White Threads

Today I went to the Sydney Craft and Quilt Fair with my friend Kirsten Edwards who is the editor of The Gift Of Stitching online magazine, and my elder daughter, who we normally refer to in blogland as The Bookworm.

You’re not supposed to take photos inside the venue due to copyright issues, so we got The Bookworm to take a photo of us outside the front door. She had to be very quick in between people rushing to get in the door, so it’s not the best photo you’ve ever seen! Kirsten is on the left, and that’s me on the right.

We all had a wonderful time.

The Bookworm came to the show for the first time. She’s eight years old, and while she’s not really into sewing very much, she likes being creative. I thought it would be a nice mother-daughter activity and she might find everything a bit inspiring. She loved it. Anything sparkly or shiny caught her eye. She had brought $20 of her pocket money, so she had a fun time noting down all the things she was interested in, then at the end of the day working out how far she could get her $20 to stretch. She bought some little treasures and was extremely pleased with her purchases. It was a good exercise in budgeting, working out what your priorities are, and realising that you can’t just buy everything you see that you like the look of.

So, what did I buy? I purchased some doctor’s flannel – I like to use this in needlecases. I also bought some Colourstreams and Kacoonda hand dyed wool felt, and some lovely lovely hand dyed “silk hankies” from Room For Threads. At Room for Threads, they use the silk hankies for incorporating into felted creations, but I’m going to use mine for embroidering on. I also purchased some gorgeous variegated wool thread from Kaalund Yarns, which I will use for embroidery.

I really was on a mission to get things for using in my inspiration panels for my left-handed book. I came away with lots of wonderful goodies. It was such fun, and I can’t wait to get started with using them.

They also had a joint Wrap With Love and Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital stand where they were collecting donations of knitted rug squares and cotton undies. I’ve been interested in the Fistula Hospital for some time, and if we’re ever in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), I’d love to do some volunteering – teaching sewing or embroidery – while I am there. So I got a few brochures about the Fistula Hospital. What an inspiring place!

I had a chat with Kirsten about my left-handed book. She’s really looking forward to it, as she’s also left-handed – which I hadn’t actually realised. Kirsten’s focus is counted embroidery, and her magazine is primarily about cross stitch. She said “Of course, you’ll have queen stitch in it.”

Look of horror from me! “No, what’s queen stitch?!”

“Oh Yvette! That’s a really important counted thread stitch.”

“Is it? I’ve never heard of it. What else am I missing?”

“Have you got rice stitch?”

“??”

“What about rhodes stitch?”

“????”

Oh dear… So Kirsten’s set me in a complete spin – I had already filled the pages! So, on checking my book page plan (known in the book publishing world as a “flat plan”), I can see that by doing some judicious squishing and removing of less important introductory information, I can possibly grant myself an extra 9ish pages worth of space. Kirsten said she’ll make a list of really important counted stitches that I should include. Fortunately I already have double running, cross stitch, smyrna cross, eyelets, french knots. But I await with baited breath her list of “must haves”. (And you’re welcome to add your own “counted stitch must haves” in the comments section.) I can’t promise anything, but I will try to be accommodating.

Could be a rather large juggle of pages and their contents coming up in the next week. Still, better to do it now, than to wish I had done it after the book is published.

(Head in hands and rolling eyes in horror…)

Sorry I’ve been so quiet over the last week. I’ve been really getting stuck into writing my left handed stitch book. My aim is to get at least three pages done each day. That will help me to reach my publishing target date.

I went down to the guild library last week (or was it the week before?) and sat and researched for a few hours and wrote up a long list of other stitches that I wanted to add in to the book. (The book expanded again by about 10 pages…) I also had some questions about a few stitches that I wanted answered – like why there seem to be two very different ways of doing Burden stitch. I have no real answer to “Why” but at least I have ascertained that there are two very different versions of the stitch. One is a running stitch, and the other is a couching stitch. They’ll both be in the book.

I’m looking forward to moving on to the sewing part of the book. I will need to stitch a sample of each stitch so that readers can see what it will look like. Then I’ll also be having an “inspiration” panel on each page to show the sorts of things you can do with the stitch, including variations where they exist.

I am having so much fun, partly because I’m enjoying all the stitches, partly because I’m enjoying creating all the diagrams, and partly because I’m just enjoying working again!