped stitches which would have been really useful because I still drop stitches all the time! Amusingly I bought the same wool colour and feel as what I made my little owl sleeping bag out of.

Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran 330014 Royal Purple

It's a Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran Yarn that felt the nicest of the yarn I fondled in Nancy's with the little time I had after the class before they shut the shop. I got it in shade 14, grape. I love purple, I loved it as a child and then it wasn't cool so I didn't wear it. A couple of winters ago it became cool again and now I wear it all the time. I have 3 purple scarves so why not make one more (if I ever get that good at knitting)! I didn't realise that aran is a heavy yarn but it gets so cold here so I don't mind.

I wanted some pretty needles and these just said have me! They are wooden needles made from Tasmanian Oak made by a Tasmanian company called Art Viva. The timber is sourced from environmentally sustainable forest practices and are topped with hand painted spotty beads. Unfortunately I got size 20cm long, 4mm needles when my yarn is for 5mm but I don't think that's too much of a problem. They are slightly uneven which might annoy someone used to straight needles but I love the unevenness as I can think "slightly bending one knit, really bendy one pearl". They are not really bendy its just a comparison, they sort of fit into my hand. They are my friendly needles.

Nuu Zuland Book marks

When I was packing up to get on the bus today I thought about taking my UFO from the Heritage Collection of Ludlow Castle in Shropshire. However I realised it was too fiddly for the bus as I have to do zig-zagging part quarter stitches using one strand of floss in a pale beige and I'd have to take a bunch of different color floss if I wanted to work on it in the lunch hour. What was so great about the Rose Medallion Sachet is that I only had to take one chunk of cotton and not worry about the color.

So I ended up taking my Christchurch bookmark which I've just started. I'm doing the cathedral at the moment and its great to be back to the loop start, railroading and the Danish Method.

I've already finished the Wellington bookmark that I'm going to give to my husband. But he hates the backstitch alphabet used to write "Wellington, NZ" so I'm going to have to find one he likes before I do the finishing. Ohh I can try this backstitch alphabet generator!

Snappy Q

I found a Q Snap in a shop that was small enough to use for cross stitch! It's a 8" square one and I snapped it up. I've used it to finish the cross stitch bit of Rose Medallion Sachet and it's wonderful (just finishing to go now). I've got the fabric snapped in on only two sides as its long but not wide enough. It works great nevertheless, the linen is taught and I get a look at the full piece without having too much space to work the thread around. I'm looking forward to putting my larger UFOs (unfinished objects) in it and feeling more motivated by using a new toy. The Q Snap has a very substantial feel, you get a real feel of the physicality of the stitching which I like!


What I want now is to have it held for me by something like the Stitch EZ so I can make full use of my John James Twin pointed Quick Stitch Needles that I am already enjoying using one-handed. As you can see the twin stab method (shown on the left) would speed up stitching.

Varie-Whated?

I've never worked with variegated fibre before and so I'm learning a lot in my rose medallion sachet. I usually do cross stitch using the Danish Method and the loop start neither of these methods work with variegated stranded cotton.

Firstly I had to learn how to do single stitching cross stitch the English Method on linen. As the kit pattern politely instructed me:

When working with multicoloured threads always complete each cross stitch as you go or the colour of the top and bottom stitches may vary, and make the work look "muddy".

They also included a wee picture of how to do the English Method but it was on aida! So I had to find a site showing you how to do it on linen, the article Building a Better Cross Stitch is great.

Another thing with variegated thread is that you have to work out where to lay the sections of colour. I have tried to lay the sections of colour symmetrically when they need to be but they will never be perfect.

You also have to think about where you cut the thread and start the stitches again. When you cut the thread its best to do in the middle of a colour section like the black line in the picture to the right. So when you finish the length you make sure you start the stitches from where you cut from the main lot of thread and rather than put the thread in the needle as this will be the last bit of thread you use.