Gulp

I have 87 metres of Brittney, Murano, Belfast and Cashel sitting on my dining table.

I may be gone some time...

The advantages of a big house

In the comments of my last post, Karen asked how I was able to work with Ewok running about the place. The answer is simple: I don't have to watch him all the time.

It's taken a lot of time, and trial-and-error, to get the house laid out in such a way that I can leave him unsupervised in two areas of the house while I work. The first area is the living/dining room. This is two sizeable rooms joined by a large archway. The living room part is 23'x13' and the dining room part is 11'x10'. This has allowed us to set it up so that my 'office' is at one end of the living room, behind the sofa, and then we have a large dining table in the dining room, which is where I cut and serge the fabrics. Nothing in either of these rooms is within Ewok's grasp (well that's the theory anyway, it doesn't always work out that way) so I can work at the computer, or chopping and stitching fabrics while he plays in the main part of the living room.

Of course he pesters me from time to time and is usually far more interested in my antics than those of Pocoyo, or the Tweenies, and occasionally he'll be very naughty and warrant a telling-off, but for the most part this arrangement works.

Finding a way of doing the actual dyeing with him about was a little more tricky, but we sussed it in the end. The utility room, where I do my dyeing, is in the basement (which is more of a lower ground floor than an actual basement, the house is built into a hill), and the room itself is tiny. Of course I couldn't have Ewok in the room with the dyes anyway, it's too dangerous for him in oh so many ways. However the basement has a large hallway (about 13' square max), off which all the rooms lead, and with the application of three baby gates we were able to fence off the central part of the hallway as a playroom for him. So while I'm dyeing, he can play safely in the hallway, and I'm just a door away. Dyeing goes in bursts of activity with frequent 5 or 10 min breaks, and I spend these breaks playing with Ewok, so he never has to amuse himself for more than about 30 mins at a time, usually a lot less, and if he needs me I'm right there.

Finally, I usually have 2 hours each afternoon while he naps, and 3 to 4 hours after he's gone to bed, before I crawl into my pit, and of course I get loads done then because there's less distractions.

It does mean that my 'me' time will have to be mostly sacrificed until the show, but I'm hoping it will be worth it, and I'm not giving it up completely. I'll still have an hour in the afternoons to stitch and watch tv, although even then I'm working, as the piece I'm stitching at the moment is on one of my fabrics and I'd love to have it finished in time for the show as a model.

Sweat shop

Well I'm starting to get an inkling of what people in a textile sweat shop have to do. Just the merest inkling though.

After doing a load of calculations and setting up an immense spreadsheet, I've worked out that I need to dye in the region of 850 pieces of fabric in the next 4 weeks!

However, before the fabric can be dyed, it has to be cut to size and the edges serged using my trusty overlocker. Yesterday I cut and serged 168 pieces of varying sizes and it took several hours.

Yet what I'm doing isn't tricky. I'm stitching in a straight line, on fairly thick and firm fabric and it doesn't matter if the line wobbles a bit. The people who work at piecing clothing together are working with all different weights of fabric, from flimsy gauzes up, and they have to put pieces together accurately with neat stitching.

They also have to work in appalling conditions. I recently watched an episode of a program that is following a group of fashion students as they travel around countries like India, doing the jobs of the workers who contribute to one stage or another of clothing production for the UK high street. The episode I watched showed them working in a manufactory where they (6 of them) were expected to piece 36 blouses together over a 2 day period. Each completed piece was checked by the supervisor and if rejected if had to be taken apart and redone. The room they were working in was spartan to say the least, lit by generator-driven flourescent lights, a generator that they had to operate themselves. The place was dirty and bug infested, and not only did they work there, but they lived there too, sleeping on the floor with a few blankets for warmth. Oh and they get paid a few pence per succesfully completed garment, almost all of which is sent back to their families in the villages to pay for their children to get the education they didn't, so that they can get good, well paid jobs and have nice homes.

I don't mind admitting that I had tears in my eyes at the quiet dignity of one of the men they talked to, as he explained that yes, he could get himself a better education and a better job by spending his earnings on night classes, but at the expense of his children's current education which just wasn't an option.

