White Threads

no designing, no stitching

I don’t really have much to say. I spent the weekend doing other things – having a break from work. Yesterday I happily and finally finished a magazine story that had been troubling me. I haven’t designed anything, stitched anything, or done anything interesting. Nothing interesting has arrived in the mail, though I do wonder how long it will be before my Cosmo threads turn up. I’m very hopeful about them coming soon…

There is a fabric sale on at the Remnant Warehouse at the end of this week. Its from Thursday 31st March until Saturday 2nd April. They’ve got 25% off all fabric. I have no opportunity to go due to prior commitments, which is probably good because I have quite a few dressmaking projects in the queue already, despite the fact that I’d love some fabric to make some new pants. I have the rainbow dress to make – in a few spare minutes I cut out the yellow stripes yesterday. I also have a shirt for my husband and a blue, long-sleeved version of my red dress to make.

So if you get the chance to go to the sale, I’d love to hear about your bargains. If you don’t mind, I’ll live vicariously through you.

wellness

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ll probably know that I had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome a few years back. I finally declared myself well in March 2009 – my doctor took a bit longer to do so!

Lying in bed this morning, I realised that we’re now in March 2011. That means I’ve been well again for 2 years. Wow!

In the nine months that I was sick, and in the time afterwards where I processed my experience (and this still continues to this day), I learnt a few things. I learnt what it is to be sick – really sick – with no way of knowing how long its going to go on, or even if it will end. I have more of an understanding of long-term illness that I ever expected or wanted to have. But I am better for it.

I learnt to value good health. It really is something that most of us take for granted until we don’t have it anymore. I also learnt that I can make all the plans I want, but there’s no guarantee that those plans will come to fruition. Sure, I’ll make plans, but now I’m much more realistic about the fact that I have no control over these things really. There are many more things that I learnt, about caring, about carers, and about learning to accept help from others.

I am naturally a “doing” sort of person, but when I was sick, I couldn’t “do” anything. It meant that I had to rethink what it meant to be me. As an achievement based person, who was unable to achieve much at all, I realised that maybe I needed to find another way to think about myself. I thought through the idea that perhaps it was about me just “being”. Even if I couldn’t do, I could “be”. I could choose to “be” a bitter person lying on that lounge, constantly bemoaning my situation, or I could try to “be” a person who people wanted to spend time with, who despite my illness was a loving and kind person. I’m not saying I succeeded in that, as I am still very much a doer, but it did help me to see that “doing” should not be the whole story.

While it was a horrible time in my life (and my whole family’s) I hope I made the best of it.

If you’re long term ill, I sincerely hope that today is a good day for you.

Ballet Russes exhibition extended

I found out the other day that the exhibition Ballet Russes: the Art of Costume at the National Gallery of Australia has been extended until May 1. It was supposed to end last weekend, and the poster I have on my wall above my computer tells me this every time I look at it!

The exhibition has been so popular that they have extended it. This is wonderful news. The Valentino exhibition in Brisbane at the end of last year also far exceeded visitor number projections. Perhaps Australian museums might get the message that textile exhibitions are well patronised and put more on, more often? I do hope so!

If you’re nowhere near Canberra, where the exhibition is on show, do visit the gallery website, as it is very informative, including a video about the Ballet Russes in general and the exhibition itself.

I splurged!

Yesterday I decided to splurge and bought myself the complete set of Cosmo Seasons threads. I decided that they’re a resource that would be great for me to have and use, but also just to be able to see the full range of colours in person.

Its hard to choose colours from a digital colour card of silly little rectangles with stripes of colour. If you’re designing, its just really not good enough. Seeing the whole skein really gives you a good idea of how much of each colour is in the skein. That’s something you don’t get from a stripey swatch.

Now I just have to be patient until they arrive. 🙂

Cosmo seasons threads

I’ve been doing some work on my new little Cosmo bookmark kits. I called the distributor of the thread and unfortunately they said they don’t have a colour card. They emailed me a file which has a basically useless chart showing little photographic “swatches” of colour stripes that you’re supposed to choose colours from.

I can’t choose colours like that! That’s ridiculous! I want to choose my threads from seeing actual skeins of thread. That way you get a better idea of how much of each colour you get in each skein.

I don’t know of any shops in Sydney that stock this thread, so I can’t even go anywhere to look at it (its just a little bit far to take a trip back to AllThreads Embroidery just to check colours…). I did ask the distributor if they could tell me who stocks them in Sydney, but they haven’t got back to me about that. So I looked further, and eventually found this. Wowee! Thank you so much to the lovely person who put this up.

As I look down all the photos they’ve posted, I see that they’ve photographed the drawers the skeins come in, so that you can see a good range of colours together. And THEN, even further down, they’ve photographed their colour card, with REAL thread… So they DO exist. 😉

I’ve happily been choosing which skeins I really like. Any votes for the skeins you like best? Its probably easiest to look at the drawer photos, because then you can see them in the context of their fellow skeins. I look forward to hearing your opinions!

Author talk

Yesterday I did the first of two author talks at my kids’ school. I volunteered myself to do this at the end of last year, and the librarian was very enthusiastic about it. I also did some author talks in Ethiopia at the school the kids attended while we were there, so thankfully yesterday’s one wasn’t my first.

But my goodness, I was nervous. All the Year 5 and 6 kids dribbled into the library, with me sitting out the front, watching them all *looking* at me. It was quite unpleasant! I had no idea if they’d been told what this special talk was going to be about (I found out later that they hadn’t, except for those who my daughter had told).

