As you may have guessed from my last post, we’ve just had a few days away, we went to Cyprus to visit family. It’s about a four and a half hour flight from here, plus the time sitting around in the airport and the hours train journey to get to the airport in the first place…so lots of stitching time!
I started this cross-stitch a couple of months ago, but now I’m retired I don’t have quite as much opportunity to stitch ‘on the go’. It’s a Faby Reilly design for a biscornu. Biscornu are those funny shaped pin cushions made by joining two squares together but point to mid-side, rather than point to point. Faby has some gorgeous designs which I’ve fancied making for a while, however I’m not going to make them into a biscornu, I’m going to put them in a book, I’m thinking of a concertina book at the moment, with maybe beads in between each page, though plans may change!
When we left home I had just about finished one iris. The photo I shared with you the other day was waiting for the homeward bound flight…
Of course our flight was delayed with us sat on the tarmac for about an hour before take-off – it would be nice, just once, for a flight to go to plan!! It did mean even more time for stitching though!
I usually take cross-stitch as a portable project, I put the threads on a DMC card, I have a very mini pair of scissors which Kate Chiconi kindly gave me years ago, I also wear a Clover thread cutter as a pendant. I’ve never had a problem with security with that set up. We were just taking carry-on bags this time and I did pop a cheap pair of embroidery scissors in my suitcase, they didn’t confiscate them which was useful when we got to Cyprus. This was Jet2, I have had embroidery scissors removed before on other airlines so I chose a cheap pair I wouldn’t be upset if they were binned.
With all that flying time I did make good progress, my irises now look like this…
I’ve a little more cross-stitching to do then the back-stitching which is when Faby’s designs come alive.
In Cyprus we spent a couple of nights around Larnaca, before heading up to Nicosia. I have to be honest and say I didn’t know much about Cyprus at all before I went, just that there was a Greek side and a Turkish side. Larnaka was a lovely place to stay, the old town has some beautiful and interesting buildings. I had a look round St Lazarus church which was built in the 9th century. We also walked to the salt lakes where to my delight I saw flamingos, apparently they over-winter there.
On the way to Nicosia we visited Lefkara, a very pretty traditional village which specialises in embroidery, lace-making and silver jewellery. Traditionally the women made the lace and embroidery, the men did the silver jewellery. Whilst I’m not convinced that all the products for sale were as hand-made as some of them claimed, I found one shop where the lady obviously knew what she was talking about. We had a lovely discussion about different types of embroidery, the traditional embroidery is cut work, but unlike hardanger where the embroidery is done first and then the threads cut, they cut first, very brave I thought! The lace is similar to tatting but I think is what is called needle lace. I bought a little round piece of lace (for another book of course!) which the lady had made herself.
Nicosia was interesting, it is one of the few divided cities in the world, we walked through the checkpoints on the buffer zone to have a look round the Turkish side too. Larnaca was a pleasant 15 or 16 degrees, whilst in Nicosia we drove up to the mountains to a monastery, it was freezing!! I didn’t expect to be passing a ski resort on this trip!!
Hopefully it won’t take too long to finish this side of the biscornu design and the other side is much simpler. I’m on a bit of a roll with it now.
thecraftycreek 