I may be having to work hard, hunched over my machine for hours at a time, but I know it's only for a few weeks, and that I will see all the profits of my hard work for myself. I have a comfortable padded chair to sit on, a clean, well lit room in which to work, and an ipod loaded with Harry Potter audio books to occupy my mind.

Musn't grumble.

Calling all UK stitchers...

...and any non-UK ones who may be here on holiday in a few weeks. Come along and support me (and all the other exhibitors of course) at the first Stitches Needlecraft Show, being held in Bakewell by Wye Needlecraft on the 9th and 10th August.

I only found out about the show this morning from a fellow stitcher who's planning to go to the show and was hoping to arrange a bit of a get together, however as I only live about 20 miles from Bakewell this looked like a great opportunity to do a show, without it costing me a fortune in travel and hotel costs on top of show costs. So I gave them a call to get the details, then called Wookiee and asked if he'd be okay with me spending a whole weekend at the show, and then called them back and asked where I had to sign. I had to do it quickly before I talked myself out of doing it.

This does however mean that thinks are going to be just a little frantic chez Kitty for the next few weeks, as I do not routinely keep a large stock of ready-dyed fabrics as it's easier to simply dye to order. So all my spare time until the show will be spent squirreled away in my tiny utility room which doubles as a dyeing room.

I have no willpower

I mentioned in a previous post that once I'd finished a current stitching WIP that I'd be starting a new piece from Victoria Sampler, specifically Sweet Pea Gazebo. Well I haven't finished the WIP, but I've started SPG anyway.

I did put a few more stitches into my WIP first, but then deicided I didn't have the drive to stitch on it at the moment. I also stitched a load of speciality stitch samples for a new product that I currently have in development, which I'm hoping to get into the shop in the next couple of weeks.

So back to SPG. I had a dig around in my kitted up folders and found that not only did I have the chart and silks pack but I had the Trebizond pack for it as well, which I'd forgotten about. I bought it all off a fellow stitcher several years ago, filed it away and then forgot about it. Anyway, this meant that all I needed to get going was some fabric, and to dig out a ball of #12 white Perle.

When I bought the fabric for HAS I got half a metre, just in case I messed up the hardanger section and needed to start over. I didn't and so I had a large piece of 28 count cream Quaker Cloth sitting around waiting to be used. I decided to cut off a length of it and dye it up to use for SPG. I dyed it a spotty mix of pale green, purple and pink, trying to give the impression of sweet peas, and I think it came out rather well. I need to try it out again on some Lugana, but if it works out I'll be adding the colour to the shop range, probably called Sweet Pea.

Sale on Now

It's the anniversary of me opening my own shop online, so for today (12th March) everything is 10% off.

Shop, shop shop!

<== Clicky on the Sparklies linky in my sidebar over there to visit my shop.

New Fabric Colours

I've been busy this last week, creating new colours of fabric for the shop. So now I'd like to introduce to you...

Thalia



Parchment



and Ocean Depths.



In case you were wondering, Thalia is similar to Basically Bonkers but the colours are more muted because it's based on cream, rather than white fabric.

Concentrate

I really should concentrate on what I'm doing when mixing up dyes, instead of mentally blogging something that Ewok has just done. That way I wouldn't absent mindedly mix the same colour twice.

At least I had a spare piece of fabric handy that was the right size to use up all the extra batch of dye, and it's one of my regular colours so I can just add it to the stock levels when it's done.

The really annoying thing is that I now can't remember what it was I was blogging, darnit.

S.E.X. Party

As you may know, I dye fabrics and threads and try and sell them to poor unsuspecting cross stitchers. I also spend far too much time on various forums full of those same poor unsuspecting stitchers. On one of these forums is another lady (K) who operates a ONS, except that now she's having to give it up because life has given her one too many lemons recently.

A little while ago another forum member suggested holding a S.E.X. party at her house, where myself and this other lady would take along our stock and other stitchers would come and buy it. Think tupperware party for stitchers. That happened last Saturday and a great time was had by all.

I used some very underhanded tactics (I turned up with my stuff) and forced several people (at flosspoint) to buy my products. I also had a frolic through K's stock and succumbed to the lure of silk threads and a chart.

