Show Your Stash: Threads

I was kicking around the internet, as we are wont to do, and I found this "Show Your Stash" meme that the quilters were playing. (See original here.) No one ever asks to see my stash, I moped. I guess that a pile of natural colored linen is kind of boring. But thread! Now that can be beautiful. 

What thread do you usually stitch with? cotton floss. Silk if I'm feeling rich and naughty. (Not really.)

When you shop for threads, do you buy on impulse or do you buy only what you need? I usually go in with a list but if I happen to be in Fireside Stitchery, they entice me by telling me which colors have been discontinued. I suddenly feel compelled to stock up! (Especially on Weeks and Sampler Threads.)

How do you sort it? By manufacturer, and then alphabetically by name.

How do you store your thread? Most of my DMC is on bobbins, though I do have a storage cabinet for "extra" floss. My overdyeds are on rings in baskets. My silks and miscellaneous threads are in boxes.

What tips do you have for building a stash? Work on projects that call for lots of colors!

How much is too much? I'm not the expert on excess. Or rather, on not crossing the line over into excess.

How do you whittle your stash down when it's gotten too large? One year I realized I had gobs of threads I would never use so I sent them as Christmas presents. The only drawback to that is that people might have expected me to keep sending Christmas presents!

Do you have a current favorite in your stash? Let’s see it!

I'm hoping to make this a monthly meme, and to expand it to other aspects of our shared hobby. If you decide to answer, please link to your post in the comments. 

Weekend Surprise

I emerged from the garden (still weeding and mulching) to go visit babies today. When I opened the passenger door, lo! the missing floss. I never would have looked there (but I have taken everything out of my stitching bag four separate times).  Thanks to those who offered to replace it. It's wonderful to have such reliable stitching friends, the sort of friends who know how important such offers are. Cheers!

Day 28: More Magnets

I began the day thinking that the hat I was knitting was going to be my craft for the day. Ah, the best laid plans! For some reason I started knitting on a size 6 circular needle. I was going to need matching double pointed needles. So I went to the local craft store where I picked up size 7 dpns. I knit with my size 6 needles and quickly realized that I needed a shorter needle. Somehow I also realized that size 7 isn't size 6; the size of the dpns didn't match the circular needles. So I went back to the craft store looking for shorter needles and to return the size 7 dpns. They didn't have any shorter size 6 needles. When I came home, I really looked at the pattern. I needed size 7 needles. D'oh!

Today I went to the local knitting shop and cleared it all up. I have a short size 7 circular and a set of size 7 double pointed needles. Let's hope that clears up that mess!

Anyway, I found this cute project via Craft Gossip: embroidery floss bobbin magnets and I had all the materials. I used some old cardboard bobbins, so I could skip that first step. All of the plain colored ones are wrapped twice, but I only wrapped the overdyed floss ones once so that you could get a sense of the color. The plain red and blue are DMC, but wouldn't this be a great project for that "craft floss" people sometimes buy you (or a good way to use up cheap floss in kits)? The coral one is DMC perle cotton 12. The blue and white stripe is an old Needle Necessities thread; the pink and green is Southern Sweet Tea from Six Strand Sweets; and I'm thinking the last one is a Caron Wildflowers which has lost its label.

SBQ: Color

Just in time for Nablopomo, the Stitchers Blogging Question makes a comeback. Thanks, Lee and CinDC!


What's your favorite color of thread? Pick just one. Why do you like it? 
When I was younger I was a huge fan of purple. Back in high school in the 80s, I loved loved loved the combination of purple (majesty, magic, mystery) and green (life, nature, well being). According to some researchers green is the most restful color to the human eye while purple combines the restfulness of blue with the energy of red. Interestingly, almost 75% of preadolescent children like the color purple; it's true of my niece. I think that's because it is rather rare in nature so "different" which signals the "differentness," originality, or individualistic nature of the purple lover. So a natural for all those girls trying to assert their independence.

As I've aged, I've moved from purple down the scale to blue. Losing the energy of the red but gaining the restfulness of the blue. I've landed on periwinkle. I love periwinkle. I've stitched a needlework set  in it.


Periwinkle  has the properties of both blue--soothing, peaceful, dependable; actually slows human metabolism--and purple. Light purple, evokes romantic and nostalgic feelings. Some say it encourages creativity.

