A New Obsession

I remember when I was about eight or nine my Mum taught me how to cross stich. I painstakingly decorated a little piece of fabric with a teeny rainbow. I couldn’t start it myself, or change colours, or finish it so I probably did a total of about twenty stitches of the entire thing myself.

Three or four years later, when I was heading back from America, my Uncle took me shopping for something to entertain me on the plane ride back. A quick trip to Walmart and I found a few little cross stich samples with flowers and baskets and things. This was back at the time when you could still take needles and scissors onto planes and I picked away at it for a little while on the flight but I still didn’t know how to start or finish and I got into a bit of a tangle.

Frustrated, I put them away and gave up.

Until Friday.

I’d found myself looking at knitting pattern books on Amazon, which led to other craft books on Amazon, which led to cross stitching patterns, which led to the little kits. And then I found myself routing around in the bottom of my knitting tub where I had tossed some little samplers I had been given years ago and never did anything with.

Quick bit of googling and I remembered what I was doing. Even better I kind of figured out how to start and finish without even looking it up. I didn’t even have any problems starting or finishing.

Within a couple of hours I had a cute little whale:

And then on Saturday I did a ladybird:

By the time I started on the ladybird I was worried that I was running out of projects. I only had one more, a rabbit, to do and then I would have nothing to feed my new-found addiction. Luckily I had a hair appointment scheduled so while we were down town I did a quick circuit of the charity shops. Oxfam yielded nothing (though they did have a cross stich magazine with a pattern for Bagpuss which I resisted the urge to buy) but Cancer Research came through.

I did worry slightly when I saw that most of the outside packaging is in Chinese, but the chart is clear and everything’s there. And it was only £4.50 which having looked at similar sized kits on Hobbycraft would’ve made it a lot more expensive originally. It’s got some sort of a sheep with pink horns which decorates a pink frilly cushion cover. Not necessarily my style but the pattern is definitely more me than bunches of flowers in baskets. Then I spotted a poppy kit for £1 and decided to go for that one as well, to help me build up to the big one.

The rabbit was duly started on Saturday and now looks something like this:

Which makes it my favourite of the lot so far. I definitely think I'm more drawn to the quirky cartoony ones over the more traditional looking projects. That said, the poppy is looking quite pretty and I'm impressed at how I'm getting on with it. I might even finish it before Thursday!

My knitting has kind of been on the back burner recently and I’ve been wanting to find a nice portable project to take with me to Edinburgh at the end of the week and I think that a cross stitch one will fit the bill. Expect to see a little more of my latest obsession around here in the future.

P.S. I'm not posting a Chapter-by-Chapter review this afternoon, or any afternoons this week, because having a cold last week kind of meant I wasn't up for reading or writing these posts. I'll be posting one on Friday this week and one next week (kind of how I used to) then I'll pick up as normal once I'm back from my graduation.