The fruit of plenty

What relaxes me these days is intense handwork. Not knitting, cross-stitch. So I find myself watching Floss-tube, which is what the cross-stitchers call their channels on You Tube. I have to admit, most are boring. Five minutes and I’m done. I love the look, I love the meditative aspect of the work, I don’t enjoy watching people for hours talking about their stitching. But one of the channels is Modern Folk Embroidery. Jacob is a lovely Dutchman who has been recreating antique samplers as well as designing new ones in old styles. Every year he designs a year long Stitch a long. You better believe I immediately signed up.

I don’t like cutesy cross-stitch, but I am finding that I love the antique or antique inspired. This is divided into 12 sections.

Being relatively new at this, I ordered the size linen that Jacob recommended. I have already used Aida and even-weave. Lets try linen. I do know that the threads in the weave aren’t even. What I didn’t realized is how I couldn’t see a thing.

Here I was, all excited and ready to go. And after a very short while, I gave up. So I ordered the same size, 32 count, in even-weave.

You can see, the even-weave does live up to its name. But, my first order couldn’t be filled, I had to look elsewhere and order again. Meanwhile the hashtag #mfesal2021 is filling up quickly on IG, and boy oh boy are people doing beautiful work, on all sizes of fabrics and all kinds of colors.

It turns out that I have old eyes! Duh, I’m in my 60s. I couldn’t work with this fabric either. So light bell moment. I went and found the magnifying glass my mother used to wear. Notice that when I ordered a needle minder for this project, I ordered an owl as well. In following the hashtag, I saw that a few people would mark down the 10 stitch point as well. You know, until you have more coverage of stitches – this is extremely helpful.

It was’t easy holding the magnifying glass with my left hand as I stitch with the right hand. But yes, I am making good progress and loving it. Then I did the smart thing and ordered a lighted table top magnifier.

I’m using two lamps, not just the lights on the magnifier. I am a huge fan of tools that make the work better and easier.

Through the magnifying glass. Yay! I can see what I’m doing!

See how quickly the work is coming along now!! Yes, I am very very happy.

Leah

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