A Year of Stitches Day 1: Running stitch

I've put down my first stitches and I've made a mistake already! I forgot to put in starting stitches to hold the end of the thread in place when I cut off the knot. Ooops. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to sew over the thread on the back. I'm going to try to do a new stitch each day so we'll see how long that lasts.

Today's stitch

I'm starting out with the most basic of stitches, that is, running stitch. I'm using two strands from a six stranded cotton embroidery thread. It's by "Designs for the Needle", made in Mexico with no colour number. It's a nice bright yellow. I've done a wiggle line of 16 stitches.

A Year of Stitches

I've wanted to do Victorian crazy patchwork for several years. It involves loads of embroidery so when I saw "A year of stitches" I thought this might be a step towards my goal of the patchwork. I've got set up and so I'm ready to start.

I was going to do it zentangle style, with a squiggly line and then fill in the spaces but I'm probably just going to freestyle it and do what I feel like each day. I originally thought I was going to stitch to black and white and maybe grey, but I think I'm going bright and cheerful instead with oranges and yellows and who knows what else? We'll just have to wait and see.

Lussekatter

Lussekatter are Swedish saffron buns. They're traditionally eaten for Lucia which is tomorrow. The recipe I used called for quark but I haven't got any so I used Greek yoghurt instead. The dough became very lose and so I had to add more flour. Somehow I don't think I'll be winning The Great British Bake Off any time soon! They looked ok when I made them but then they rose, popped out the currants, which should have been raisins, and went all blobby. They taste ok, although I would have liked more saffron.

Crafternoon

I went to a crafternoon in aid of Mind today. It was held at Cafe Ceramica. It was to make a decopatch ornament. You start off with a cardboard base, and paste small pieces of ripped up tissue paper on, giving them a coat of glue once they are pasted on.

I decorated two hearts as hearts are a common decoration in the Swedish Christmas tradition.

This is my first attempt, where I randomly pasted on red, white and gold patterned tissue.

For my second heart, I decided to try something more ordered, placing a motif in the middle of each side and then surrounding it with gold and white tissue.

I enjoyed doing them and would like to do some more another time. For once, I didn't buy supplies to do some more as I have such a backlog of projects to do at the moment!

Free Form Crochet

I've been looking longingly at free form crochet for a while now. There is a course of craftsy which I may try but haven't quite made up my mind yet. I think I'm going to crochet a few bits and try joining them to make a small bag. We'll see if it becomes a reality.

My first Scrumble

I found some instructions on how to make a scrumble on YouTube. A scrumble is an element in free form crochet which is joined with other scrumbles to make the finished design. The video is in Dutch, which made it a bit difficult to follow. I haven't followed the instructions precisely, but then it's free form so I'm looking for ideas and to be creative instead of just copying to the letter. I like the idea of making wavy parts so that it doesn't lie flat.

A Crochet Flower

In another video on scrumbles, I saw this flower from Sheru Knitting. It was fun to make and a lot easier than I was expecting.

Although this particular flower is going to be part of a bag, I think joining lots in a row would make an interesting scarf.

Norwegian Knitting

I found some knitting on Netflix. It's a multiple hour long program of people knitting and talking about knitting. It didn't sound too interesting but it was! It was informative and relaxing to watch. After watching it, I decided to try the Norwegian knitting style. Knitting was nice and easy but purling took a bit more effort for me to catch on.

Unlike British knitting, the wool is held in the left hand for a right handed knitter.

Purling requires inserting the needle, twisting the stitch and then grabbing the wool from behind. For the first few rows I didn't grab the wool corrected so I ended up getting a twisted stitch. I quite like the effect but it wasn't what I was going for.

For the twisted stitch I pretty much just placed the wool over the needle like this:

instead of placing the needle over the wool and sort of hooking it under as shown below.

Christmas Wreath

I went to a wreath class at Kingsbury Water Park today. I've never done wreaths with natural materials so it was interesting to learn how to do it. I'm happy with my first attempt at a wreath.

The base of the wreath was made from wisteria, bent into a circle.

I use lots of natural string, ribbon, a huge pine cone, holly with berries, ivy with berries, scotts pine, and leylandii. The pine left resin all over my hands which then got coated with dirt. Lovely! It refused to wash off using soap and water so I had to resort to Swarfega.

I made about 15 small bundles of greenery, tied together with string, which I then attached to the base, again with string.

The huge pine cone maybe doesn't fit too well but it was so magnificent I just had to use it!

Cracked Black Pepper and Figgy Bread

We ended up with rather a lot of dried figs so I decided to make some bread using them. I used a BBC Good Food recipe but with a slight variation. I used 2 teaspoons of yeast, reduced the salt to 1 tsp, and added 1 tsp of sugar. I found it quite difficult to incorporate the figs into the dough.

Felted Baubles

The wool I ordered for felting arrived yesterday. So beautiful. It's hard to use it when it's so soft and lovely to just hold and touch. I was thrilled with my mixed bag of lap waste. Lots of Christmas colours.

I also ordered some red and green for making baubles, like the one I did at Kedlestone Hall, and a needle felting kit.

Materials and Equipment

I used creamy white felt from the big bag in the top image, and some red and green shown in the image above.

Last week I got some polystyrene baubles (£2 for 10) to use as a base to felt around. I wasn't sure whether it would work ok with the loop for hanging them or if I'd have to cut it off. It worked fine with it.

I worked on a pink children's play mat as it has a rough surface which helps with the felting process.

To wet the felt I used hot water in bowl, and I also used diluted washing up liquid in a spray bottle. It's really easy to apply too much so diluting in and using a spray bottle helps to spread it around without applying loads.

Steps

1. First two pieces of wool are pulled out, as shown above. The first bunch of fibres is wrapped around the polystyrene ball.

2. Next some red fibres were laid on the white fibres. This is an organic process, and the final result will depend on how the wool felts rather than the exact position of the red fibres.

3. and then wrapped around the fibres and ball from the first step, making sure the fibres at at right angles to the first bunch of fibres, and the red fibres on the outside.

4. Now it's time to wet the ball of fibres. To wet the ball, dunk it gently into a bowl of warm water, then spray on some washing up liquid. It will become a squishy mess. Be careful not to squish it as this can lead to breaks in the finished bauble. I made this mistake with the bauble and acorn I made at the class.

5. Gently roll the bauble in your hands. It will feel quite sloppy but keep going, very gently, until the wool shrinks around the polystyrene ball. Once it was a little firmer, I mixed rolled it in my hands and on the mat. I could have rolled it on bubble wrap instead.

6. Once it's firm, give it an extra few minutes and then it's ready to dry.

These are the ones I made today, mixing red and green fibres with a white fibre base.