June - Cross-Stitch Again!

May has not been a particularly productive or creative month for me. This was partly because I wasn't well prepared and needed to buy a hoop to do my cross-stitch and also this month has been busy with work and travelling and house- hunting. We had a holiday with family when UK restrictions lifted which was really lovely and I managed to read quite a bit while we had help with the boys which really helped me relax. All this to say that I have not done the cross- stitching I had planned to do. 

When we got back from our holiday and the hoop finally arrived I became daunted at the scale of the piece - it seems to be for an A3 design which seems very ambitious for a first attempt! So I decided to do some practice stitching and work out how you are meant to do it.  

This turned out to be useful because there were a few presumptions I made that would have made the process even harder. For example, the thread (floss) that you use for cross- stitch is made up of six threads but only one or two threads should be used at a time. I spent an evening trying to keep the threads together and thinking my practice stitches looked very bulky until I googled and realised what I was doing wrong. I then spent the following evening unpicking it and starting again! I did some random stitching including some which wasn't cross-stitching just to see what it looked like, I really love the colours of the pattern.

So June will also be cross-stitch but this time properly. I hope to speak to you in a month with a completed octopus, wish me luck!