Chateau de Chatelaine

Warning: this is a looooooooong post. It’s about three posts rolled into one. With lots of stitchy pics though, so stick around :o)

I hope your Christmases were wonderful and warm (inside) and white (outside), though not too white, because, well...

…what does one do when one is snowed in and one’s computer crashes at the same time? Well, one weeps and tears out one’s hair and wrings one’s hands and when the weeping and tearing and wringing is done, one stitches. And what does one stitch? One stitches a strawberry. As one does, around Christmas time:

This is one of the strawberries designed by Niki Farrauto for Blackbird Designs’ beautiful Christmas book Joyeux Noel, stitched on 30 count R&R Iced Cappuccino that I coffee dyed and baked in the microwave because I was silly enough to stitch on the wrong side of the fabric. Luckily, I used DMC threads for the stitching, otherwise I would have been in the soup, with me coffee dying my fabric after the stitching was done. I didn’t stitch this strawberry because I felt particularly festive or Christmassy (what the hay? Feeling Christmassy? There’s no such thing, I’m sure), but because I needed a fob of some weight and length for the adornment of my self-made chatelaine.


You see, I’m always losing my needles and scissors around here, and I don’t mean between stitching sessions. No, I lose them during these sessions. Whilst stitching. My child and my cat take delight in getting into all sorts of impossible situations that I have to rescue them from (every two minutes or so), so I’m always flying hither and thither and when I settle my behind in my stitching chair for another round of two minute stitching, I will have lost every stitchy thing I need. It was obvious to me that I needed a chatelaine to put around my neck, so that I would at least always have my needle and my scissors handy and that there wouldn’t be any danger of one of the beasts gobbling up my needle while I’m busy rescuing the other. What to do, what to do? I thought. I knew The Drawn Thread has a magnificent design for a chatelaine, but I don’t have it and I don’t have time to order it, wait for it to arrive and then stitch it. By the time I would get to finish-finishing it, Pelle would be about 40 years old and I would have no use for it anymore.

What I do when I have to think about stitchy things is I go through my drawers filled with fabrics, threads and charts and it was in one of these drawers that I found the solution to my problem...

kumihimo

Now, I admit that this sounds rather like a fascinating and intricate way of killing oneself, but in actual fact, it’s a Japanese braiding technique. I went on the internet (when my computer was, as yet, un-crashed) and looked up some stuff about kumihimo. One thing I learned is that kumihimo is not cross stitch. There is hardly anything to be found on the WWW, but the information I did find I used, and you can see the results in the picture below. Once the braid was long enough (about four long evenings later), I had to think of a way to finish it. By this time, my computer was belting out steam in its quiet corner in the room, so I was pretty much on my own. Then I thought of the strawberries and thought they were the perfect solution to the fob problem.

I think the (Dutch) term Crea Bea has never been more aptly used :o)

Once I had shoveled a path through the snow and I could get myself and Pelle out of our cottage, what do you think I found in the mail? A very, very early (or slightly belated) birthday gift from Harmien!
Don’t you agree that, with these fabulous goodies made by the Queen of Neatness herself, my primitive-looking, sampler-themed stitching set is as good as complete? Harmien, you couldn’t have picked more perfect designs for my birthday gift. I love, love, love all of it. Harmien added a cute notebook and some needle magnets, and the gift came wrapped in that stocking you see in the second picture. I nearly fainted when I saw that stocking, because I was actually afraid Harmien had wrought that as well, but she admitted (as I would never have done) that the sock was not self-made, at least not by her. The Christmas ornie is lovely too, isn’t it?

And since this post is already so long I’m bound to have sent my readers straight to Snoresville anyway, I might as well finish with a progress picture of the Pistols:

And here’s my cute pixie in the snow:

Can you say Awwwwwwwwwwwwww!?
Wishing you a very sparkly New Year’s Eve!

Yours Crea Beatively,
Annemarie.

Blathering on

Thank you, thank you, thank you, for all the kind, thoughtful, sweet comments, e-mails and post cards I received from so many of you after my previous blog post. Really. Whenever I read similar messages on other blogs I always thought: ‘what on earth can I write that will give any comfort?’, but I will never think that again. Even the simplest {HUG} was felt and I can’t thank you enough.

Enough of the weepy stuff. I will keep you posted of course, but I’ve found that life really does go on despite it being rather crappy right now. And life without stitching is no life at all, right? Right. Hence the update.

At the start of last year (that would be 2008), I started a sampler for my parents’ 40th wedding anniversary. Being the experienced procrastinator that I am, I didn’t make it. Never mind that this was also the time when I left my partner and had to build a new life formyself and Pelle: I now know that’s a very poor, unforgiveable and silly excuse not to finish something like this on time. So I did finish the sampler for Christmas and took it to the framer’s this morning (more about my framer later). Here it is in all its un-framed but finished glory:

I Thee Wed by Blackbird Designs. I stitched it on some unknown 32 count fabric with the suggested DMC conversion (which I wasn’t always too happy about)
Yikes! I just noticed the yucky brown spoton my chair. Ewl. No worries: it's just coffee. My coffee spoon fell out of my cup just the other day. Annoying Dutch habit I have: I drink my coffee with the spoon in my cup. And I don't even take milk or sugar!)

This was a lot of stitching. This was a lot of solid stitching. So much so, that I decided to use half cross stitches for the grass because I would never ever have finished it otherwise. Not too fond of solid stitching, you know... Obviously, I changed the words to the initials of our nearest family: my parents, my brother and his partner and Pelle and me. My brother was kind enough to reveal the first letter of his daughter’s name, although she isn’t expected to make her official entry into this world until after Christmas. (And yes, I’m stitching her a sampler, and yes, I still think I will finish it next week to take it to the framer’s as soon as the wee one is born).

Speaking of my framer! You must all think either the woods I live in are filled with money trees, or that I am one of those divorcees who sits on her behind all day, stitching and sipping tea (well, coffee) while her ex brings round cart-loads of cash every month. Alas, neither of these suppositions are correct. No, the simple fact is that my framer is dirt cheap. Oops, I should really use very small letters and take care that this doesn’t reach his ears or eyes, otherwise he might perk up said ears and raise his fees. I understand that framing in the States is excruciatingly expensive. Well, I’m very sorry for all of you, but it is nice to be able to get something cheaper than you lot for a change (you do know how much one single simple skein of DMC costs over here, don’t you? 1,30 euri, ladies and gentlemen. According to my online converter that’s $ 1.89) (one skein. Of DMC floss. I kid ye not). In fact, it’s cheaper to get my things framed by this guy than to buy a cheap frame and do it myself (not to mention the fact that I am utterly talentless when it comes to framing anything).

It was really good to be blogging again. Hopefully, this birth sampler for my niece will be done shortly, so I will have something new to show you. And ooh, ooh, ooh... My brother and SIL aren’t the only ones expecting an addition to their family! Rather than selling Pantoef to a vivisectionist or giving him away as a blog contest prize, as I threatened to do a couple of months ago, I went ahead and got myself another kitty. It’s a girl this time and she will be here at the start of the new year. Her name is Pipien (which I couldn’t put into phonotype if my life depended on it. It sounds roughly like Peepeen, but with much shorter ‘ee’ sounds. Someday, I will record all of the Dutch names you encounter on this blog and play it by way of soundtrack to Orts and Ends).

I had no intention of blathering on like this, but there you go. Hope you don’t mind!

Yours blatheringly,
Annemarie.