Hardanger

Here is one of latest samples which was required. Hardanger is a type of drawn thread embroidery, and takes its name from the southwest region of Norway which it is associated with. It is traditionally a whitework technique which involves counted threads (not my favorite pastime) combining drawn threads and filling stitches. The main purpose of this sample is to show embroidery with drawn threads.

Top row from left:
Kloster blocks, drawn threads wrapped, with square filet filling,
Eight pointed star in satin stitch,
Kloster blocks, drawn threads with needle weaving, with divided branch stitch
Middle row from left:
Square eyelets,
Kloster blocks, drawn threads with needle weaving, with beaded square filet filling,
Satin stitch hearts
Bottom row from left:
Kloster blocks, drawn threads with needle weaving and picot
Traditional tulip in satin stitch
Kloster blocks, drawn threads with wrapped bars, with dove's eye filling

Inside border : pin stitch
Oustide border/hem: back stitch picot with beads and open-sided square edging stitch

I survived!

And came home with this (not so little) beauty! Its hand woven, Indian, wool, 200x300cm and is perfect for the new bedroom. Which is probably going to end up being my Project Spectrum project for this month as the walls are painted Edwardian Lemon, bit of a cheat though - because M has done much of the work - I have just had to do the shopping for it. Sometimes this has been a pleasure, sometimes a pain. IKEA shopping is a lot less painful when you get there early enough to park with ease and Sunday morning traffic is calm. By the time I left early afternoon there was a major scrambling for my parking space.

The photo above is the one I took using my camera phone to email M with, it is currently rolled up in our hallway as we now have to wait for our newly sanded and waxed floor to fully dry. When that is done we can roll the carpet out and fully admire it in situ before moving our furniture in. 

Rug shopping

As M is nearly finished with the DIY, I am returning to shopping duty. Got the curtains and fabrics needed, now need a large rug to go over the sanded and finished floorboards when they are finished. As you can see from the photos not much luck on the rug front - but I fell in love with this set of tiffin boxes in Habitat as well as the lime green mug. I also picked up a couple of half price linen napkins which I will use for my embroidered book cover. It is very tempting to go back to Habitat for more mugs, which are stackable, and other lime green goodness: salad bowl, salad servers and not forgetting the garden table and chairs. yum, yum, yum.

Have been doing a little surfing and am resigning myself to the hard fact that I am going to have to subject myself to the horror that is IKEA on a Sunday. Not sure which one to go to, I have four choices: Bristol, Brent Park, Croydon or Thurrock...

Birthday Girls

Today is my niece L's birthday and I thought she would like a pocket wallhanging like the one I made for my sister's little girl last year.

Again, this was fun to do I customised the fairy's to look like her and her family. So we have:
Mummy Fairy:

Birthday Girl Fairy:

Grandma Fairy:

I realise now that the birthday girl has since grown her hair longer. No doubt her mean and bad Uncle M will tease her about cutting it! Grandma fairy has a hat because its her trademark. The pockets are being filled with candy and erm... some funky toy cars (guess who bought them). 

Tea & Cake

I have decided to start design for my panel in the form of an altered board book. I picked up a Child's board book from one of Eastleigh's many charity shops for 50p and set about ruining altering it. First I sanded it roughly to removed some of the obvious print, wiping of the residue with a baby wipe. Then, I got out my old can of smelly gesso and coated the covers and pages with it. I think the smell was due to the fact that its old. Whatever it is, it isn't a nice smell and the rest got lobbed. By the time the gesso was dry the original text and pictures was pretty much hidden but was definitely obliterated when I painted the pages with a mixture of general acrylic and textile paint. I blended in the colours with my sponge paint roller. This left me a board book ready to collage and paste things in.

The Panel

I have plenty to show at the moment. Some of it is a little half finished. All of it is badly photographed. Well it would be photographed at 7.30am on a cloudy UK day, with a camera phone.

I have started on my next finished item for college. The item is a panel - this can be a wall panel, a panel for a garment, book cover or a similar item. I have chosen to make a book cover for various reasons these can be divided into 2 groups: reasons not to put in my project book and virtuous reasons to put in my project book.

Good reasons.
- I caught the book bug at the Susie Jefferson workshop I did in January.
- I want to try out an altered board book, which I can incorporate into my design work
- I like food and want to have a stitch and cake crossover.
- I wanted somewhere to store some photos and recipes of my Grandmas, after creating the recipe cards for my sisters.

Norty reasons.
- A wall panel reminds me too much of a wall hanging, and I ain't going back into that territory for a while until my mental scars earned with the last one have faded.
- A panel as part of a garment would mean I would have to sew the garment as well, much as I love sewing clothes at the moment extra sewing on top of the embroidery is the last thing I need to be doing.
- shouldn't be too large in size and would be doable as my hand stitch finished item.

Lazy, moi? I like to think I am (or my mother always said I am) but I will probably end up doing more work than necessary. I need to start making design decisions based on keeping to my timetable. Scrub that - I need to make decisions. (and not procrastinate for England)

A Wet Weekend and plenty of Chocolate Cake

As our unusual cold and dry winter has changed to our more usual wet and drizzly winter, on the first day of spring (the loss of 1 hour as we move to BST is hitting me hard this year), I include this month's recipe. The wartime derives from the influence of rationing on the ingredients list - there is no egg in this recipe. I would have liked to have curled up on the sofa with a slice of this, a cup of tea and some stitching this weekend, but was too busy.

On Saturday I was in a college workshop making a start on our third and final experimental sampler. It is going well but is not finished yet, so will make an appearance when that has been completed, which will be soon as I have a lot of hand stitch to get done. I must admit I did have chocolate cake with the girls then but the recipe for that included plenty of eggs and erm, beetroot, it was published in the March edition of Delicious magazine. We popped into Winchester for a little bit of Mother's day shopping for Mark and thread shopping (yay!) for me. Of course I couldn't stop at just buying thread and bought a couple of books on techniques that have recently caught my interest. Chikan (or chikankari) and Ribbon embroidery.

One sofa I was lucky enough to curl up on was at my friends (that is one comfy sofa). I was a very happy Kitty as I had just eaten a delicious meal which I hadn't had to sweat over (G & Mr T did instead). Salmon wrapped in parma ham served with lentils and spinach. Finished with a chocolate and walnut fudge cake and my favourite bitter orange ice cream (the delicious Nigella Lawson one). I was truly spoilt as I drank champagne and the most delicious dessert sherry.

On Sunday we had to go out to Southampton to find some trousers for the other half and I wanted to track down some lighting components for something I am trying to finish as part of my form work. Then it was off to Winchester again to attend one of the nephew's christening. I was pleased to see that the outfit I stitched for his brother 5 years ago was still going stong if a little crushed!

I was glad when we got back home and I could grab back some of my lost sleep. When I got up I sat down to a delicious risotto that M had made from a butternut squash that he had found and roasted. Yum. Mental note to self, let him cook more.