The Rabbit Hole

I swear part 5 on this chart is probably bigger than parts 3 and 4 put together, if not larger. I've already stitched so much, and there's still a lot left... more regular stitches, and then a crapload of back-stitching too, and a load of Rhodes stitches. The 2 parts after this don't seem to be as big, so I'm considering this the hump in this particular project so far.

I'm also completely sick of stitching these yellow houses, urgh. Pretty much the same thing x 8 gets a bit tedious.

And time to take a break anyway. Between yesterday's stitching and some I did earlier today, my neck is killing me, and given that we pole-vaulted from cold weather into summer and it's well over 80-something F in the house, sitting around with 3 square feet of linen covering my lap over clothes is a bit more toasty than I want to be at present.

I'd like to think that I'll be done with this part soon, and can subsequently take pictures, but I'm guessing that even stitching solidly it'll easily take the rest of the week, especially given all the back-stitching on the windows and doors. But, the end result is worth it. And the next part of the chart is way more interesting too, and I'd like to move on to that soon.

Sunday night I finished part 2 of my St. Petersburg White Nights cross-stitch piece. Hopefully this weekend I'll manage to get part 3 completed. I'm hoping to catch up with the online class a bit over the next month or two (which is currently at part 9, with parts released monthly).

( Pic Here )

The mail was nice and fast, and vgnwtch and darkvervain received the package today.

And so, pictures!

Sadly, the pictures I took don't do the piece justice, and I didn't really check how the colour turned out before I put the piece in the mail, but there's an example picture I'm including from the designer's website to give a more accurate idea.



The design is by Little House Needleworks, and is called, no surprises, The Bookshelf. It is stitched on 28 count Light Mocha Cashel linen with DMC floss. There is some metallic gold in the spines of the books, which is a little hard to make out.

( More detailed pictures )

I mentioned in an earlier post once about the cross-stitch sampler I want to make for Dashiell. Here's a picture of it. It's from a Dutch magazine, Ariadne (Baby en Peuter), back from 1990, before Ariadne in general turned to suck.

Ariadne used to be a monthly craft magazine, mostly 'fiber arts'. I think it started somewhere in the 60s or so (at least, I saw old ones from the 60s when we dug through my aunt's stuff), and was always full of stuff to do. It came with a removable workbook in the center, which had all the patterns and instructions. It would contain sewing and knitting patterns, cross-stitch charts, various other crafty how-to's. I've never really seen a magazine like it since... the only one that comes close in the way that it has free patterns in the inner worksheet is Burda, but that's purely sewing.

And then in the 90s it changed, and started leaning more to home decorating. And now it's really nothing more than a buying guide for home furnishings (and a lot of it in the kind of french country style) with the occasional craft project thrown in.

I think my mother has a complete run of the magazine from the 1980s, and after my aunt passed, I got a bunch of them too. The 80s ones have the best patterns... stuff that's not so outdated or can be easily updated, and just really nifty ideas and patterns. Of course it's still back in Holland with the rest of my stuff, waiting to be shipped out here.

And so I ramble...

My aunt's passing earlier this year, and the subsequent need to deal with her posessions put a few things into sharp relief for me. Besides having to deal with the vast extent of her packratting and hoarding, going through the unfinished projects was a sad business.

( Reflections )

( Cross-stitch Project Pictures )

( Resolutions )