Raw Silk Fabric

BLISS ... Received the pure raw silk fabric, hand-spun and hand-woven fresh from the centuries old Anatolian looms. Undyed and the natural colour is very close to DMC 613 ... While preparing to upload the picture to this blog, the second good news arrived. I received a phone call from the post office that they had a parcel whispering my name :) The whisperers were the Waterlilies of Caron Collection.

The raw silk fabric is a delight for any stitcher. I shall look into taking orders and supplying for international stitchers. It is woven like the linens that we pay zillions, soft and a wonderful sheen to it ... I tried measuring a gauge and it is 18 warps and wefts to an inch. So exciting!

And the third goody of the day is a wonderful book, a catalogue of the Bavarian National Museum on Samplers, "Kataloge des Bayerischen Nationalmuseums - Stickmustertücher". This publication was not known to me until I saw it on the web with its bargain price. I do not speak German so to understand what it exactly is, I googled to see that it is an out-of-print book and the available copies go up to EUR 120 and beyond ... Surely, I jumped on the offer which, as I said, was a great bargain price :)

Result of a recent search and cannot possibly imagine anyone paying so much for a catalogue. Indeed a nice source but with loads of black & white pictures. Well ... Whatever !!! I have my "mint" baby in my hands :)

P.S. Managed to find a simple crochet edging for my Grün ist die Hoffnung and am looking forward to post a picture once I manage to crochet a few inches :)

A year after that we moved into our new house on July 2003, I planted about 200 trees in my territory. It was not the easiest thing to raise the trees with the very dry, hot and long summers not mentioning all the efforts watering them especially after laying the watering lines which were constrantly chewn by our darling dogs and squirrels. Nevertheless, they survived all those tough times until five of them died last Autumn. Yesterday was the day to start removing them and it was not the happiest day for me!

I had long wanted to attend a workshop where ladies bring their handwork along and gather every week on Friday. The hostess Güzide, in the meantime trains those who want to learn patchwork and I was one of the two!

Below is my first piece which is done with scrap cotton fabric, so the colours are not in their best of harmony :)

 

This morning I had a wonderful surprise gift from Austria. Some very different lace/embroidery that I do not remember seeing before, especially the colourful and darker ones.

 

And was able to clean all the dangling yarn at the back of my Grün ist die Hoffnung last night across tv and even had time to sew a few mother-of-pearl buttons before falling asleep. Still could not look into what crochet edging I shall use and more importantly, if I shall ever be able to succeed! The edging will be of the colour at the centre; mold green!

New addition to my growing collection ... A lovely little darning sampler on linen from Hamburg, Germany. Possibly from 19th Century third quarter ... 20 x 20 cm square!

Front

Back

Today I shall confess another neglected project of mine; antique style beaded coin purse ... The DPNS are US 4/0 and that converts to 1.25 mm. Thread used is DMC Pearl Cotton Size 8 and the beads are 11/0 rocailles (2.1 mm diameter round seed beads) ... I probably sound very familiar with the terminology but hey, let me not fool you again ... It took me days and days of surfing and reading to understand what they all meant :) Once the baggy basement as you see in the picture below is completed (which already is), I was planning to continue with crochet but it did not take too long to realize that colour black will be too difficult for my eyes especially with crochet. Instead, I shall continue knitting the rest of it. This is my very first project. As you would see again in the picture, there is one more spool threaded with beads and those beads are threaded in such a sequence that, once knitted in the round, the right beads will overlap on each row to form the wreath pattern which should place itself at the centre of the purse! I am not very hopeful but as I said, I shall aim to making it possible :)

Once finished, it is supposed to look like this purse below shapewise but with a pearl wreath over shiny dark grey (very much like black pearls) beaded background. Well, as I said, I shall do my best to work it out :)

Baby Camel Yarn

Following my dear llama yarn, I happily found baby camel yarn from Israel. If I have to describe the colour which is natural, it is Nescafé with plenty of milk :) Or, as Christa says; milk with a little Nescafé :)))

Today's gift of the PO box is this lovely sampler from 1901 and reads "Bete und arbeite" ...

Today was very hectic. Did not get a chance to spend much time for myself though had a wonderful dinner with some friends tonight ...

I cannot possibly see the contact e-mail for Christa2712 and would like to relate my very sincere thanks for the informative comments ... Thank you Christa for all the information on tahini and the winding link. I am going to have a look at it tomorrow :) Much much appreciated :)

I also want to thank Anoushka for choosing one of my freebies for her new SAL ... I am very honored and flattered considering all the wonderful free patterns on the net. THANK YOU dear Anoushka :)

CLICK for Anoushka's blog :)

Anoushka had also organized a SAL last year with the Cherub ABC, one of my earlier designs. To view the wonderful interpretations and colour variations, CLICK :)