Yesterday I managed to get my first project done in 2007. It is Winter Mandala by Der Feine Faden which is our workshop for January. It is all done in petit point and like I said previously, I just LOVED it. When I can next start a new project I know I will be doing a Pat Thode santa in petit point with Blomsterthreads as well.

Then last week my friend Pamela surprised me with a new shopmodel. She stitched this superfast and my mom framed it in a ready bought frame. Even the mat was exactly the right size. This is Patch Rouge no. 1 by DHC Dessin. It is stitched on 40 count Newcastle no. 52 with Soie 100/3. I don't recall the exact number but it is a very deep purple.

And we also got another one of Pam's stitching framed. This is Friendship in all Seasons by The Trilogy. Pam used a combination of threads on again 40 count Newcastle no. 52. I really like this design and can't wait for the companion piece to arrive in the shop.

Now my Happy Bunny, Bunny Day is also framed, but it wasn't in the shop when I had the camera there. It is great to use all those ready made frames that we have in stock for these pieces.

As for stitching I am working on 3 projects at the moment. First of all, I made good progress on 1803 Pennsylvanian House from Carriage House Samplings. Then I need to start an ornament this week as we will exchange our ornaments on Jan 21st. I picked a sweet design and found some silks and an overdyed Lakeside Linen that will work fine together. And finally, I am working on my drawn thread workshop. I hope to be able to post a few pictures at the end of this week.

Posted by dehandwerkboetiek at 9:07 PM CET

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Well, actually I have two new loves. The first is petit point and the second is our new Blomsterthread. I have converted a design by Der Feine Faden to Blomsterthread and am stitching it over one in petit point. It is such a pleasure to work on. I love how it it feels and how it looks. It really covers the linen wonderfully, you don't see any linen at all. Blomsterthread is not as "shiny" as regular cotton floss but with this design it just works great. The picture is a bit blurry, I will try to get a better one when I have finished it.

I also finished my Happy Bunny Bunny Day.  It took a moment to find the buttons, but they were in a most logical place. My mom is working hard to get it framed for me.

The Trilogy - Happy Bunny, Bunny Day/ Threads - recommended Weeks Dye Works and Sampler Threads/ Fabric - 32 count Belfast Summer Kahki

And this was my last finish in 2006. My mom helped me putting it together, she did the sewing part LOL. I think it really turned out cute. This will be the first ornament for our Christmas ornaments club in 2007. I can't wait to stitch more of these strawberries.

Posted by dehandwerkboetiek at 8:25 PM CET

Updated: 5 January 2007 8:28 PM CET

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It's been quite a while since I updated my weblog, but the last weeks before Christmas were just too busy. I hope to have another update on my trip to Ackworth up this week as well.

One of the things that kept me from blogging was my stitching on my parents'  Christmas gift. And even though we decided to get together a day earlier than planned, I managed to get it done in time.

This is the Quaker Santa from The Workbasket, stitched with 1 strand Gloriana Cranberry and Needlepoint Silk 991 on 40 count Newcastle Flax. I just loved stitchting this guy. It took quite a bit of time and silk as his coat is pretty solid stitching. We went to the framers'  today and selected a wonderful frame. I'll hope to remember to post another picture once he is framed.

Usually on Christmas I start a new Christmas project, which I hope to have finished by the following Christmas. Last year I started a needlepoint canvas by Pat Thode and since it is long from being finished, I decided not to give in to temptation. I instead started a new project from The Trilogy LOL. I really love this bunny and since I don't have a lot of spring/Easter projects stitched up, thought it was perfect. It is called Happy Bunny Bunny Day. I used the recommended Weeks Dye Works and Sampler Threads on 32 count Summer Khaki Belfast. This is how far I got.

I started Pat Thode's ornament from the Just Cross Stitch Christmas issue and just need to stitch the stars and the text. I want to change the word Merry to Kerst (Dutch for Christmas). Then I need to go and check which of her ornaments I haven't stitched yet. I know I didn't do the 2005 one but there are more. I haven't decided yet how to finish them. It might be that I will just frame them and put them in my hallway. Or make a wallhanging out of the first 10.  

Miss Murphy is really enjoying my presence these weeks. She's curled up on the couch or on one of the chairs most of the time, purring away. I really love it when she has her nose turned up like this.

As 2006 is close to an end, I am trying to make a list of what needs to be stitched in 2007 and what needs to be finished. I am determined to finish at least one large piece in 2007. Whether that will be And a Forest Grew or Moulin Rouge, I don't know yet. Then I have some smaller projects that need a few more hours and they're done. But first I need to make sure all the workshops for 2007 get stitched. I am already working on the drawn thread one and on a surprise one. It will take a while to get those out of the way, but they sure will be fun to stitch.

