WOXS 327 & 328, Disney 111

If you are a regular visitor here, first of all, thank you 🥰, and second, you may have noticed that the gaps between posts are getting wider and wider. This is because I started to work, and even though I still cross stitch whenever I can, the publications with my models in them are getting fewer and far between. I also have less time to spend on the computer, but this morning I`m free (until we go to do some Christmas shopping - Christmas?!? Where did this year go?? 😲), so I thought I`d better review the past few months` crop and add some photos here.

Issues 327 and 328 of The World of Cross Stitching both have my wee cards as the cover gift: the first one is a lovely wintry wreath designed by Durene Jones, and the latter a thank you card from Emma Congdon:

Issue 328 of WOXS also has this gorgeous winter floral composition by Amanda Gregory that took 75 hours to stitch - the magazine says 90, a 20% markup 🤣,which to be fair is probably closer to realistic expectations if someone doesn`t have to chase deadlines like yours truly. But whether you spend 20 hours on it or 200, it will feel like no time at all, because you can finish one section at a time, including the backstitch - I love designs with mini-finishes, they grow so quickly! 😁 

Finally, there is a new sampler starting from issue 111 of the Disney Cross Stitch mag from Hachette Partworks, dedicated to Winnie the Pooh and his friends. I love Winnie and I`m still working on the step-by-steps for this sampler, so I`m glad I can spend many more happy hours with these guys. Hope you`ve liked my wee collection of photos, thank you for visiting, happy holidays to you all and see you in 2023! 😊

The Twelfth Night Cushion Saga

Apologies to everyone who`s already familiar with this story - and to the rest, here`s what`s been happening on the Olivia front.

It all started around April this year, not long after I first saw the 2012 Globe production of Shakespeare`s Twelfth Night on SkyArts (since then I`ve bought the DVD - naturally!). ;) Twelfth Night has always been one of my favourite Shakespeare plays and I have seen many different versions of it on stage and film, but this Original Practices, i.e. all-male production was a real treat. I`m not much for categorical statements like `this must be how it was back then` - I`m more in favour of toying with the idea of the possibility that `this is how it could have been`, `this is how Shakespeare`s contemporary audience might have seen this play`. Not just because the groundlings are leaning on the Globe`s stage and male actors play female parts, but the attention to detail is legendary: the musicians play on replicas of contemporary instruments, and Stephen Fry marvelled at the fact that the brass buttons on his costume were made using molds that were authentic (cf. around 5 mins into this interview on YouTube).

And the sheer fact that Stephen Fry plays Malvolio! Johnny Flynn and Paul Chahidi were true revelations to me, and I`m especially glad that I have this record of the production with Roger Lloyd-Pack who, sadly, died last year. The image of him stuck in the box tree will stay with me as much as that of Trigger and his trusty brush. :)

So around April-May, I got the idea of doing something to celebrate this rare occasion when everything comes together to create a `perfect 10` of a play that was, in a huge part, thanks to the award-winning performance of Mark Rylance, often tagged as `the most talented Shakespeare actor of our time`. He played the countess Olivia in Twelfth Night, whose white-faced, high-collared image just begged to be translated into a cross stitch pattern - so after a little fiddling with my trusty Jane Greenoff design making program, I eagerly started stitching.

The original theatre poster and Phase 1: the face; 27 hours

43 hours

65 hours

78 hours

96 hours

103 hours

And finally, after 140 hours, the finished stitching, complete with crownlet:

From Day 1, I always imagined the finished product as a plump, natural coloured cushion. I discussed it at the time with the lovely Rebecca Reid, who was my magazine editor at the time (sadly, she has since left our mag but although I miss her a lot, I know that the stitchy world`s loss is the sewing world`s gain). She very kindly provided me with the fabric - and even made up the finished stitching into a cushion for me, what a star! :)

Rebecca chose gold-and-white fabric for the piping, to complement the ruff and the crown - beautiful!

