Progress, Purchases, Perle Cotton...

I have been steadily working on Floral Star.  Only one more part to go!

I have some new purchases that came in the mail today.  The first is the Robin Rendezvous kit by From Nancy's Needle.  

And the second being a set of counting pins from Etsy.  Yes, you can use a spare needle, but who does not like a pretty gadget?  What's nice about these pins is that they are thicker than usual counting pins or canvas pegs, so these really stick well and stay where you put them in 18 count canvas.  Some canvas pegs I have found slip right through or are very loose.  You can see these counting pins also come with a fastener on the end, so they will not fall out of your canvas should you turn it upside down to end a thread.

Here is a counting pin in action!

And finally here is a great link to getting tangle-free lengths of perle cotton straight from the DMC blog.  I was going about using perle cotton all wrong, and was getting huge tangled knots trying to pull a length out.  I have tried the method described in the link on the perle cotton used in Floral Star and it works wonderfully!

I am a member of the Counted Canvas board and Needlepoint board on Facebook.  I post progress pictures quite often.  Just a few days ago I received a comment from someone that said they had never seen Floral Star stitched how I was stitching it, that they had always seen it stitched starting in the middle.  So, I explained that although the directions say to start in the middle, I always like to start at the top left of a project.  I just count carefully.  This is my personal preference.  So, this person comes back and says, well, that makes it a lot harder, the way you stitch it.  

I am here to say that there is no stitching police coming to your house saying no, no, bad stitcher, you MUST follow the directions!  To me, the directions are actually guidelines from the designer.  They are not written in stone!  Do what you want!  If it works for you, that is all that matters.

Until next time...