Posted by dehandwerkboetiek at 12:29 PM CET

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I read about this idea on several weblogs and finally decided to join. I joined Katrina's Pay it Forward challenge. Here is how it goes. I will send out a stitched gift (the challenge is for a crafted gift, but since I do stitching best, it will be stitched) to 5 recipients. You can sign up by leaving a comment on this post, just make sure I have your email addy to get in touch.

The only thing I ask is that you put this challenge on your weblog as well and pay the gift of a crafted surprise forward to another 5 persons.

It will be fun to select the projects and to decide on the method of finishing. Not to mention that I really like the idea that this will go around and around. So who's up for the challenge?

Posted by dehandwerkboetiek at 10:59 PM CET

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It has been really long since I updated my weblog, but now that the opening is over and life is almost getting back to normal, it is time to post a stitching update. I have been able to work on some projects over the past weeks. Especially in busy times I find that stitching is so relaxing for me. Just an hour of quiet time and a busy needle makes me a happy person.

The first project I worked on was a workshop I taught last Saturday. It is one of Jeannette Douglas Designs' Take Time to.. series. This time it was Take Time to Quilt (Autumn). I love how the colors show up and the variety of stitches is really amazing. Jeannette is such a talented designer and these Take time to series are really wonderful to stitch. You get a silk thread pack along with the design and Jeannette makes sure you have more than enough silks. Sorry for the blurry picture, it's the best I could do.

Then I thought I needed to start something new LOL. For some reason the trees and animals from AAFG aren't shouting loud enough for me to hear. So I picked up one of Little House Needleworks' new threadpacks. I choose Pumpkins as I really love this design and thought it was very fitting for the time of year. Included with the design are 5 skeins of Crescent Colours. This is another overdyed thread and I really like how it works. The colors for this design have subtle color changes which I prefer. I choose Belfast flax as fabric.

And then another new start. It's Celtic Birds from The Sunflower Seed. I am stitching this on 5cm raw linen banding over one thread with Gloriana Poinsettia. Originally I wanted to use a darker color of silk but couldn't find one that worked with the banding. I am planning on finishing this as a bookmark.

As the end of the year is getting closer I am thinking about which projects I would like to get finished before New Year's Eve. I know there are several unfinished projects that I could get done and then there are some that will take longer (AAFG and Moulin Rouge come to mind).

And this guy I definitely want to finish before the year is over. It's the ornament by Pat Thode in the Christmas issue of Just Cross Stitch. I really love Pat's santa's and this guy is just another great example. Below the santa it reads Merry on the chart, but I want to change that to Kerst (Dutch word for Christmas). I think I can make it fit.

And the very last picture is of a very dear project. This is what I call "emergency" stitching. Something that is very important to do, has a strict deadline and you only have little time to accomplish it. This little angel of hope is accompanying a very special person who has to undergo severe treatment. I hope that it will give her some hope when she needs it.

It's the ornament by Brightneedle in the JCS Christmas issue of this year. I stitched it, my mom sewed it and I attached the cording. It was stitched on 28 count Lugana.

Well, this has become quite a long update. I am about to leave for England for a few days for a special retreat at the Ackworth School in West Yorkshire. Once I am back, I will share pictures and stories here.

Posted by dehandwerkboetiek at 8:05 PM CET

Updated: 7 December 2006 10:58 PM CET

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We got everything (well, almost everything) done in time to open the shop last Thursday. And of course I am totally unbiased LOL but I think it looks really nice. I just love our "wall of thread", so that you can see all the colors easily and I think it is very inspiring. And it was so heartwarming to see so many customers over the past couple of days. And every day it was a pleasure to open the mailbox to find more cards. Below are some pictures I took on Friday I think.

This was taken from the entrance of the shop towards the back.

This is our wall of silk threads. We didn't have all the Gloriana colors in stock, but I will take a new picture when the wall is really full.

This is opposite from the counter. On the far right, on the door are all the workshops posted.

More threads towards the end of the shop, here you will find Blomsterthreads, Sampler Threads, Weeks Dye Works and Needle Necessities.

This was taken from a pretty awkward angle. Here you find two of our drawers with fabric. In the front you see all the venus threads and in the back of the picture our Petite Treasure braids from Rainbow Gallery as well as the Wildflowers (though you can't see them).

Now that the shop is open, life goes back to being as normal as it usually is. We will try to mail out orders on Friday as much as possible so that you receive your stash on Saturday. Nothing like some good stash to start the weekend with a happy face.

