I can't believe it is more than a year since I finished stitching this piece in preparation for my class at Beating Around the Bush in a few weeks, but I had never dreamt it would take me so long to get everything ready for the kits. I am making extra kits, so it will go in the SHOP in early October. If you want to make sure you don't miss out, send me an email I can reserve one for you.
After having been away for nearly a month, I am busy restocking many of the kits. My friend Heidi comes over once a week at the moment to give me a hand (I don't quite know how I would manage without her) and it goes so much easier while when you can chat away while counting, sorting, counting, packing...
Below are the second lot of Mountain Oak kits ready to be bagged up. I have chosen to kit this one with full skeins of Appletons yarn. Not because the design uses a full skein of each colour, but with 33 shades it would take us foorrreeeeevvvver to count out the lengths needed. Besides this way, there is plenty in there if anyone doing the kit wants to have a go at my blanket stitch edge and corner tassels.
... but I have managed to squeeze in a few stitches here and there. I started a new piece of doodle stitching while I way.
I didn't like the way the filling around the second row of circles was turning out. It was too busy, so had put it aside, feeling kind of stuck...
I had placed pistil stitches into a line of blanket stitch, and although I liked the texture of the knots, it just looked messy. The idea had been to then change colour below the knots... which just made it look even more messy. SIGH!!!
.. so I just started filling in the next area, glancing at my messy, knotty, not-so-fabulous bit and hoping the solutions would come to me.
In the end, I just ripped out (well, carefully unpicked) the pale green stitches below the row of knots and replaced them with the same colour corn-yellow I had used for the pistil stitches.
I think this is better - the circles are clear and I still have that bit of texture from the knots.
Feeling much better about the way it was looking, I filled in the rest of the space with a mixture of straight and pistil stitches. I think it works. In fact, I rather like it and will most likely use this combination of stitches for future projects.
The next bit is going to be rows and rows of stem stitch, so that is pretty straight forward. This piece is inspired by the view from my brothers back yard when I visited them in Denmark not so long ago. Normally it is all very green but with the unusually dry summer they have had (along with so many other parts of Europe) it was all looking rather parched. Anyway - my brother has a special birthday coming up soon, and I want to finish this piece for him and I am back to enjoying stitching this little doodle piece.
I hope you too are having a nice time with needle and thread.
Happy weekend,
Anna XX