Is it December already?

Goodness me!  Have I really neglected my blog for a whole month?  Wow!  That must be a record.  Well, here I am in the usual one piece.

My main reason for not posting was lack of anything interesting stitch-wise to report.  There have been other things - illness, being busy with day-to-day stuff, stress etc, but plain lack of productivity (related to the other reasons!!!) is the main cause.

Anyway...

I made it to the Harrogate K&S Show this year after being afraid I couldn't go.  In fact, I had a better, longer day there this time than I had for a while.  I also realised how dehydrating the place is and made a mental note to pack twice as much liquid next year so as to avoid the feeling of being very achey and tired most of the day.

I also got some great new stuff.  The first picture is the threads and the lovely, fine-point scissors.  I bought my first Stef Francis threads (the gold one) and also my first Japanese thread (the multi-metallic one).

The second shot is of the contents of a bargain pack of light evenweaves I picked up for only £8.  There are 8 pieces in there, all good project sizes, some larger, and some even seem to be linen or linen-look fabrics.

I also got a couple of packs of small pieces from a different stall.  I enjoyed looking at Jane Greenoff's little fabric sampler books and thought these smalls would work well to make up one of my own. =)

The next photo, and the last from the Show, is of the four pieces of silk I got from The Silk Route, one of my favourite stands.  I'm still interested in making miniature textiles for doll's houses and I thought the one on the far right especially would be great for 'the gentleman's room' stuff.  The piece on the far left is actually lemon, not cream, and I just bought that for the sheer pleasure of it. =D

As I'd recently made a fair bit of pocket money on e-bay and Amazon, I still had a decent amount left after the show and so put in a big thread order with good old Sewandso.co.uk  I more or less completed the Anchor Coton à Broder #25 collection (just omitted 2 shades I couldn't see myself using) and then plugged some gaps with some DMC ones.  Sadly, their skeins are a completely different shape, so I wasn't able to store them together.  Other than that I grabbed some more Pearl Cotton #12 balls and discovered that I still have room for about another 15.  The beads are Mill Hill Pony Beads in sizes #6 and #8.

So, just a quick stash posting for now as I still have nothing to show you and hope that the stitch-itch might strike again soon.  It always does, never fear. =)  No 'mojo' comments though, please!  I'm quite passionately against magic and related things, so that expression doesn't sit well with me, although I appreciate the thought behind it. =)

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2014

Embroidery Tools

This post is LONG overdue and is dedicated to Jules of Adventures in Thread who requested it quite some time ago when I mentioned that I'd cleaned and reorganised this section and then offered to explain what some of the things were.  So, without further ado..... (Sorry about some of the photos - too bright light!)

First we have a thimble (which I use on occasion), a pack of expensive Japanese pins from a quilting shop in Taipei, Taiwan, some Thread Heaven, which came as part of a cross stitch group exchange game and which I don't use much, a needle threader, which I never use and have only keep 'just in case' and the ubiquitous seam ripper.

Next is the scissors/cutters section and you can see here from top left a pair of goldwork scissors, a small pair of embroidery scissors I keep as a spare, petit point scissors used for cutwork in hardanger and drawn thread pieces, some more embroidery scissors which are a bit wrecked, a Clover cutter pendant for air travel and the general pair I use for most thread cutting work (and which aren't as dirty as they look - the white spots are actually the bright light reflecting on the 'textured' surface of the black plastic!)

This stuff is mostly measuring, marking and cleaning: 3 dressmakers' pencils, an ordinary 6"/15cm ruler, a ruler which you can use to measure angles with (that I got 4 years ago in Taiwan thinking it was nifty and that I would use it a lot - but never have!!), a toothbrush for brushing away fluff and carbon/chalk marks, tweezers which are more for bending things than picking things up and, finally, an old clothes price tag which is just the right size for making tassels around.  No, I don't wear XL.  This seems to have been something for Sir!!

Here are my stumpwork wires.  There are 4 coils from a set I bought - probably meant to be jewellery wire (as is the small reel, I think, which came from an art shop in Taipei), but will be just fine for most wired stumpwork elements and is also much easier to find than florists' and cake decorators' wire.  The front 2 packs are from a sugarcraft store and are paper covered.

Here we have some more stumpwork etc tools:  A hedebo stick, which is used for making circular elements around before attaching them to the main fabric, a set of 3 half cone sticks in various sizes, a stiletto for puncturing fabric (for Broderie Anglaise etc), and a stuffing tool for pushing toy stuffing into smaller spaces.

And that, apart from the pair of thread snips that got overlooked whilst doing the scissors photo, is it!  What's in yours?

