Muskaan's Earrings

I don't think I've really done justice to muskaan's pattern. On this page of her blog muskaan writes about earrings and has a link to a pdf copy of the pattern. They're quite tricky, with curled rings and two layers, but it's a small project, so I think I'll redo it and see if I can get a neater result.

For Evenings

I've been very busy for the last couple of days, with things unrelated to craft, and haven't had a chance to start my embroidery project. When I do, I don't plan to work on it in the evenings. I don't have good enough light and I probably won't have enough concentration left at the end of the day. So I plan to start knitting a cardigan, also for a competition. The brief is a woman's cardigan with a collar and set in sleeves, in yarn no thicker than double knit. It was surprisingly difficult to find a pattern that fulfilled all those criteria, but I found this one on Ravelry. Here's a closer view of the picture:

And here's the yarn, so I'm all ready to begin:

Flower Lessons

My practice flower.

 I cut a piece of fabric 20 cm square, steamed it and measured it again. It was still 20 cm in one direction but only 19 cm in the other. So the fabric must be  shrunk before use.

 I traced a flower from the corner of my pattern, using a pencil. The pencil lines faded rather rapidly. I'm glad I discovered that before I traced out the whole pattern! I think a black ballpoint pen might work better than a pencil.

 I used three related shades, but I rather think that the dark and medium are too close to each other. A lesson for when I choose colours for the real thing. This flower makes me think of waterlilies, so I'm thinking of choosing waterlily colours.

 When I started working the chain stitch, I had to change my thinking from lazy daisy type chain to chain stitch as a filling stitch. In lazy daisy, you want a space to show in the middle of the stitch, but when filling, you're trying to cover the fabric completely. Corlie, leader of the craft group I belong to, showed me how to tug the thread and then if necessary use a thumb nail to squidge the stitch together. I concentrated on that and on getting the lines of stitches close enough together to cover the fabric.

No doubt I have a lot more to learn, but I think I learnt quite a bit from this flower.

Colours

I sorted my motley collection of embroidery threads into groups of related colours. What palette to choose? Pink direction or orange direction? There is a lot of pink, but not much purple and blue that would complement it. Hmmm. I could do my sample and still change my mind, so there is plenty of time for contemplation.

Mary Corbet's Pattern

I think that next time the cleaning bug bites, I'll lie down and wait for the affliction to pass! Anyway, time to begin a new project.

 I practised a bit of chain stitch and then looked for a pattern that would work for an evening bag. This one will take an awfully long time, but I think it might work. I like the symmetry of the design and the possibility for shading.

 I found it on Mary Corbet's Needle 'n' Thread blog. There's a link to the blog on the left hand side of this page. In spite of the fact that I do very little embroidery, I'm a great fan of Mary's blog and read it regularly. She does amazing work herself, and is generous with information about techniques and patterns. This is not Mary's own design, but follow the links and you can find the pattern and the story about the Hungarian graphic artist called Lilly who designed it. Mary named it Circus Pods! (Her exclamation mark.) I bought some calico today. I plan to trace a small corner of this design onto a bit of the fabric and have a go at filling it in with chain stitch.

Sheep on the lawn

I've been bitten by the cleaning bug - high time too. It's very uninteresting. So I thought I'd show you this picture of sheep on the lawn that I took from my veranda this morning. The sheep are Dorpers. It's a meat breed, the little wool they grow is not used. Can you see the lambs at the back? We've had several pairs of twins this season. The white 'fence' around the flower garden is to protect the flowers and herbs in there from the sheep. The sheep have a wide area of veld to graze on, but they rather like the lawn and the flower beds.

Sewing

I've been watching The Great British Sewing Bee, a television series about a competition for amateur sewists. I'm not about to sew a pair of velvet trousers, but it did give me the yen to get my sewing machine out. This muslin wrap is for my cousin's new grandson and will wing its way to New York.