Good Juju

I'm totally off the rotation this week: working on the quilt for my niece and making Valentine's day cards for my grandmothers--still trying to write to them every month! And our home computer is having "issues" which are stressing me out. I told the dude to go buy a new one last weekend, but he'd rather just yell at this one. Why not? So it takes ages to get two photos onto the blog. Anyway it's sapping my low energy.

However, CinDC blames my lost poll for sweeping her box of floss off into the great wide open. Let's help her find it.

Needles with Ink

Today, google thought I should know about a story that a Harrisonburg, VA television station did about The Tattooed.

Annie Holloob spends a lot of her time reading to kids and [doing] arts [and] crafts from crocheting [to] cross stitch and needlepoint. She also has several tattoos.

You're kidding me! A tattooed woman does cross-stitch? Or is it a cross-stitcher is tattooed? It's just so crazy! (You realize that is sarcasm, yes?)

So here's a non-Friday quiz:
Are you tattooed? If you are, pop a note in the comments telling us what it is. If you're not tattooed, you can still play: what would your hypothetical tat be?

SBQ: Gettin' Flossie with it

Sorry about the title; I'm a little punchy today. I'm a bit relieved to have this question to write about; it gives me a chance to to think up one more stitching accessory that I can live without (to balance yesterday's top five). I just need one more, if you can think of anything.

How many different brands of “complete” embroidery floss sets do you own? How do you keep track of it? (i.e., spread sheet program, index cards, palm pilot, etc.)
I own only one set of complete floss: DMC. The DMC is in boxes organized numerically. The extra skeins are in the millennium keepsake chest.

I have a lot of Sampler Threads and Weeks Dye Works floss; a handful of Needle's Necessities, Caron flosses of all composition, and silk flosses from Krienik; a few skeins of Crescent Colors; and a couple skiens of Anchor. These are all kept in Ziploc bags.

To keep track I have an old "geek book"--with paper! checklists from the Stitcher's Pocket Inventory for most of the products I own. (I'm totally analog.) I haven't been keeping it up lately. What I usually do is take out the bag of ST or WDW, find what I need, make a list of what I don't have and pop over to Fireside Stitchery or Strawberry Sampler to get what I need.

I could use some kind of system whereby I can "check out" floss to a project. But that would be too much like workin'.

Not Sure I Like It

When I went to get the threads for the Souvenir Sampler at Fireside Stitchery, I had to make substitutions. They don't carry the suggested Needlepoint Silks. So I got Caron silks instead. Because I only had the NS numbers and vague descriptions, "mauve, light brown," and because I was there after their official closing time, I just grabbed what seemed right. I think the colors all work with the fabric and each other, but I'm not feeling it. They seem too bright and too early 90s--remember when every pattern called for 221, 502, and 931? The colors in the photo--and we know we can't rely on pictures--are more subdued and more "heritage" feeling, if I may borrow the scrappy term. The colors I'm using don't seem like my mom's kind of thing. To be honest, neither do the colors that are called for.

I've only done the very top row. I could start again. If I did, I could:
* use the DMC colors that I have

* get different silks from a local store

* order the Needlepoint silks online

Obviously, these solutions have different timelines associated with them. I could go upstairs and get the DMC right now. I could get local silks this weekend.

How does one solve this sort of dilemma?

What are we: morons performing brain surgery?

Can someone tell me why Just Cross Stitch continues to print Martha Beth Lewis’s bloated articles? A dissertation on finding the center of fabric with a coda about using Bent Creek’s or Twisted Threads’s three inch squares so you can start in the lower left or upper right corners… A Dickensian novel on replacing threads… Way too much about putting a needle into a hole in fabric... A Dummies manual on making an x...

I don’t mean to suggest that there is nothing complicated about counted thread work, no matter what the needlepointers say, especially when you consider that so many of the more interesting patterns that are coming out these days include several stitches. Beats the hell out of paint-by-numbers that’s involved in most needlepoint. How many people actually do a pattern the way it’s printed? Do we really need Ms Lewis explaining every step to us? Could she be more condescending?

Take the most recent article—the article on substituting threads. Pages and pages dedicated to considering what color to use, how thick the floss should be, what the luster will add to the mix. Any stitcher who doesn’t know that you should use flosses of equivalent thicknesses on fabric (or change the fabric, duh) ought to have her scissors taken away from her.

But in the end, I read them all—every word. It’s like watching a car crash. But when, oh when, will we get those pages back? Pages for designs, pages that interest even a smattering of the readership.

Next up: what’s the deal with Jesus?