My New Hobby!

No, not photography, bees or wildflowers - but I do like them all too! After spending quite a large part of the weekend browsing my new books (I told you I would!), embroidery has taken a hold on me. The great thing about is that I was really looking for something to enjoy for myself and not necessarily for any other reason (although it will definitely come in handy for decorating my sofites!)

The photo above which I took at the weekend gave me the idea for practicing some of my newly acquired embroidery stitches. I had an oddment of linen (part of a bundle of off-cuts) which I'd decided to use (I love this fabric, pricewise it seems to be on a par with Harris Tweed though - ouch!)

Here's a little piece of the design - I used a fabric marker to transfer my doodles onto the linen, but being air soluble they had disappeared within an hour! Perhaps the marker was a little too effective - I wanted it to stay long enough for me to finish my design! I had to go 'free form' then and just make it up as I went along.

I grappled a bit with the embroidery hoop - we are not 'best of friends'! But it keeps the fabric taut which is required for quite a lot of the stitches. My kids thought it was very funny to see me demurely stitching away. I'm usually to be found stuffing some pure creature with toy stuffing or scrabbling about on the floor cutting out a new pattern. Perhaps I'm getting a bit refined in my old age!

But I still like scrabbling about on the floor, so the embroidery will have to fit in somewhere when I'm looking for a bit of quiet time : )

My boys will be going back to school this week, so I'll be getting them all sorted and kitted out. If I'm not here, I'll be counting school pencils, straightening school-ties or hunting down abandoned school books!

Cheerio an Drasda :)