A few months ago a friend visited and brought a large bag full of crafty things, they belonged to her mum, who is now well into her 90’s and no longer wants them. There was all sorts of goodies in there, including this little cross-stitch kit.

It’s a bookmark kit by Textile Heritage Collection, I think it’s still available though as this one had a £2 charity shop sticker on I think it was a bit of a bargain.

It’s probably not a design I would go out and choose, but I liked it enough to stitch it and actually it’s turned out rather sweet.

I decided that as I was reading so much more now, it was time I made myself a bookmark, instead of using train tickets, WI programmes, envelopes…

It’s stitched on an aida band, 14 count I think, as it was stitched using three strands of floss. It only took a couple of weeks to stitch with odd half hours here and there.

It was designed to just have a piece of felt covering the stitching at the back with a little tassel matching the light turquoise border. It’s actually quite a soft aida, I wanted a bookmark to be a bit firmer, so I found some cotton in my stash which had red fruit on which match the robins perfectly…unfortunately the way it folded they’re all on the back apart from that little glimpse at the top!

I left off the tassel as with the green and black background it no longer worked.

I now have a smart bookmark to mark the place I fell asleep…