The amazing thing about this one was that I intuited what to stitch for this particular recipient, a tutor on a course I took in 2008. As it happens, her office is painted in lilacs and she has a lot of butterfly artwork in there! I made this piece into a card for her (as shown) and it was signed by everyone on my course for her. I am so glad that she liked it.

The other piece I stitched was for my wedding stylist, who is expecting a baby. As I don’t know if the babe will be a boy or a girl, I went for this lovely little chart I found as it’s so brightly coloured it can be neutral. I used seed beads instead of French knots to make things easier and give it a bit of texture. Again, it was made into a card.

I’ve not had time to cross stitch anything since. I do have some WIPs and also a couple of knitting items on the needles, but for the moment nothing new to show. Here’s hoping I can spend more time in 2009 doing crafts! :-)

This is from a chart of a cute twist on the zodiac, namely Scorpio. I loved stitching this guy — only about 10 hours on 14ct aida. I later frayed the edges and mounted him onto a card:

Scorpio Card (click for larger)

To go with the card, I knitted a simple 4×4 rib scarf, in a gorgeous deep red colour. The yarn is Rowan’s Kid Classic (shade 825), which is 70% lambswool, 26% mohair, and 4% nylon. Did I ever mention how much I love knitting with mohair and mohair blends? This scarf was so great I wanted to keep it for myself in the end LOL … But no, to the States it went! :)

Scarf in Rowan Kid Classic (click for larger)

Here’s a close-up on the detail, for anyone interested. Again, you can click for larger if you like:

Scarf Detail (click for larger)

Finally, remember Hello Kitty? I made her into a sweet card for a different friend’s birthday. I recently found a back of blank, pearlescent cards in a variety of pastel shades, and whilst I don’t usually do pastel colours these cards make beautiful companions to some of my cross stitch finishes!

As to WIPs, well … Knitting wise, I’m working on some jumpers and wrist warmers, whilst in the world of cross stitch I’m participating in a mystery stitch-a-long (MSAL) via the LiveJournal Cross Stitch community… Pictures coming soon…

And yet… It’s too small. I’ve since figured out the reason for this — ideally, the perfect tension for the yarn should be 9 stitches and 12 rows over 4″, whilst using 10mm needles. When I use this needle size, I come out too tight — and so, it would be best for me to up a needle size or two.

I ended up knitting a tension square after the hat. Blah. But it did knit up quickly and I was pleased to find that I can achieve the correct tension using 12mm needles. And so I’m now knitting a jumper — but afterwards, I may just go back and re-knit that hat. It was certainly quick enough. :) For now though, it’ll make a cute fashion accessory for one of the soft toys… Or maybe for one of the cats! LOL …

Here it be in all its glory. I really do love this colour — so frosty! You can click for larger should you wish:

I’ve not had this problem with other stuff, so it just goes to show how important knitting a tension square is before starting a project with a new yarn!

What do you do to your thread clippings? Do you just scrap them or do you use them in something else?

Well, for me it depends on the length of the clipping. If it’s shorter than is usable — i.e. I can get less than three stitches out of it — then I bin it. If it’s longer than that, I wind it around the original thread so that I know what colour it is (i.e. a short piece of DMC 666 ["Christmas Red", to you non-stitchers out there] will get wrapped around the remainder of the thread skein) and store it until I come to use it. I tend to do this with every colour possible, except DMC 310 (black), which I always keep no matter the length — black is always, always useful. :-)

Anyway, the current WIP is a hat, in shade 335 (”Blancmange”) — which is really a lovely polar-ice blue. Gorgeous. The hat pattern is in four sizes — three child sizes, and one adult. I cast on the appropriate amount of stitches, knit away, and get to my decreases. Part-way along the first row of decreases, I realise that the number of stitches on my needles don’t match the pattern.

It takes a fews seconds to click — and by this point, my heart-sister Jo is laughing at me… Yup, you guessed it — I’d cast on for the smallest child size. Then I’d worked as per the adult decreases.

My reasoning is this: usually, I work the smallest size for a top (as that’s normally around a UK size 10). Because I’d seen the hat pattern as per any other pattern, I just did as normal… Except it’s not a pattern for a top, and so I have to work to the largest size in this case. I realised this and worked accordingly — but only when I reached the decreases. I didn’t realise this before I started. And so I’ve now ripped it all back and started again.

*headdesks*

One of these days, I swear someone will remind me to pick up my head on my way out… LOL