New start

I started a new project today. Kathy and I have long been talking about doing this piece from The Cross Stitcher Magazine (British) May 2005 called There are Fairies at the bottom of my garden. After much procrastinating on both our parts we have decided to begin and stitch on it on Wednesdays, or one day a week of our own choosing.
So I decided that since I am starting something new on a largish piece of fabric that setting it up on q-snaps and using my stitching stand might be a good idea... wrong. I was so far out of my stitching comfort level that I have just dismantled it all and set myself up with one of my favourite hoops.
I tried a 17 X 17 q-snap...couldn't get my arm under it...a 17 X 6 q-snap set up...too awkward, even with a meter stick to help balance it across the arms of a chair that is not my usual chair (part of the problem but not all of it), I clamped the q-snaps onto the gripit stand...not my cup of tea.
I finally reminded myself that this is what I do for fun...why am I making it difficult?
So I'll be using a hoop and will post a picture of my progress in my next post.

On another front, I have in my posession the first part of Jeanette Douglas's "My Stitching Album". I had decided that I would not use her pre-packaged thread packs and would chose my own colour(s). Easier said than done! My plan had been to do each page of the book in a different colour of Waterlilies, figuring that one varigated colour would do...well that didn't really work out...so I started playing with a DMC variated thread and adding solid DMC colours to the palette. I soon realized I was a little out of my depth with the colour choices...I am better at following directions when stitching than designing and choosing my own colour variations.

But all is not lost. Beatrice and I are both planning to do the book on black fabric and choose our own colours...so a quick call brought Beatrice over and we spent a lovely couple of hours choosing colours for all our pages. We think we have found a beautiful selection of DMC variated, solid DMC, some WDW, a few Waterlilies, some beads, and blending filament...now I can hardly wait to get started...the big decision...what colour scheme do I start with??? purples? peaches? pale greens? blues? pinks? red/oranges?, orange/grays, beiges???

About 6 or 7 of us are going to be working on the book together but only Beatrice and I are crazy enough to be doing it on black. Most of the rest of the stitchers have chosen ivory and perhaps some of them will like our colour choices as well.

If anyone out there is interested in joining us I do have a few extra of the "My Stitching album" packages in the shop, can order Jeanette's thread choices for you , or can send you a copy of ours.