From November 22nd to 25th, Harrogate Convention Centre was transformed to a den of fibre and fluff for the annual Knitting and Stitching Show. For those of you not familiar with the Knitting and Stitching Show, it’s a convention hosted at several sites in the UK, with the biggest being at Alexandrea Palace in London, features teams of suppliers, workshops and demonstrations for all things knitting and stitching.
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Sometimes finishing all the stitching is only part of completing a piece of embroidery… Having finished quite a few pieces now that I’ve ultimately ended up framing, the process of mounting it up has become a lot less intimidating. This is great but it also means that it has become a bit routine just putting pieces on square mount board to stick in a frame.
A lot of things were supposed to happen this year, including finding a way to get back to my Royal School of Needlework certificate course, but of course, sometime the things that are supposed to happen just don’t work out. At least they don’t always work out as planned, sometimes they work out in mysterious ways that actually end up being maybe better than what you’d originally been aiming for.
After my RSN Silk Shading Day Class, I still had rather a lot of my little birdy to do and having managed to get quite a lot of the main body done had lulled me into a false sense of security as to exactly how long it was going to take.
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I don’t know how I’d managed to miss this fantastic institution on last year’s visit to California, but just in case all the wonderful quilt stores haven’t wowed you, or the amazing world of lace, San Francisco has yet another gem very well hidden away on top of Tiffanies, the SF School of Needlework & Design.
Somehow I wasn’t so laden with lovely new fabrics after my tour of Berkeley that I couldn’t find the energy for my final stop, the Lacis Museum of Lace and Textiles. Really I should have gone earlier in the day, as it’s actually only about a fifteen minute walk from Stonemountain and Daughters but it is very conveniently located near Ashby BART station so my tired feet could escape back to SF relatively easily. Even more convenient considering how many extra bags of embroidery supplies I ended up with from here!
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One of the great things about the spread of the Internet has been the increasing accessibility of information on even the most niche of hobbies. This is great news for crafters for very obvious reasons, but with a growing number of wonderful Youtube tutorials and online stitch tutorials, is there any place left for a hardbound stitch bible?
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For those of you not familiar with temari, they are the wonderful embroidered balls that are often covered in mindboggling geometric designs or traditional Japanese motifs, such as cranes or 菊 (kiku), the chrysanthemum, often considered the national flower of Japan.
After the RSN Day Class, I still had rather a lot of work to do on my goldwork and silk shading monogram. The stem stitch part was completed but I still needed to finish the raised leaf stitch, the shading on the flower, a lot of couching and some chip work too!
Having visited the wonderful world of Britex Fabrics, it was going to be very hard for my next crafty stop in California to be anything better than a disappointment. However, while Britex Fabrics might be the Aladdin’s Cave for the sewer, the small, unassuming Old World Designs in Menlo Park is probably the hand embroiderer’s Nirvana.