Yesterday I was able to finally get some stitching done. I had been working on Prairie Schooler's Autumn Leaves for a while and never got to finish it. So I sat down and stitched all that brown at the top of the design. I changed the words to Herfst instead of Autumn. I really enjoy stitching PS designs, I love the colors and the details.

Then a while back I also started a secret workshop project. I can't share it until the workshop is over (November 18th). It is a very special workshop, organized by 2 ladies who are celebrating their 50th birthday with a group of friends by doing the workshop. I thougth that was an excellent idea to celebrate such a special birthday.

And since I promised myself that I could start a new project once I had finished Fall Leaves, I did put in the first stitches for my parents' Christmas gift. Last year I didn't start until early December and I nearly didn't get it done in time. So, a little wiser this year, I decided to start in time. It is a French design, with 2 colors of green. I think it will be fun to stitch. I changed the threads from DMC to silk and love how it comes along.

I am sure that some of my readers will wonder what is happening to my And A Forest Grew. Well, I hope to pick it up this week. There are just a few more motifs to do and then the first page is stitched. I hope that over the next weeks I have a wee bit more time to stitch and this will definitely be in my rotation.

Posted by dehandwerkboetiek at 3:15 PM CET

Updated: 6 November 2006 8:28 PM CET

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This last weekend went by really quick. On Friday and Saturday we had the last shopdays in my parents farmhouse. It is so wonderful to meet new customers and see old friends coming in. We had the last pan of soup (well, except for a few workshops) and the last sandwiches. We are, hoever, so much looking forward to the new location and it looks as a lot of customers are excited with us. More about the new shoplocation later on.

Then yesterday my mom and I got up at 5:30am and left for Hamburg at 6:30am. Last year we went to this tradeshow for the first time and liked it enough to go back this year. Getting there takes about 3.5 hrs but we managed to miss a turn and it took us an hour longer. Good thing we had enough coffee left to drink another cup before we headed off to the show.

At the show we went to visit Tentakulum first. They offer a new range of spacedyed silk threads that we wanted to check out. Mom and I were both so impressed by the colors and the possibilities that we will order these new and exciting threads for the new shop. Below you can see the different threads they have.

After that we went to hunt for Danish Blomstergarn. This looks a bit like the DMC flowerthread and has wonderful colors. I don't think I have seen an online colorcatalogue, but we got one at the booth and I will see if I can scan it. I just used these threads in Fingerhut's Ajour Country Living and fell in love with them. Their mat/soft finishing is perfect. We found a good supplier and think we'll have in before we open the new shop.

On to Vaupel & Heilenbeck for more books and more banding. Their booth is always so impressive with finished models. It's a great place to get inspiration for new ways of finishing. We ordered the new Christmas book from Acufactum, a book with hysterical cats, some more MWI Stickgalerie books, some leaflets from designers that I didn't know before and the leaflet to stitch a 1 meter (approximately, I am pretty bad in guessing heights) Christmas tree. I was so impressed with this. Below you can see a picture of this wonderful tree. Once you are done stitching this, you don't need another Christmas tree in your house LOL.

We took a break for a cup of coffee and some lunch and went on to Zweigart. They had the best news ever. As of last Friday they have darkblue Belfast linen!!! Yes, that is linen!!! I am really excited about this. The story was/is that it was really hard to get linen dyed in a good dark blue color. And this is the best dark blue color you can imagine. Think of DMC 823. In the normal Zweigart quality. I can't wait to get this linen in the shop. We also ordered another new color Belfast which is hard to describe, it is a yellow/green color. And Newcastle is now available in no. 53 natural/raw as well. And we got a new Cashel color that is a soft buttery color. Very, very, very nice. And finally we picked up a new linen that is sort of pre-finished. It's Cashel linen, 48cm wide and has a hemstitch finishing around the long end with a seam. This will be perfect to make tablecloths or even bags. It will be available in 101 (antique white) and 53 (natural/raw).

After all that buying we went home really happy with all our new products. They still have to arrive in the shop, I will update the website as they come in. We have some exciting plans for the linen banding as well.

And as promised here is another pic of the new shop. I don't know if it is clear what these boards will be used for :). They will be used to hang all of our wonderful threads.

I love the grey/green color we used for the frames. We have used it on the doorposts as well and I am sure it will turn up at other places as well. We thought about painting some smaller frames too so that we can put needlework in it. The ceiling is supposed to go in this week, as soon as I have pics of that I will post them. Just a little more of a week to get most of the rough work done. After that we will use the last week to put everything in place.
 

