Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens

A bright sunny winter's day took me to Kirstenbosch on a lovely walk through the gardens.

The Kranz Aloes were looking splendid

and the bees were having a feast. There must have been about twenty buzzing around this clump of aloes.

I caught a glimpse of Teddy Bear Mountain along the way. It's a firm favourite among children on school outings and is remembered for years afterwards.  

I was pleased that those dinosaurs in the dinosaur garden were statues and not the real thing. Imagine coming across an animal of that size on your rambles.

I was headed up towards the Treetop Canopy Walk which is well camouflaged until you are right there.

The views of the gardens and surrounding mountains are wonderful.

I saw these flowers from way up on the walkway. They were the most delicate shades of pink.

Not long after my walk, the Hottentot's Holland Mountains off in the distance were tipped with a sprinkling of snow and winter had truly arrived here in Cape Town. The snow doesn't reach very far down the mountains but when it snows the temperature plummets and we know all about it.

  

But on this day the sky was clear and blue.

Making my way back to the car park I crossed the lawns, passed the pond and had a last glimpse of Teddy Bear Mountain. I was already planning my next visit.

Chicken Scratch and Australian Cross Stitch - the Russian Connection

A sudden spike in the number of visitors to my blog had me trying to work out where they all came from. On finding that they were being referred by a Russian website I was even more curious.

It turns out that there is a very good compilation of information together with photos of Chicken Scratch on this Russian website here. If, like me, you don't read Russian, Google Translate will give you a good idea of how the text reads. (The translation is not perfect and you may notice somewhere in the article that the literal translation is "chicken embroidery dash"!)

My gingham pincushions appear at the end of the article as a comparison between Chicken Scratch and Australian Cross Stitch and there is a comprehensive list of resources at the end which includes a direct link to my blog. Many thanks to the author of the article whose name I unfortunately have been unable to confirm.

Australian Cross Stitch pincushions

The difference between Chicken Scratch and Australian Cross Stitch? Although both are stitched on gingham, and both are embroidered with crosses, Australian Cross Stitch never has double cross stitches or running stitch. You can clearly see the double crosses and running stitches so characteristic of Chicken Scratch in the photo below. Find out more in my previous blog post here.

Chicken Scratch 

On the home front, it's real winter here in Cape Town with cold, damp, dismal days. I have been indoors hibernating and getting my new PC up and running the way I want it to. The next step is downloading Windows 10. I will also be teaching an embroidery course on Dresden Lace and Pulled Work soon. A damaged software disk has meant that I can't download my embroidery software for drawing up stitch diagrams. It's going to be a busy week at the keyboard.

Hedebo resource

If you are interested in trying some Hedebo embroidery and want a good starting point try visiting the Greve Museum's Hedebo site Hedebosyning here.  Although it is in Danish you can click on the right side of the landing page for the English version.

There is also a free pdf tutorial to follow here. Unfortunately the instructions for the tutorial are in Danish but the stitch diagrams are clear and fairly easy to follow. I'd love to hear from you if you do give it a try. Just leave a comment below.

My computer has been to the 'doctor' again but it is still not fixed. Its unreliable now as it freezes 5 or 6 times a day. Looks like it's on its last legs. I have been putting off making the decision that it is actually quite old and needs replacing. The thought of new software and moving everything over is daunting.

In the meantime, I can borrow a machine to keep in touch and I'll post a longer piece when I can access my files and photos again.

Till then, happy stitching!

Finger Puppets

The little surprise that went into the pockets of my grandchildrens' pants before they were posted looked like this.

One set of finger puppets went off to Brisbane and the other identical set went off the Bangkok. Now that they have arrived safely at their destinations I can share the photos with you without spoiling any surprises on the other side of the Indian Ocean.

Each child had one finger puppet in each pocket.  Either a frog and a dog

or a fox and an owl.

I found an overwhelming number of ideas by searching for 'finger puppets' on Pinterest and also on Google Images. Although I bookmarked a number of interesting sites, I don't seem to have made a note of which ones inspired these. I will gladly credit the source if you can let me know where they came from.

Till next time, happy stitching!

Feedback on Kimberly House Post

Today's quick post is one that I started writing a while ago. Regular readers may remember that my niece Genae has recently joined Kimberley House, a small company that makes a wide range of beautiful hand embroidered items. You can read more about them in a previous blog post here.

Hand embroidered tea towel by Kimberly House

Genae sent me some feedback I'd like to share with you.  Not long after I posted the blog she received a very nice order from Europe. It was unusual to receive an order from that part of the world because her customers are generally from the USA where Kimberley House is based. The order was eventually attributed to one of my blog readers. Genae was delighted and so too was I.

Little surprises on the back of my kitchen tea towel

I'm often amazed when I see the list of countries that my blog reaches especially as many are not English speaking. It's a humbling thought, and all thanks to the internet. I can only imagine that Google Translate makes it possible for even more stitchers to read my posts.

Patch Pockets

Children love having pockets on their pants. I thought patch pockets would be a lot easier to sew than those that you let into the side seams.

After scanning some free patterns and tutorials I based my pockets on this excellent tutorial found on Dana-made-it.com

Here's a peek at the contrasting lining I chose for my two year old granddaughter. It's a lovely tactile silky satin in an unexpected sky blue colour.

Next time I'll show you the little surprises I made to put in the pockets.

Hedebo Tea Cosy - Drawn Thread

I haven't done a lot of stitching recently, but I have made a little progress on my Hedebo tea cosy. The surface embroidery has been completed and the drawn thread work is well underway. You can read more about this project in previous blog posts here and here.

Below you can see that the pretty little pulled work border around the sides is complete and I have started cutting threads and filling in the openwork areas. I started with the small less important areas, leaving the central motif until I had had a bit of practice.