I can't believe how long it's been since I actually did any proper stitching!  I've done a bit of finishing up this month (as you saw last post), but the only embroidery I did was to finish off the cupcake card.  Things are hanging around the living room waiting for me look:

This is one of what we call our 'intelligent bags' (an Oxford University Press bookshop tote - the other is from Cambridge!!) and it's good for housing the stuff I need for the projects on hand.  You can see various patterns, materials and so on in here - mostly upside down!!

And here are my poor, neglected work frames, which have only been touched to move them out of the way and back again recently!

I've been trying to clear the decks of things like finishing up, mending and so on of late, or else have been mad busy with something else and/or stuck with my nose in a language textbook.  Having said that, I feel quite impatient to get back on now with these two, the things that are in the bag (about 4 more - a camera case to make up, the rabbit, TAST stuff and an old C&G sample I mean to finish up as my last UFO to clear) and some baby knitting that I'm just waiting for the yarn for.  A Chinese friend here is having a little girl in November after 2 boys and so I thought I'd do her a couple of pretty things - with which idea she's thrilled.

Oh, speaking of being thrilled, Georgina the disabled girl loves her scatter cushion cover and has already had a cushion pad bought for it.=)

Other than that, what news?  I added a 'forthcoming' page to my blog, so you can easily see what's planned for the near future (where possible) and something which will disappoint some: I won't be doing the C&G after all - health's still too poor and I have really too many demands on my energies as it is.  However, I plan on developing a fair few ideas and new skills, so I hope there'll be enough to keep everyone's interest.

'Til next time, tinkety-tonk!

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2012

Kreinik thread gauges etc

Isn't 'gauge' an oddly spelled word?  (Aren't many English words??)  I always want to write 'guage' instead.

Anyway...

Sorry for the quiet spell.  I've actually had a nasty bug all month (hoping this has been my 'flu month for the winter, so I've already got it out of the way), although I was better than usual with them and was able to stitch and blog and so on.  Over the last week I've been either busy catching up with domestic stuff, being away in Wales or just plain wrecked!  However, partly thanks to Megan down under, I've put my copyright thingy-whatsit in a template so I no longer have to keep scratting around to find a © each post!!

The roses project has been taken out of the hoop, pressed and the small back flower re-drawn in and then mounted as you can see here.  I've rolled up the other part and paper clipped it out of the way (using plastic coated clips just in case of staining) as you can also see, but it won't stay like that for long, as it should be done soon.

As the fabric has a very slight give in it (NOT really the ideal embroidery canvas!) I was glad that I took it out of the hoop before I put in the spider's web!  Had I not, then the long, straight stitches would have hung loose once it was let out.  So, I'll put that in holding the whole thing semi-taut in a plastic snap frame instead.  And that brings me on to the business of thread gauges.

I decided against using the prescribed Madeira #40 thread for the simple reason that I don't own any and the nearest stockist I know of is two counties away in Ripon.  That's too far to go to see if there's any real difference between that and Kreinik Cord!  I don't want to buy in new stuff anyway, I want to use the enormous collection of threads I've amassed over the 9 years I've been stitching.  One commenter suggested using the Madeira over the Kreinik, leading me to wonder if it was commonly known how fine Kreinik 1-ply Balger Cord actually is. Now this was a very hard photo to take, so forgive the gaps and the diagonals etc, but here's a comparison of some Kreinik thread gauges.

You can see at a glance how relatively thick threads like #8 Fine Braid and #4 Very Fine Braid and/or Cable (which is 3 plies of Cord, I think) are when put alongside Cord and Blending Filament.  Bear in mind though, that this photo is showing them all larger than life and I've noticed that the Cord looks about twice as thick as it realistically should!!  For this kind of thing (the web), I prefer to use Cord as it's more 'unified' than BF, which easily separates into it's two elements - the colour and the cellophaney bit.  Anyway, Cord is very fine gauge and this shade here should knock up a fairly decent web.  I've gone for 105C, a black and silver blend.

I like the corded types of Kreinik braids as well.  Here you can see a reel of regular silver 001 Very Fine Braid alongside it's 001C, corded version.  The finish is more even and the colour is often stronger.  Some of the 002 golds look OK in their own right, so to speak, but once you compare them with 002C in the same gauge of braid, they seem  very scrappy and patchy indeed!  The photo doesn't really do the difference justice in the silver, but I only had a dog end left on my current reel of 002.

I've been working a bit more on the poppy petals and have got half way through the third one.

Gail asked what I was doing with my old needlecase after moving my everyday supply to the new hardanger one.  Well, it's still in use housing the overflow.  I still need it really, and I can't think of how better to use it and have no idea of throwing it away.=)

Finally, here's the my tool section of my main workbox, which I cleared out and tidied up yesterday.  Let me know if you want me to take out all the things and explain what they are - as best I can anyway, as I've had some a while and not really used them yet....

© Elizabeth Braun 2011