CupTeaLuv?

Know when to walk away…. know when to run…
Great song — even greater advice really.
Just over 7 years ago Andy and I were in Christchurch, Dorset, England. It’s a beautiful place — I loved it from the first moment I saw it. It had special walking paths along a stream that were just magical in the moonlight and even prettier in the sunlight. The cathedral was stunning and the town was quaint and the people friendly. If we’d ever had to move within England — that’d have been among my top 5 choices.
While in this beautiful place — it became my hobby to find the local needlework shop and browse the patterns, threads etc. because I decided that during our first bit of marriage I wouldn’t get a job right away — I would get acclimated to the country, the weather, the people etc. I also decided that I really missed doing cross stitch.
So in the local shop in Christchurch, I found a beautiful kit (I never buy kits as a rule — and guess what — should have stuck to my rule!!) of a map of Britain. It was marked 55.00 pounds (i think?) but looked a little worn for wear — many many ladies had picked it up, looked at it, flipped it over to see the back, tried to peek inside the packaging to what was inside… etc. Also the front cover belied the fact that it had at one point been in the front window and exposed to the sun. I spoke to Andy about purchasing it. He (smartly) asked me if I thought I would really finish it. I insisted vehemently that I would. And at that point (and up to about 2 hours ago) I really believed I would!!
So I got a scroll frame big enough to do it, and in the hotel room the next day while Andy was working in a nearby company, I started it. The kit came with linen, which I had never worked on before — only aida cloth. Aida is the one which is more like squares with holes at the corners, whereas linen is just holes — no visible boxes. When stitching on aida — you go up the lower left hole, across the square/box and go down the upper right, then come up again in lower right corner and go across the square/box and down in the upper left, making an X (hence the name cross stitch) — but with linen…. you have only the small holes, and you skip a hole for each stitch that you make… it’s less complicated to demonstrate — my point here being that stitching on linen is about 150% more difficult than on aida. So the fact that this is my first project on linen that I am attempting and the measured size of the piece (when finished) is 24 inches wide by 36 inches high — is like saying that you can ride a bike, therefore you must immediately also know how to drive a stick-shift left-handedly.
But I gave it a good start, and did about 6 square inches of work, then another 4 inches, then discovered that I was off. But not only was I off — I couldn’t even work out where I’d made my mistake.
With any other piece of stitching, this probably wouldn’t have been a problem. However, with a piece that large, and this being the middle of the piece, if I am off one single thread on one part, and can’t work out how to compensate for it… it is only going to get worse and worse the further from the middle that I get.
So I stopped — tried again (and failed) to figure out where I’d gone wrong. And then I put it away… started a different project and finished it (beautiful wedding sampler for my brother and a birth sampler for a friend’s children) and continued like that, stitching on aida — starting and finishing projects.
Every once in a while I would come back to the Britain in Stitches… look wistfully at it… sigh… and put it away again. Until one week I felt extremely ambitious, went to the needlework shop up in Bakewell (Wye Needlecraft — best stitch shop in Derbyshire!!!) and got a piece of cream colored aida to begin the map again.
And I did — I worried about the fact that I might run out of threads because of having started it before (being a kit you only get so much thread in each color) — but nevertheless I began again.
And once again I went wrong… and once again I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why or where.
As an aside — in my defense — the chart is made up of backstitched city and town names, and of little symbols for trees, mountains, rivers, etc. — but the shining glory of the whole thing is the mini (and I do mean mini) cathedrals, village halls, castles, and other ancient landmarks. They have all been charted over one thread… and stitching that on aida just doesn’t work well — because you don’t have the hole in the middle to go down into — you have to physically force the needle through the middle of the square to stitch the buildings.
This time I had even begun to copy onto my own graph paper, the place names and the buildings — to make it easier for me to see how to stitch them. I had an envelope of Place Names, one for Buildings in England, one for Buildings in Scotland, and one for the finished graph charts…
After I went wrong a second time, I kept the graph charts, and the giant blown up photocopies I had made of the original charts (heaven forbid that anybody try and stitch this thing from those originals — they’d be blind by the second half hour!!!) and put it all into a bag for another attempt someday.
By this point I was really hooked on stitching and had made many new friends from the stitching shop in Sandbach and was even going to a weekly stitch & chat with other ladies…
There I learned some neat phrases for categorizing stitching –
stash — items you own that are on your “to-do” list… you have purchased them in advance
WIPs — works in progress…
UFOs — un-finished objects…
Through the course of meeting with these ladies — my stitching became much more adventurous. I gave linen another try — completed a very small (5″x8″ piece) which was very simple because it was solid stitching — no counting across any gaps or anything more than 4 holes away. I found that I really liked the look of it — and of the charts and samples that Sue had in her shop by the designers Mirabilia and Lavender and Lace… L&L is the mother and Mirabilia is her daughter (who ironically lives and designs in Columbus, OH!) — beautiful ladies and fairies and queens and mermaids… beaded and metallic threaded and just amazing on linen…
So I picked out a chart that I really loved, bought a piece of linen to work her on, and began. I already by this point had most of the DMC thread collection — and not long after this completed my collection (Andy got me the rest of the colors as a Christmas present — in the US in a good sale they cost 5/$1 — in the UK they don’t go on sale and cost $1 each.)
I started the chart with the ladies’ help and really loved stitching the “Rose of Sharon” — finished her in about 9 months. She’s beautiful. She’s framed and hanging in the dining room.
That got me hooked completely and I was desperate to stitch another design — this time I wanted one with beads and metallic threads — so I picked “Angel of Love” — who is amazing… the middle of her dress is a solid mass of beads and metallic threads. She took about the same amount of time — even though I could stitch much faster by this point, she was that much more complicated and intricate that it took as long.
She is framed and on the living room wall. After her was “April’s Blue Diamond” — another lovely lady who only took 4 months (her dress is slim and there was not much to it so didn’t take much time), and then the “Herb Gatherer” by Shepherd’s Bush … lastly “The Winter Queen” — a beautiful lady facing the side with a crown of beads and fluffy white furry thread lining an intricate dress of about 3 shades of whites and at least 7 shades of blues. She took about 9 months too — and again I stitched so much faster by then — but she has a dress that is solid stitching about 19 inches across and the same high — takes a while when you have a solid area like that.
All these ladies are on the wall in stunning frames.
All of this to say…. I am giving up on Britain in Stitches — I picked it up a third time, got a new piece of linen, had a tremendously good start and got much much further than ever before, and yet here I am again — off by one thread, (the mistakes were never in the same places) and once again, I can’t for the life of me figure out where I went wrong. I kept rough track this time of how long I worked and what names or buildings I stitched on which day — most of the days I spent at least 5 hours working on it, and only managed to do 4 or 5 names and 1 or 2 buildings.
Folks… for a stitcher who can stitch about an 1 1/2″ square in an hour (which is pretty awesome) that is soooooooooooooo slow.
Not to mention that it was making my eyes cross trying to stitch over one thread and do backstitch on top of that!! Ay yay yay.
So rest in peace, my little map of Britain… I am not throwing you away… but I don’t think I will be picking you up any time soon….
*if you listen carefully you can hear “Taps” being played in the background*