The threads in question are Gloriana silk floss, and they are oh-so-strokeable. She had all of them strung onto one of those metal rings, and at one point I was sat with it in my lap, just stroking it, I half expected it to start purring.

I was very restrained on the day and only bought 11 skeins of the silks, but I've since emailed her asking for another 20 skeins (if she has them). The ones I bought on the day are Twilight Blue, Midnight, Bell Flower, Periwinkle, Red Clay, Sage, Ollalieberry(2), Merry's Mauve, Pigeon and Winterwoods.

The chart I bought is Blackstone Fantasy Garden by Ink Circles. I've been contemplating this design for a while now, and was going to add it to my wishlist, but then it was there, right under my nose, and I just couldn't resist. My plan is to stitch the design using the Gloirana silks instead of the Carries Creations threads used in the original, hence the request for more skeins of the silks, I need more colours to choose from.

I've made more progress on the tits too. I finished the fifth one last night, so just one more to go and it's done.

Basically Bonkers

Here it is:

Approx DMC shades 208, 209 & 3807

Ok, so I promised you the tale behind the name a few weeks ago, as I was gently reminded by Karen in a comment recently.

Back in June a large group of stitchers, myself included, all got together for a stitchy weekend at some holiday cottages in Derbyshire (we'd booked the whole place). In the run up to the weekend people were offering to teach people various things and I offered to run a dyeing class for anyone who wanted to have a go.

Several people were interested, so along with all my stock (well I couldn't turn down a captive audience, could I!) I packed up all my dyeing paraphernalia.

We had a glorious weekend and early Sunday afternoon I set up a dyeing area in the small garden between the cottages, and those who wanted to play gathered around for the demo.

I started with dyeing threads, because these take the least amount of room, and once they're in the pots of dye they can be moved anywhere there's a flat surface. Next I moved on to fabric immersion dyeing, where the fabric is immersed either partially or totally in a pot of dye, usually scrunched up. These can also be moved away once they're soaking. Finally we laid out some fabrics for sponge dyeing, which one of the ladies described as 'like being back at nursery school again' as she wielded a dye laiden sponge in a rather alarming manner.

The result of all this inspired dyeing were some wonderful colour schemes, and I decided that several of them would do nicely as future colours for my collection. In honour of the ladies that had created them, I asked them to come up with the names for the colours.

One of these ladies is Joy, who is a frank speaking lady with a big personality (she's a love, and I'm pretty sure she'll read this and be in bits at me calling her a lady), and earlier in the weekend, during a rather mad conversation, I'd said to her; "You know, you're just basically bonkers!". Much hilarity ensued, and the nickname stuck.

The colour you see above was created by Joy in one of those happy accident moments. The fabric was originally dyed with a new colour, one that I'd not had chance to try out before that weekend, called Vivid Violet. It actually came out a very bright pinky purple, and Joy is not a fan of pink. So in an attempt to alter the colour to something more purple, we dyed it again, this time with a dark blue/purple dye and this was the result.

When I asked Joy to name this colour she had a bit of a dilemma. You see she already has a colour named after her, Buttercup Joy, created in response to her request for just such a colour. She'd also already named one of the other colours she created that weekend (she was quite prolific in her dyeing) after her daughter, so she was now a bit stuck for names.

Then in a flash of inspiration she said, "You can name it for me after all, just call it Basically Bonkers!"

A finish

I've finished my second (and more than likely my last) piece of stitching for the year. The design is a freebie called Coeur, one of many lovely designs I found on a blog I was sent to by a friend. The blogger is Ludivine, she's french and her posts are in french, but even if you can't read the posts (like me) I recommend you go and have a look at her designs, they're wonderful. To see only her posts with designs in, click on this link Grilles gratuites.

Anyway, here's my finished piece:

Click for a bigger image.

This is not my usual choice of design, but I was looking for something to be a showpiece for a new batch of thread colours that I'm releasing in the New Year. As they're all shades of pink and purple it seemed appropriate to do a Valentines related design and this one really appealed to me.