So after half a year, Olivia was ready for her journey to London; I contacted Mark Rylance`s agent and posted the cushion to the address she provided - and I thought that would be the end of it... or maybe I half-expected an email from the agent, letting me know whether they (Mark Rylance and his wife, composer Claire van Kampen, who provided the music for Twelfth Night) liked it at all...? Hehe, I even bribed his agent with some gummy bears to say they did, even if they didn`t - because I`m well aware that cross stitch is not to everyone`s taste, and non-stitchers usually don`t know how much time and work is involved in one of these pieces, not to mention that I wasn`t even sure whether M. R. was in the UK or maybe shooting in Hollywood... So to find that he actually took the time to find my tiny address label on the parcel (I never put it on the card) and personally write a wee note to say thank you means a lot to me - actually, scratch `a lot`: I am over the moon right now! :D

Cross Stitch Collection

I`ve been (literally) snowed under for a week now - although if I`m honest, it could be a lot worse than the couple of inches we`ve had so far: I could be staying in e.g. Ballater and spend my precious time shovelling two feet of snow, instead of sitting in my cozy living-room, furiously stitching. OK, at the moment NOT so furiously, since I`ve had a little mishap. The design I`m working on now is a mandala-type intricacy by Durene Jones for Cross Stitch Gold - actually, it`s more like a henna tattoo, using a lot of DMC 902 (garnet) as the basic colour with some pink, orange and electric blue to accentuate and, of course, a lot of gold (metallic thread and beads as well) to make it sparkle. Unfortunately, I only got one skein of garnet and it looks like I`ll need more like four, and Anne must be on holiday or off sick because it`s very unlike her not to answer my email for days - anyhoo, after running out of the main colour, I did whatever else I could but now I just have to wait for the replenishment (unless Hubby takes me to Kirkcaldy on Saturday - I will NOT drive in the snow! - where I can buy some). In the meantime, I`m itching to get on with my little chefs but I don`t want to get another big project out, in case I get too absorbed in it and then I wouldn`t want to go back to "the job". So as a something-in-between, I started to play with this cross stitch clock I`d picked up a few weeks ago for £3 in a charity shop:

I think I`ll give it to my mother-in-law for her birthday (unless I decide to keep it in the meantime). Of course, I could also use this mini-break to get on with my knitting: I want to make some hats for the Woolly Brew girls` new appeal and my second teddy square, technically, couldn`t even be called a square as it`s only 5 rows so far but last weekend I got a far more important job from The Boss. Gregory came to me with a fully developed picture in his head concerning a little alien that he wanted me to stitch for his gang of teddies to experiment on (?). So I "just" had to follow his instructions and make it the right size (he made me unpick the legs twice because they were too long and too wide!) - so here`s the result:

He even drew the eyes on a piece of paper so I had a template to follow, and he showed me (the little control-freak!) the angle he wanted me to sew them on - as a consequence, my Hubby says it looks more like a little green pig with his blue ears flopped over his eyes, as if playing Peekaboo... Anyway, now that I have the time to write, I thought I`d add some photos of the works I`ve done so far for Cross Stitch Collection (at least the ones that have already come out). As another first, I shall attempt to add a link, rather than a photo, to my blog - starting with the retro Xmas trees that appeared in issue 216. Then there were the thank you cards I stitched for issue 218; and the latest issue (219) has my Mothers` Day owls in it but I couldn`t find a link to this magazine just yet, so here`s a good news-bad news situation: I`ll add my own photos which are much less artistic than the ones taken by a professional photographer... on the other hand, if the links above didn`t work, at least you`ll SEE these, right? OK, I think it`s a nice, long post now so I`d better go and get some work done, not to mention that a picture is worth a thousand words anyway - so here`s another 4000 words` worth:

UPDATE: since this post, I`ve found these too here.

teachers` thank you cards - finished!

The weekend is not even over and I have all five thank you cards finished for Gregory`s teachers and the driver... Is that efficient or what? I`m well-chuffed, especially that it means now I can get back to my other stitching/knitting :)))