as my hubby will tell you. It is expensive to frame things that you have stitched– particularly if they are 20inches by 17inches. Seems to me that the other FOUR ladies I have had framed are all about that size and the price they quoted me this morning at the framing shop was nearly DOUBLE what I ever paid on those. It’s a real shame too, because I really like these guys. But there’s no honkin’ way I’m paying that much for framing a piece of needlework. now i’m sad.
I don’t know how to frame things myself. And now my gorgeous lady who is finished and ready to be hung up, is not framed!!!

I finished the Summer design on the Friday, and added the buttons on Saturday morning. Also finished it off with my initials and the year.
Then I charted out my name and the year for stitching it onto my Winter Queen– which is a bit more difficult. I stitch it over one thread, so it looks quite delicate and pretty. Then once I had it charted, I worked out on the fabric where I wanted it to be, and stitched it on.
Then I charted out some more names– names of two little baby girls born recently to two ladies in church– both born on the same day!! Katie Jo and Ruthie Grace. I had bought these two teddy rattlers for them, and the teddies have aida bibs attached to them with room enough to stitch names and small hearts on. They turned out quite cute, I must say!
After that I got to work on good ol’ secret pressie number one. The middle bit is nearly ready for backstitch. I did quite a lot on it on Sunday and even more yesterday. Today I’m just putting in the last few stitches on the middle and I might just do the backstitch as I go along instead of waiting until the whole design is finished. Each project is different really– most projects I start in the middle, work my way out, then do backstitching and any other fancy bits– usually metallic threads before any beading, but sometimes if a design lends itself to a different method, I will vary things. I know– how excitingly thrilling!! What a risk-taker I am!!! oohhwheee watch out!
Back to work for me– need to cook some chicken soup and give my second attempt at baking bread a go! I’ll report back later.

