Off Piste

underatopazsky

Dec 31

I was given a lovely new pair of embroidery scissors for my birthday last week and as I've managed to get a little downtime before panto hits next week, I decided to use a pattern/partial kit I bought a while ago on eBay to make a scissor keep for them.

The kit is by an American company, Shepherd's Bush, but when I looked at it closely, I wondered why on earth I'd bought it. I like the colours and I sort of like the sheep, but that's about it.

I decided to stitch it in single strands of stranded cotton on some of the 32 count linen left over from my floral blackwork tag in 2021. This was fine when I was stitching mostly outside in the summer, but in the winter light, much more difficult to use. By the time I'd finished what on earth that Lowry-style factory thing is and the mound the sheep is standing on, I had defaulted to my magnifying lamp.

I'd already started to deviate from the original design by this point. I'd decided not to fill in different colours between the cross stitches in the border as I prefer the contrast between the natural linen and the charcoal coloured thread. Ditto for the 'windows' in the thing on the right. I didn't want the huge cross shaped flowers on the mound, so they were left out too and I didn't like the design of the sheep very much either, so at this point the words, "Sod it," or something similar were uttered and I left the piste.

I'm a great lover of Herdwick sheep, or herdys as they are affectionately known in their native Lake District and I may have one or two of these little cuties around the house...

...so it was obvious to restitch the sheep as a herdy, with sturdy white legs in chain stitch, white teddy-bear face and dark grey fleece. The flowers work much better as eyelets rather than a block of four cross stitches and the scattering of French knot flowers on the mound hides some rather dodgy stitching done without the magnifier.

The obligatory finger shot to show how tiny it is:

The original design has some odd cross shapes and a peculiar elongated star in the sky, so they are going to be replaced with clouds. And I'm thinking that weird Lowry factory may come out and become a tree...