It's stitched using one of the new colours, called Hunnybunny (approx DMC 3608 and 3609), on my Fairy Tale fabric. Stitched over one, using two strands and tent/continental stitch rather than cross stitch. I find this works better for me when stitching over one.

As you may also guessed, this means I have the scanner back, so as soon as I can get the batch of fabric in the washer, ironed and dried, I'll tell all about Basically Bonkers.

A new start

So after saying in my previous post that I wasn't going to start anything new until I'd finished stitching my tits, what did I do?

I started stitching this: Coeur

In my defense, the reason I'm stitching it, is as a showpiece for a new colour of thread that will be hitting the shop in the New Year, so it's business stitching and therefore doesn't count (good excuse huh?)

It's a free design and the lady who created it, Ludivine, has many others on her blog. This linky will take you to her free charts index. I rather wish I could read her posts, but my french is simply not that good. I can figure out the odd word here and there, but most of it escapes me.

The colour I'm stitching it in is called Hunnybunny. It's shades of pink from DMC 3609 to something a little darker than DMC 3608, and I'm stitching it over one (tent stitch) on Fairy Tale.

This colour is one of five new colours of thread, of which I've sent samples to the magazine Gift of Stitching, so they should be featuring in their New Products section soon (I'm hoping for January). I've also sent them a sample of a new fabric colour, one that I've mentioned before, that's called Basically Bonkers. I promised an explanation of that name, and one will be forthcoming, when I have a picture to post with it. Unfortunately we only have one scanner in this house and Wookiee is using it at the moment.

Stash Thursday

It was another stash day today =)

I ordered a chart about a week ago for my secret santa stitcher for this year. She may read this so I can't say what I ordered. However I could only find it for sale in the US ONS's, not in any of the UK ones, so in order to justify the postage I added a few things for myself.

So I now have Rejoice, Wish and Christmas Tree Ornaments from M Designs. This means that I have all the trees I need for the two tree groupings that I want to stitch. Rather than stitching each tree individually and making them up into ornaments (I'm not really a stitched ornament kind of person) I'm going to stitch two 'forests' with them.

The two groupings will be:

Group 1: Peace, Love, Joy, Rejoice and Christmas.
Group 2: Hope, Believe, Dream and Wish.

Of course getting the charts is the easy part, now I have to choose the fabrics and threads for the two pieces, and do I stitch all the trees in a group in the same thread or each one in a different thread. I think I know which fabric I want to use for Group 1, it's a new colour that will be appearing in the shop very soon. It's really dark, rich, and vibrant shades of purple called Basically Bonkers (I'll explain the name at another time). This means that I'll need to use pale colour threads for the trees. I'm tempted to try using white or pearl Krenik braid but I think it might drive me nuts doing five trees like that. It might also be a little tricky if I decide to stitch them over one. Maybe if I stitched the bottom leg in white DMC and the top leg in Krenik (BF for over one and braid for over two).

All these decisions and I don't even know when I'm going to be able to start stitching, I still have to finish my tits off and the next thing I want to start is one of two HAEDs. As I'm trying to stick to not starting anything new until I've finished one of my WIPs, it could be quite a while before I can start work on my trees. Maybe I can think of having Group 1 finished for next Christmas.

With these hands

I've been a crafter for many years. Ever since I was a little girl and my grandmother showed me how to dry, paint, and then string together melon seeds to make necklaces and bracelets.

My mother showed my how to do some simple embroidery stitches and I made her a sunglasses case out of felt and floss. I wouldn't be at all surprised if she's still using it.

My first Saturday job was in a local needlecraft shop where I discovered the world of cross stitch and tapestry and spending my pay before I even got it.

I got back into making jewellery in my late 20's, this time with glass and wire, then silver and semi-precious stones. I took some summer classes at the School of Jewellery in Birmingham (UK) in silversmithing, stone setting, gemology and pearl stringing.

About two years ago I went to Canada on holiday and went to a class on fabric dyeing and from that started dyeing and selling my own range of fabrics and threads.

I know many people who craft in one form or another and one thing I've noticed along the way, is that the hands that create the most beautiful things are usually hard worn, coloured, scratched, cut, burned, or shriveled and pruny.

