Pretties

I made some progress with my spring wreath during the very snowy last weekend (we had the record snow fall for recent times, and there is more to come tonight). My grandma used to enjoy embroidery a lot and I remember how tedious it looked to very inpatient younger me, I thought it very improbable that I would ever try. But I loved the pretty colors, I liked to play with the shiny cotton threads, to put them together to test how they would match together in wild combinations. So last time I went home to Czech (I will always call it "home" I guess, does not matter that I have new home here for so many years) I brought the big bag of my grandma's embroidery cottons with me. I can still smell her house when I open it, almost like she is watching over my shoulder. Hope she would like what I am doing with it :). I as well got myself handy the Mary's Thomas Dictionary of Embroidery Stitches I have found in small museum store next to Dupont-Winterthur Gardens in Delaware (I cannot believe it is more than year we visited that wonderful green place, we simply must plan a visit for spring!) and here is the result :)


With this project, I am definitely (re)discovering how very satisfying the embroidery craft is. I made the felt flowers as sort of sampler, to explore what can be done. I took the pictures in the evening light just after the snow stopped falling, in front of the house


and I was so excited how gentle and subtitle the little petals looked on the fresh snow ... I still have to come up with some final arrangement; I may use some thin willow branches to weave a wreath and attach the flowers to it, although I like how the plain white background brings up the greens and the fine structure of crochet lace and stitches.
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I made this scarf quite fast sometime in fall, of the angora/mohair/wool mix I got from the Laramie yarn studio. It was just about 200 yrds I think, barely enough for narrow lacy scarf. The yarn has kind of baby-ish colors and the scarf may end up being a bit too girlish for my taste, but it is very soft and warm. Another problem is the yarn is very fragile, I even broke some stitches on edges while stretching it to see how it looks after finishing. To fix it, I have found a minty lace mohair leftover in my stash and came with the reinforcement plan in the shape of victorian lace edge (America Knits, Kousa Dogwood Shawl pattern). Hmm ... now I am making it even more frilly :), but I like the lacework !



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With all that white&green in my head, I have spent the Saturday evening with one of my immediate impulse ideas, I made granny squares runner for the kitchen windowsill, using leftover of very colorful bluish-green cotton just perfect for the simple pattern.




Well, I had some productive time between the showelsfull of snow :)