thecraftycreek

Well, the impulse buys have begun! I popped into the supermarket for some milk and came out with 2 pints of milk, 12 bearded iris bulbs (gorgeous colour!) an astrantia root (astrantias like my soil, so I’m trying to get one in every colour!) and a stunning zantedeschia which will look great together with the iris bulbs in our Amethyst and Amber garden! I used to turn my nose up at orange flowers but I love them now, maybe it’s another sign of getting old, like wearing purple!!

A more considered purchase was a new rose from David Austin, last week I moved three roses which weren’t successful at climbing an obelisk. There was one square left where I could plant a replacement. I wanted a rambler that would fit in with the amber colour scheme without being too rampant! Ramblers have much more pliable stems for winding round objects! I googled it and found Ghislaine de Feligonde, a pretty coppery peach colour, and even better, it doesn’t have a lot of thorns! Within a couple of days of ordering, it had arrived and was planted! I planted some viola plugs round the base of the rose as some light ground cover.

We’ve had a mild, dry weekend here in Yorkshire (cold, wet and miserable again today!!) so I spent most of Saturday pottering round, pruning more roses, weeding, dividing perennials…my sedums have been very floppy for the last couple of years which is a sign that they need dividing. I  dug each clump up and used my fork to divide it in two, replanted one and moved the other to the front garden- free plants!

Bulbs are coming up all over the garden, I spotted a couple of crocuses hidden under an obelisk and some stunning blue irises are flowering in a pot. These dwarf daffodils will hopefully flower in the next few days.

I’m a bit nervous about digging too much at the moment as what looks like a bare patch of soil invariably has a plant just waiting to burst through! Perennials are starting to appear in the garden, geraniums, the lovely silver leaves of the perennial cornflower, aquilegias, brunnera, crocosmia…

Shoots are just starting to appear on some of the shrubs too such as philadelphus and this golden berberis.

The bullfinches have been regular visitors to the bird feeders, together with a couple of chaffinches, for some reason the chaffinches struggle with feeders, they can’t stand on the little perches, all the other finches seem to manage though. We’ve had blue tits, great tits, coal tits and the long tailed tits, at this time of year I can watch them flitting through the trees and shrubs as they come along the back lane, round the garden perimeter, to the bird feeder. The robins were hopping nearby when I was gardening, hoping for a worm!

I enjoyed my first cup of coffee in the summerhouse too, spring is just round the corner!

Last month whilst I was on holiday I started a Hardanger & Drawn Thread Sampler designed by Jane Greenoff. I have to confess that since returning home at the end of January I haven’t even had it out of the packet! Today, after spending several hours on the computer (albeit sorting out the holiday photograph album!) I decided it was time to get it out again.

I’d not tried drawn thread embroidery (or hardanger) before I bought this kit, it’s a beautiful sampler and I love the colours, but I would still hold by my argument in my last blog that the instructions presume a level of knowledge, it is not a kit I would recommend for a complete novice.

Today, over on Kathy’s Quilts, it’s slow stitching Sunday, I’ve certainly done my bit of slow stitching today… Drawn thread embroidery consists of removing threads on evenweave linen, then embroidering knots over the remaining threads. It took me a while to understand the instructions, but basically threads are cut and removed in pairs, at opposite ends of the area being worked, the thread removed from one end is then rewoven into the gap left from the other thread…mmm, it took me a while to get it too! For this band on the sampler I had to remove 4 pairs of weft threads, leaving the warp threads behind. Hem stitch is used to edge the band, which also has the effect of pairing the threads.

The band I was working on was ‘hemstitch with coral knots’. The diagram hadn’t printed very well so it took me a while to work out that the first row of knots would tie the warp threads in clusters of three pairs, whereas the second row of coral knots made a decorative wave pattern.

The next band on the sampler epitomised my issues with the instructions; ‘Buttonhole bars in purple and green’ There are six shades of purple and three shades of green in this kit, so precisely which shade am I meant to use! Initially I thought it would be the same shades as the cross-stitch in that band, however looking at the image it looks a lot darker…so I guessed! There are also no instructions on how to do a buttonhole bar, ok so I know how to do one, but I’m sure that many people don’t!

By chance I discovered the vintage linen cloth I chose to photograph the sampler on had a band of complex drawn thread embroidery as a border!

I’ve just got a hardanger heart left to work now, so hopefully I’ll finish it this week. Then I’ve just got to decide whether to frame it as it is or to stitch a folded hem to finish the edges first. I’d like to think I’ll master the folded hem, but realistically I’ve not been enamoured with this style of embroidery (you can’t like everything!) so I will probably be glad just to complete the sampler and frame it.

It is the ideal kit to try out this style of embroidery, short bands of different stitches to make a very pretty sampler. I have enjoyed stitching this sampler and I’m really pleased with it, the colours are lovely and it’s been good experience, just not quite so relaxing as I anticipated!