Organizing

I'm not a natural organizer. I have storage boxes, but items tend to mysteriously move to temporary boxes, to drawers, to my nightstand - it is normal to have wire spools on your nightstand, isn't it? - my "working box" and to several parallel universes, no doubt.

When I started embroidery, I kept my newly acquired stash in the envelopes and/or boxes it arrived in because I had no idea yet what to put where and how.
Luckily the Royal School of Needlework sends their kits in big boxes with compartments!

So after I had finished my first kit, the box was empty and ready to get filled up with all my stash.
I really hadn't expected that the floss lot I had bought would take up that much space, I just managed to fit it in and this is about three or four layers high.
For now, there's not much left that there wasn't space for, and once I will have finished my second kit, another box will be waiting to get filled up.

Can someone help me do the same with my wires now? ;-)

Lavender

Of course jewelry had been on my list since I tried my hand at hand embroidery for the first time. I was aware that it would be different from working on a larger project because the space is really limited, but when I got my first bezels, I found it was even more difficult to come up with a design of my own that fit the space.

I began with a small silk shading flower, but too many petals meant too much width.
Next I started a little fern, but I'm not sure about that one yet, it's a bit boring and I won't be able to fit in much more, so it's still in the stars if it's going to be finished.

Then I stumbled upon a picture of lavender. Long stalks with loads of small blossoms sounded perfect and there were at least three kinds of purple in my floss stash (which I only organized today asking myself why on Earth I thought I needed that floss lot, but I sure have a lot of green now - ferns for everyone! ;-)).

I really had fun and got wild with French knots (which I already love) and bullion knots (which I don't love that much yet, but think that's a matter of practice), added some brown specks here and there, and then it just needed a bit of a color pop on this neutral background - a bee, what else?

I think it's cute for a first own little design and am definitely looking forward to play some more.

Silk shading flower

Silk shading, thread painting, needle painting - these are all different names for one embroidery technique.
I had seen it more than once before and thought it was really beautiful, but it had never been on my want list.
When I decided I really wanted to give embroidery a try, it was because I had totally been hooked by gorgeous goldwork which is probably not too surprising for a jewelry maker.
I had no high expectations about my own skills, so it took me very long to jump into the cold water, but I finally ordered my favorite kit by Becky Hogg - the little fox (if you haven't seen the blog post, it's here). It sure challenged me and even more my hands, but much to my own surprise it didn't put me off embroidering.
Actually I had just ordered the kit and already knew I would treat myself to the self-paced online course "Introduction to Goldwork" offered by the Royal School of Needlework eventually and bookmarked it, but when I was ready to purchase it, it was not available due to supply shortage and I had to pick another course.
There are 16 courses and I really had a hard time choosing one that I felt confident enough about. In the end I chose silk shading, which I wasn't confident about at all, because I liked the design best (although I was aware I might non like the look of mine that much).

Next I got myself a free-hand embroidery stand and some bias band to bind my hoop.
When the RSN parcel arrived, however, I was very reluctant about starting the kit. I had watched the first video a few times already and had even started to do some sampling for practice. The kit looked so much more intidimating to me, though. What had I been thinking?

It took me two months to complete this project. Seven weeks were dedicated to three petals and the leaf - I needed a lot of long breaks - and in the last week I had become more comfortable with the process and finished the last five petals, the stem and center.

I learned a few things during it, not all of them embroidery technique related.

1. While Gundel is usually fine to watch from afar, der Dekan is determined to get to the embroidery floss and he would gladly try to grab the thread I'm working with at the moment and pull (don't ask how I know). Thankfully he calmed down eventually and after discussing his wishes and mine whenever I started a session ("No! No! You can't have it, Dekan. Don't even think about ... Dekan, go away, I'm holding a needle! Stop that! You don't want to go the vet, do you?"), he usually was distracted by a snack and then went to wreak havoc elsewhere or take a nap.

2. I have absolutely no mind for directions and although I absolutely understood the stitch and color diagrams in theory, I had problems to translate that to my stitching. To be honest, I think it has a lot to do with my being so used to working without a plan (except in bead looming) and follow my guts rather than my head. Which wasn't bad for most of it, but I didn't like my second petal much, and to save the look I made the last petal bigger than designed before then ripping out the unloved petal after all.
Actually I'm fine with that, but it's also typical for me - drawing outside the lines ;-)

3. I like finishing embroidery, but I still haven't put up my fox and I'm completely clueless how to frame the flower.

4. I'm as hard on my embroidery needles as on my beading needles.

5. "You're gonna need a bigger boat ... erm, embroidery hoop." Actually I'm going to need more hoop sizes, I think, but I'm trying not to go nuts now and buy supplies like crazy, as tempting as that thought is, also ...

5.1. ... I hate Brexit because so many of the supplies are much more readily available in the UK, but custom fees and taxes add up quite quickly. Yes, it is a very selfish reason.

6. Bullion knots and I are not good friends yet, but I love French knots, both seeing and stitching them, in fact that was one of the first stitches I consciously noticed when seeing embroidery pieces.

6. I really loved the self-paced course. I watched the videos in full more than once and sometimes I just went to a spot to remind me of something. Kate Barlow is a wonderful tutor who explains and shows everything very clearly.
I often say I'm not good with tutorials as I'm too impatient and that's true, so it was a bit of a surprise for me that I pulled this through and I also credit Kate's tutoring for that.

There is probably more, but you have suffered enough already, so I'm finally going to show you my flower and not point out the flaws because I'm really happy with it!

Labradorite and amethyst

About two months ago I blogged about my "jewelry burnout" and what I did instead. So far things haven't changed much. I am struggling my way through my second embroidery kit, but only touched beads once during the last month to loom a custom bracelet.

Are there sounds you like in crafting? I love the tiny pop in bead looming when pushing the beads into the space between the warps (not just the sound, but also the way it feels) and I love the sound of a needle and thread going through bead embroidery foundation - so much that I started missing them more than actually making jewelry. They have something deeply satisfying to me.
I know, it's really weird, isn't it?
However, that is what finally did the trick and made me grab a labradorite cabochon from my stash without any plan whatsoever. Just glueing the cab onto the foundation felt like a good start, even if der Dekan tried to steal the cap of the glue tube once again.

I picked some bead colors for the bezel that I thought would work well with the colors of the labradorite, a grey shimmering kind of golden, metallic silver, and - maybe a bit surprising - a kind of green-golden metallic.
After doing the bezel, which was the easy part, I was completely lost.
I would have wanted to make some unusual, playful, but all I could think of was quite classic and, to me, not very imaginative and a bit boring.
In the end, I just succumbed to the idea of a classic bead embroidery pendant. I still have some lovely frosted amethyst in my stash from years ago which actually was another color working beautifully with the stone, but this edging looked a little bland to me, so I added another layer to it with tiny silver "rays".

This pendant developed over a few days which is pretty slow for me, but the heat and a hurting thumb joint didn't help and there were quite a few breaks.
So I'm still not sure if it has been enough to give me a good kick in the butt, so I will finally be tackling my list of ideas again (without forgetting about my embroidery which came to a stop due to heat and a mistake which means there will have to be some ripping out, argh). We will see, I guess ;-)