Pick a card

Lately I've been rediscovering the joys of Tarot with my beautiful new deck, the wild unknown tarot.

 

I find the total lack of any humans depicted in the deck both refreshing and disorientating, when dealing with the conventional set meanings for the cards.

The artwork is simple but evocative with mostly black and white sketches and spots of colour added to draw attention to focal points.

I think it will be a useful deck for learning to work with intuition over set definitions as it can be hard to apply the standard meanings to some of the cards, just going by the images.

 The prominence of animals and trees in the deck make it easy to imagine sitting in a misty wood, a dark cloak keeping the damp at bay while drawing the cards and laying them out on a convenient smooth tree stump. Perhaps watched over by a glossy black crow.  And that's no bad thing in my book, holding on to a bit of mystery in this very modern world we live in.

  

Super kawaii stitching - go!

 

Stitching desperately in to the early hours of the night I just about managed to finish this "kawaii" cutie in time to present it to a fellow Japan-loving friend for her birthday.

I love the little details of the flowers on her kimono, the French knots on her sleeves and the subtle white backstitching on her obi belt.

  

A bird in the hand...

 

I stitched this sweet little owl key ring the other day. I used a dissolvable canvas to stitch the cross stitch design on the felt. You need to soak it in hot water afterwards so that the canvas dissolves, leaving the stitching on the material.

Unlike waste canvas, you don't have to pick out the remaining canvas after soaking because it dissolves but you do need to use very hot water and to let it soak for a while or you end up with a sticky residue coating your stitching which is most unpleasant.  

The Sea Daisy

Another quick stitch. A cute daisy flower in cool aqua and green tones with a dash of contrasting red.
Always handy to have a few cards already stitched up ready to go to the perfect person.

 

 

 

Stitching Spring



I stitched this for a friend's birthday, her name is Rosie and the design reminded me of a Tudor Rose so I thought it was apt.

Small projects are a nice break after spending weeks or months on larger designs. I fit embroidery around work and other hobbies so it's not something I do every day. Large kits certainly take me months to finish.

The pattern reminded me of the Assisi technique, especially popular during the medieval era, where the background is stitched to produce the design on the material used, see example below...

 

 

 

 



  

Embroidered Dove

Autumn is upon us, the leaves are changing, the temperature is (sort of) dropping and for the world of embroidery magazines...it's Christmas already.
I now seem to be working on three pretty big stitching projects simultaneously but I found time to stitch this cute Yuletide dove in the spare moments between them.
It's nice to break up big projects with a little something you can do in a day sometimes.
I liked the colours and the fact it's stitched on linen, rather than aida, as it gives me more of a challenge. Linen and evenweave are materials I'd like to become more familiar with as they can create a better finish than aida with some designs.



  

Pretty Polly

Having just had some time off work, I've taken the chance to catch up on some reading but have also, inevitably, amassed a new selection of 'waiting to be read,' books.
Among them, a couple of Tolkien bio's, the wonderful 'Book of Barely Imagined Beings' and Kate Forsyth's 'Wild Girl.'

But first I must finish 'Jane Eyre' which I've been reading at the same time as 'Anno Dracula,' as my copy of 'Jane Eyre,' is too big to carry around easily. (I know Kindle's are easy to carry but I just don't like them. Give me a physical copy any day, especially if it's illustrated.)

Anyway, having two books on the go meant I needed a second bookmark so I decided to stitch this parrot kit I had lying around.

It was also nice to be stitching something I could finish in a day or so as I've got two big projects on the frames right now. They will be beautiful when complete but progress always feels maddeningly slow with the larger projects.

I was rather pleased with myself for managing to painlessly stitch the six French knots for the parrots eyes. In the past they've been something of a nemesis of mine, sometimes turning out perfectly and other times, becoming a complete mess, for no obvious reason.

But today they were a dream to stitch, here's hoping that's the case for my future knots!