The librarian introduced me, and I got to it – talking about the writing process. I *know* that I said practically everything was an “important” point. I need to stop doing that. If I’m saying it, chances are it probably is important or I wouldn’t bother mentioning it! I also know that there were a couple of other phrases that I definitely overused.

No-one asked any questions. They were a group of stunned mullets… until at the end, when most had gone back to their classrooms, and those who were left were putting the tables and chairs back to rights. Then quite a few of my daughter’s classmates came over and asked me questions.

“Are you rich?” NO!! No-one other than J K Rowling gets rich from writing books! 😀

“Do you know any famous authors?” No, not ones that you might be thinking of, though I know quite a few of the writers in my field.

“Where can I buy your book?” I suggested a couple of places.

“Do you like writing books?” Yes, I love it!

I think it went well. I hope they found it interesting. I hope the information I shared with them on the writing process assists them in their own writing. I hope that I inspired at least one of them to consider being a writer. Who knows?

cosmo fobs

After I came back from Brisbane I said that I was waiting for the chance to play with the Cosmo Seasons threads that I bought from All Threads Embroidery. Well, I finally got the chance to do this on the weekend. Lately because I have been working so hard during the week I have been making the conscious decision to give myself me time on the weekend.

You may think that if I work hard at embroidering all week that I wouldn’t want to do more embroidery in my leisure time… But I do, because I love embroidery so much! So on Friday night I got to work with my new cosmo thread, a needle and thread and had a bit of a stitching doodle. It turned out to be a fob to go on my scissors.

I revised the design and made it into a bookmark fob. And then I designed two more, in different designs and colourways. What fun! I was so happy with my little experimentations that its highly likely that I will be making them into kits. I used counted thread stitches from my left and right-handed stitch dictionaries, and combined the Cosmo threads with some gold thread and gold Mill Hill Magnifica beads.

I had great fun with the fobs, and they’re the sort of thing that stitches up reasonably quickly – mine took a few hours each. I took them with me wherever I was going over the weekend, and if I had a short while of waiting time, I just pulled them out and stitched. Because they’re small, they’re very portable.

My report on the Cosmo threads is this – they’re so nice! The cotton is very soft and has a lovely sheen. Some thread seems to change thickness a little, but this thread does not – its very even. Most of the time the colour gradations work nicely, changing from one colour to another over a good distance, though I did get one section of thread yesterday that made me quite cross because it was so boring! However, I just cut a new piece from the thread and it was much more interesting. On the whole though, the colour changes quickly enough to be interesting, but not too quickly! This is very much dependent on the stitches you are using though, and how quickly the stitch uses up the thread.

The price that I paid for the Cosmo thread at All Threads was very reasonable, so if you have to cut out a section of boring thread and move onto the next bit, it doesn’t seem so wasteful.

I’ve sent an enquiry to the Australian distributors of these threads to find out if I might be able to get them for making into kits. I hope that they don’t have a stupid rule like that you must carry the whole range to be able to buy from them. (I have come across that sort of thing before. I can understand it is a sensible rule for shops, but for designers simply wanting to put the threads into kits, its just unhelpful.)

And now after talking and talking about them, I’ll finally let you have a peek. 🙂

Mountmellick solace

This is the Mountmellick doily I’ve been working on over the last few days. It was a lovely project to work and really helped my emotional wellbeing. If you didn’t read the comments from yesterday’s post, please do take a look at Lakaribane’s blog post, about her experience of healing from sewing following the devastating earthquake in Haiti just over a year ago. The english version is the second half of the blog post.

I’ll be teaching this doily and all the stitches required for it at Maitland later this year, and maybe at one or two other groups as well.

As soon as I’ve had the chance to write up the instructions, I’ll release it for general sale also.

trauma and making it through

Following on from yesterday, which was a bit about how needlework seems to be very good for my health, I was listening to the radio yesterday afternoon. They were discussing how with all the trauma that the world seems to be going through (Japan, Christchurch, Queensland floods, cyclones, political upheaval in the Middle East etc) some people might be finding it a little difficult to cope. That’s not to say that we as far-off observers are feeling anything like the people who are actually experiencing these things, but for some of us it still affects us.

The presenter was talking about how it is important to do things that help you cope. For some, that might be spending time with friends, or meditating or praying etc. For me, one of my coping activities would definitely be doing embroidery.

And so, with some awful and shocking news this week from friends, and what’s happened in Japan, on top of all the other things that have happened in our corner of the world over the past few months, I realised how valuable the time I have spent embroidering over the last two days will have been.

After spending some time the other morning in sadness, embroidering really lifted my spirit. I have felt calm. It was quiet, and allowed me to think and process.

So while I have been doing work (the embroidery is for an upcoming class), I think it was probably the best sort of work I could possibly have been doing.

stitching happiness

Yesterday I spent the day stitching a new Mountmellick design for some classes later this year. I had a lovely time doing it, and realised how grateful I was to have a job that I love so much.

I was having a chat recently with someone just before I was due to teach a class. He asked if I was all revved up and excited about the class for the day. Looking forward to it? Yes. Revved up and excited? No. I’m just not that sort of person. He said “You don’t seem to be the sort of person who gets overexcited, very much.”

No, I’m not. In fact, when I was sick with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, I had myriad blood tests, one of which was slightly unusual that measured by adrenalin levels. They were very low. The technician doing the testing commented that either I had a problem that was making my adrenalin levels low, or “often we find that sort of thing in people who meditate. Do you meditate?” I replied that I don’t meditate, but I do do embroidery, which is a very meditative thing to do. She thought that could well explain the test results.

What a calm and unexciting life that I lead…

Just the way I like it. 🙂