Each openwork or drawn thread area is outlined by the two rows of chain stitch so characteristic of Hedebo embroidery.



In these drawn thread areas, I cut 2 threads and skipped 2 threads in both directions. I strengthened the grid with ordinary sewing machine cotton because I wanted the whipping and the underlying grid to be unobtrusive.

For the large rectangular area of drawn thread work at the bottom I carefully counted and tacked over every 2 threads to mark the threads I wanted to cut. Its's a big area and I didn't want to miscount somewhere and have to fix up any threads cut by mistake. Why the blue and red tacking?

I started with the pale blue thread but that didn't show up too well, especially at night. The bright red was much easier to see. I won't leave it in the embroidery for too long in case there is a transfer of it's strong red colour to the linen.

Also, when I changed to the red thread, I began at the side by going under the first two threads to be cut, as you can see above. The plan was to slip the point of the scissors under each pair of threads where the red thread lay underneath. Anything to make the cutting easier and more foolproof!

I have eased out the cut threads one by one and trimmed them off close to the satin stitch border. Next I'll strengthen the grid as before by whipping over the grid intersections with machine sewing thread. Finally I'll weave in the decorative filling.

The end of this piece of embroidery is in sight. It will be good to finish it but I still have to decide if it is actually going to be a tea cosy or if it's eventually going to be something else.

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On a different note, I am back from a long anticipated reunion of Rod's family. It's been a few years since the four siblings and their spouses were all together. We met up in Sedgefield on the beautiful Garden Route and spent a very happy time taking long beach walks, having fabulous home cooked meals, and catching up and sharing fond memories. With the family scattered all over the country, and the globe, getting together is difficult but we all left Sedgefield with the firm intention of having another reunion before too many years have passed.

Winter arrived surreptitiously while we were away and being back home in Cape Town has been a bit of a shock weather-wise. Temperatures have dropped and the first big, but very welcome, rains have fallen. Perhaps with the cold weather here it's time to stay indoors, keep warm and take out the embroidery.

Till next time, happy stitching!

Art quilts

Shared Sky is collaborative exhibition of art quilts and painting on linen by two groups of artists, one South African and the other Australian. It runs until 26 May 2015 at the National Gallery in Cape Town.

From the catalogue of Shared Sky Exhibition
 at Iziko National Gallery

The exhibition celebrates ancient cultural wisdom and the understanding of the movements of objects in the night sky. These are the same celestial bodies that are being studied by scientists and astronomers around the world by means of the Square Kilometre Array project (SKA) and the giant radio telescopes located in South Africa and Australia.

The telescopes are situated close to the areas where the two groups of artists live. Hence the collaboration of the SKA organization and the artists at the Bethesda Arts Centre in South Africa and the Jamaji Art Centre in Western Australia.

It was raining the day I went into Cape Town to the National Gallery and you can see that my catalogue got rather wet and crinkled. I didn't want to fold it up in my handbag and I rolled it instead to try and keep it dry under my umbrella.

The catalogue shows one of the quilts at the top and a painting below.  It's just a little glimpse of what's on display as no photography was allowed in the gallery. 

In real life I thought the quilt shown above was stunning. The photo does not do justice to the colours. The work is a combination of applique, quilting, hand embroidery and machine embroidery. The paintings are worked in little dots and again the photo of the night sky painting above does not do justice to the impact of the work.

On display too is a small group of decorated ostrich and emu eggs. It's hard to grasp that some of these eggs were painted 77000 years ago.

The other exhibition at the same venue that I found intriguing was the William Kentridge installation The Refusal of Time. The multiple videos, enveloping sound and big gallumping machine bombard your senses in a way that's difficult to describe and I left feeling I'd like to go back and see it again.

Autumn at the Berry Farm

A visit to Hillcrest Berry Farm for fresh raspberries reminded me that it's autumn here in Cape Town.

Autumn is a short season and there are few displays of colourful autumn trees. 

It was a damp day but a delicious light lunch and the view of the surrounding mountains made the little excursion from the city well worth the drive. 

My friends and I were each able to buy a couple of  punnets of fresh raspberrries, just about the last of the season, and we did come away with packs of frozen blueberries that will last well into winter.

The days are short, the evenings cool and winter is just around the corner. If you are in Cape Town or somewhere down south keep warm and happy stitching!

Hedebo Tea Cosy and an Inspirational Motto

I have done a little more embroidery on my Hedebo tea cosy which I wrote about some time ago. This UFO (unfinished object) was started in 2006! I often wonder why some projects languish in the UFO or 'to do' box while others are completed fairly quickly.

Hedebo tea cosy based on a design by Hetsie van Wyk 

One of the things that bothers me about this Hedebo project is that I used perle threads for the surface embroidery and it has not given me the results I had envisioned. At the time perle or stranded DMC embroidery thread was all I could get. With internet shopping opening up the variety of threads available, I think I would now perhaps choose a cotton floche thread which is softer looking than the perle I used.

I have come across this inspirational quote a number of times recently and it prompted me to take action. After all perfection can be an enemy of progress. Can't it?

Photo: Offizin on Etsy

My tea cosy may not match up to my original mental picture of it but I really like the design and with my new motto 'done is better than perfect' I'm carrying on with the stitching. I can also practice techniques that I don't use often or haven't tried before - like the eyelets I was putting off doing.

The eyelets were made without cutting any threads and the 'special tool' I used to keep the openings all same size was a 2.75mm knitting needle. With a stiletto, awl or laying tool you have to judge how much to open up each hole, something I have found tricky. The knitting needle worked well for me and I like how you can get the same size hole each time - well almost.

The next step is to finish off the pulled work around the sides and around the border at the bottom. Then I can start cutting and withdrawing the threads for the drawn thread areas. Those are the bits I have been wanting to get to for a long, long time.