Jan 12, 2020

Happiest of New Year wishes to you all from wintry Ottawa. We had freezing rain all night and now we are in a snow flurry so it is a most awesome weekend to stay home and stitch! For me, it was a perfect way to recharge after a hectic month of kids visiting, family events, Christmas, work and life.

With the start of a new year, what is old is new again for me. Embroidery was a love of mine as a child, well before I discovered cross stitch. There are a few pieces stashed away upstairs that I stitched as a 10 or 11 year old from stamped embroidery that somehow made its way into our house. I have not done much embroidery since I was a teenager so it was a surprise to me to see how much my interest was captured by it recently. As part of my trying to continually learn and grow, I joined a facebook group Millenial Needlecrafts so that I can see what the kids are up to, as it were. What an amazing and dynamic group. For years, I have heard that the needle arts were dying out, but let me tell you, there is an amazing group of people who are doing some really neat things. The artistic expression and experimentation that is shared with the group is so inspiring. While I am not a huge fan of the profanity (odd, as I swear like a sailor in real life), I love the new avenues of design and ideas and have been inspired to pick up my non-blunt needles and thread to embroider again.

One idea that captivated me was zenbroidery, a stitching version of the adult colouring book. A quick search of Amazon came up with this kit:

It came with a stamped cloth and a needle as well as an instruction sheet that shows the needleworker how to do stitches like the chain stitch and satin stitch. I pulled out my hoop and this mess of threads that are leftovers from kits that I have completed.

While the freezing rain tapped against the windows all afternoon and evening, I stitched away at this piece and played with colours. Thanks to all of my years of cross stitch, I still have nice and even satin stitches. I love pulling out different colours to start on a section and then changing my mind as I stitch because the piece will speak to me differently by the time I go to add a colour. The beauty of this piece is that there are no rules.

Happy stitching!

Jan 7/18

So, what to do when a surprise snow storm hits and the temperatures have been -20C or so with the windchill? Well, curl up on the couch and stitch, of course! Our weather has been frigid since Christmas with a constant flurry of snow that is amounting to a decent amount of snow. Yesterday, a dumping of 15cm of snow fell and there was nothing in the forecast. This picture is of our way of embracing winter. The temperature last night may have been -26C with the windchill and we stood as close as we could to the firepit to gain any warmth, but we were having FUN!

I just put the last few stitches in to this cute design that I started yesterday on a scrap piece of 28 count linen. You can find the pattern here on pinterest. I used threads from my scrap bag with a little supplementation from my DMC stash of skeins. The stitching is probably 4" by 4" if I remember correctly from my measuring of the cloth when I pulled it out of the fabric stash. Heart shaped ornaments are really catching my eye these days. Not sure why the affinity for hearts, perhaps because there has been a fair bit of emotional and physical healing in this house these past few months. There is something soothing to me about hearts.

Stay warm and happy stitching!