I was looking at my hands just now, which after a hard days dyeing definitely fall into the shriveled and pruny category, with a side order of stained, and thinking that they look awful. Then I looked at all the wonderful colours of fabric and threads that I've created with them, and somehow it doesn't matter any more.

I am a mole, and I live in a...

...box?



This is my latest 'rescue', it being that time of year once again. The time when the new arrivals in the world of fauna take their first tottering steps, hops or flights into the world. Only to be pounced on by one of my cats.

I was in the utility room doing another batch of dyeing, when I heard the squeaking of some poor hapless furry thing out in the hallway. Rushing out to see what small rodent they'd caught this time, I was greeted with a total absence of moggies, nary a fuzzbutt in sight. Then I saw movement out of the corner of my eye and spotted this fellow scurrying round the base of their scratching post. I quickly scooped him up and popped him in a very handy nearby box. I don't know how long he'd been hiding behind or under something. It must have been a while for the cats to have given up waiting.

Anyway, I took the requisite photo's before taking him outside and releasing him back into the garden. Unfortunately due to his scurrying around, this is the only one that came out well.

Restocking and rashes

I had a great weekend away. Lots of fun and giggles with a bunch of mad stitchers, what more could you want. I also managed to sell half my stock to them, arms are so easy to twist when you're waving fabrics and threads under their noses! So I'm now madly trying to restock the shop. I've got 64 pieces of fabric to dye just to restock, and then I need to dye a whole load of new stuff with the colours we discovered over the weekend.

You see I held a little dyeing class on the Sunday. I told people if they wanted to have a go, to bring some threads or fabric to dye and I'd supply the rest. This was really just a cunning way for me to get them to come up with some new colours for me, and bless them if they didn't do just that. I now have five new fabric colours to try and recreate with names given to them by the people who created them. Which is why one of them will be known as 'Basically Bonkers' *grin*

Apparently Wookiee and Ewok coped quite well without me, although Ewok did miss his mummy and as a result was quite 'needy' while I was gone.

Since then my poor boy has been teething badly again, with the accompanying nappy rash. It wasn't too bad until today, but today he's had the runs, quite badly, and it's really aggravated the rash to the point that his little bum has a lot in common with a babboons' and I've been having to wipe him with cotton wool and water because the wipes were making his bum sting. Even with the cotton wool and water he was crying the whole time I was changing his nappy.

Although I know teething babies can suffer from the runs, I suspect this is more likely to be a bug that he's caught from me, as I was suffering on Tuesday and Wednesday. Fortunately the last nappy of the day contained something a little more solid, so I'm hoping he's got over it now, and the cream that I put on his bum will have plenty of time to work on the rash overnight.

New fabric and thread colours

I've been busy dyeing recently. Here are some of the fruits of my labour:

Midnight (on linen)
This is close to the DMC range of 791-794 in colour

All the following are clickable for a bigger image:

Mossy Bank	Smoky Mountain	Topaz
Flower Jade	Sherwood	Dark Celadon
	Nile Crocodile

All of the threads are available already. The fabric will be very soon. I remember someone asking me a while ago when I would be doing some greens (IIRC it was Heather), well here they are, and there are loads of green Solitaires in the shop as well, the ones created when I was experimenting.

The first batch of my next experiments are currently rinsing. These are all shades of pink, red, blue and purple. There are fifty skeins in this batch, all different colours, and I have another three batches to do, with fifty skeins in each. I really enjoy the experimentation, not so much scanning the results to put in the shop. I may start selling Solitaire bundles just to reduce the scanning *grin*

More stitching

I finished this little fella a couple of weeks ago:



He's Make a Wish by Lili of the Valley and I stitched him on an opalescent fabric that I dyed especially for him. It's meant to look like an evening/night sky and I think it works. I may add the fabric to the permanent range in the shop but I want to play with the idea a little more first. If I do add it, it'll probably be a dye-to-order piece where you can choose where the horizon is, to fit in with the design you want to stitch.

I'm now stitching on a long time WIP, Egyptian Pair from Janylynn. I'm currently stitching Nefertiti.