Posted by dehandwerkboetiek at 9:43 AM MEST

Updated: 12 October 2006 9:47 PM MEST

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Over the past weeks I haven't had a lot of time to stitch, the new shop location is keeping us all busy and it seems that there are a millions things to take care of. Next time I visit, I will make some more pics, but here is one of my dad working in the storage space.

It is such a huge difference how it looks now. As for the shop itself, it is one big mess LOL. There is wood shavings everywhere, pots of paint, old papers, old sheets, all the heavy machinery and tools my dad and his friend who helps us use, I just couldn't take a decent photo. Hopefully next time I have more luck.

Some friends were wondering if I had completely forgotten And A Forest Grew. The answer is: not at all, I stitched on it last weekend and got quite a bit done. I had forgotten how time consuming it is to change colors so often, but I love how this piece is turning out. I am this close to being done with the first page. Just 13 more to go LOL.

There are some missing stitches here and there but I decided to do them when I could use the same color for some other motifs as well. I hope to get another session done the next weekend. Though with an upcoming trip to Hamburg, it may be a short one.

And to show that I do try to finish UFO's, I picked up Brightneedle's Spooky Halloween. I started this about a year ago I think and changed all the colors as I wanted to stitch it over 2 instead of over 1. I finished the square in the upperleft corner (just need to add some bats) and moved to do all the outline stitching on the other 4 remaining squares.

Who knows I might actually get this finished before Halloween this year. I never realized how much fun these 9 square designs from Brightneedle really are. There are a few more that I would love to stitch, but first I got to finish this one.

I am trying to get a few more pieces done, my 48 count project is about 60% done, but it's at my parents at the moment. I just love working on high count linens. The projects get to be so small and cute. Yesterday at the Merkwaardig day in Nijkerk, one of our customers showed us several of her tiny samplers and they are gorgeous. I hope to get a few done too over the next months.

Right now, it's back to the kitchen to prepare diner and get some more ordering done for the shop. Then tonight while watching the soccer games I can hopefully finish another square on my Halloween piece.

Posted by dehandwerkboetiek at 6:06 PM MEST

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Now that we have this gorgeous 48 count Italian linen in the shop, I decided to give it a try. It is not that hard to work on, it helps really to work with Qsnaps as the stretching of the fabric opens up the holes a bit. The design size is about 45 stitches wide and you can see that the stitches don't even measure up to 5cm. It is really tiny. Can you imagine stitching 9,5 stitches per centimeter?

I hope to get this finished in time for our next show. We will kit the design up with some 48 count Italian linen and some YLI silk so that stitchers can try it out. It's quite addictive to stitch such small things.

As for the shop, we had someone come over for the ceiling and apparantly he has a great suggestion for the lighting. As I couldn't be there, we'll visit his showroom on Friday and hopefully can decide then what we want to have. Now we need to figure out what to do with the wooden floor. And I need to decide how many boards we need for all the threads.

Posted by dehandwerkboetiek at 10:38 PM MEST

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It has been rather quiet here for the last weeks but that was due to good reasons. Over the past weeks we have been checking out a shop location in Roden and found one that we think is perfect. Well, it will be perfect once we open. On Friday I received the key and the last two days we have been busy checking what needs to be done, how it needs to be done, if we can do it ourselves or not and even what color of paint we need on the walls in the storageroom. It is soooooo excited to know that after 4 years we are able to move into a real shop location.

For me the picture of this key is a dream come true. Ever since I was a teenager and got really into cross stitch, I wanted to have my own shop. Starting the shop almost 4 years ago was a big step forward to that dream. I didn't know if I would ever be able to move to a shop location, but this past year, we discussed it several times. And now we are ready. We don't know yet when we will open, but we are hoping for the beginning of November. The shop will be open as usual and we will continue to mail out orders as well.

 

And for those of you who are wondering about the Kitty Pi Bed, here is a picture of a week ago:

As you can see Miss Murphy is not yet impressed by my efforts. I have been able to move to a circular needle right now and that makes the knitting a lot more pleasurable. I have done 15 of the 30 rows that will form the bottom of the bed and then have to do quite a few more. The rows are pretty long so it takes a while to go around.

No picture of And a Forest Grew, I haven't touched in in weeks. I doubt that over the next weeks I will have a lot of time to stitch, but hope that I can pick it up. It is a gorgeous project. For now I will go back to my knitting, Miss Murphy needs that Kitty Bed before the cold days get here.

Posted by dehandwerkboetiek at 8:04 PM MEST

Updated: 18 September 2006 12:02 PM MEST

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