Last night I was trying to sleep and my legs just would not stop twitching! It was a feeling like I was too hot, so I would stick them out the end of the duvet, but that didn’t help, so I would pull them back under, and they were still twitching like mad!
It was such a weird sensation– I’ve had that happen before, but not for a while.
On a different note, I’m still recovering from my op, still feeling very sleepy sometimes. I woke up about 5am yesterday morning and couldn’t get back to sleep, and ended up taking a little snooze between 4:30 and 6pm and then was up for a few more hours and went to bed about 10ish and slept through til about 3am. Woke up and was up for a few minutes, fell back asleep and slept through til 7am. Not bad considering I usually can’t sleep the night after having an afternoon snooze!
I finished my Winter Queen just about half an hour or so before going down for my surgery on Monday, so I started another pattern– a Bent Creek one, a kit of “Summer“– a nice slice of watermelon with a checkered tablecloth below, a bumblebee buzzing around above, the word Summer, and a square dashed border. I’ve finished the watermelon, and now am working on the checkers, so I reckon I’ll finish it today. Which would be great. Then I’m going to work some more on a secret surprise project for a friend.
I also might be doing another surprise kit for another friend. After that I’m stitching a birth sampler for my new neice!! Mia! The picture that I attached to the birth sampler is the closest thing I could find to what I’m going to do — the one I’m doing will actually have her details on it.
Then I’m thinking of starting Celtic Banner… click here for a picture of it.

someone on the Lizzie*Kate mailing list posted a link to where you can order the charms for the 2002 Flip-its series (just the charms) in case you wanted to stitch them again without buying the charts again!
only $12 for the pack of 12!
Joseph’s coat website
going to have a look at the site!

Finished April Flip-it by Lizzie Kate this evening. It was started on Monday evening (2/2/04). Stitched on Cafe Mocha by Silkweaver, 28count, using Gentle Arts Sampler Threads. Photos to follow!!

because all of my stitching accessories are in my stitching bag — which I forgot *gasp* at Andy’s parents’ house when we went down there for Christmas!! Andy’s sweet Mum offered to mail it all to me, but it would cost a fortune because of how heavy it would be. So I have to wait until we see them at Easter, or maybe I’ll get lucky and they’ll see Ruth (Andy’s sister) and she’ll bring it up to her house. We’ll probably see Ruth & Tim sometime around the end of Feb./beginning of March– we usually hook up between Tim’s and Andy’s birthdays.
I’m still trying to work on that map of Britain– but with ruining my eyes for the day from playing Ratchet and Clank 2 this morning, that’s out for now. I’m having stitcher’s withdrawal– I know, how sad!
itchy stitchy fingers!

I started this kit called “Britain in Stitches: The British Isles” by Heritage Stitchcraft (Susan Ryder is the designer) about 4 1/2 years ago when I bought it in a shop in Christchurch, near Bournemouth. (If you follow this link you can see a photo of it with some of the parts of it stitched independently. The kit I’m doing is the big one on the right hand side.)
It is huge– a massive 2 feet wide by 3 feet high! The design is a map of the UK & Ireland with town/city names, rivers, moutains, trees for forests, and individual landmark buildings. That’s what really drew my attention to it — the detail of the buildings– castles, cathedrals etc. It is very difficult to stitch, however, because absolutey everything involves half-stitches and backstitch (both of which I am not a fan!!).
I’ve got a system though, I’ve started re-charting all of the names and buildings. There are about 8 pages of charts with everything on, and another 8 or so with the buildings on separately, just stitches on the right, and backstitch on the left. So I’ve started with page 8 of the everything pages, which happens to start in the middle of the fabric– and using colored pencils and re-charting the buildings I’m re-drawing them over four squares of graph paper to each square of regular chart. This really helps with the half-stitches and backstitch! I’m also doing the names of the cities/towns in this way too– only I don’t need the color for those.
I re-charted all of the names and buildings on page 8, then got to work!! I’ve got 4 buildings done and about 12 place names so far. Nearly finished with the Isle of Man. I can’t take it with me to the Sewing club I run at church once a month, because the light isn’t good enough to see with the jobelan. Pretty much I can only work on it at home, with my halogen lamp shining brightly over my left shoulder.
I know it will be worth the work– it will be the ultimate souvenir of Britain if we do move back to America! Plus I won’t ever worry about forgetting where places are, because I could always look them up on my map!
It may be a project for life though– at this rate… 8″ square of stitching in 4 1/2 years….. it will take forever!