African Animals Needlebook

I finished this last night. I think it came out quite well.

African Animals Needlebook

I've now finished the basic stitching. I just have to block it and then I'll do all the edge stitching and sew it up.

African Animals Needlebook

More on the needlecase, I've done almost all the non-blended colours, just one left in the middle of the spots.

African Animals Needlebook

The latest on this:

There won't be another gecko on this case. But I do have the matching scissor case so there'll be another gecko there.

African Animals Needlebook

I have beaded the gecko now and done a bit more of the stitching.

New starts

I thought I'd be clever and just take a couple of little kits to work on on the plane. Cos I'm not a great traveller and tend not to be able to concentrate on things for very long while moving. And of course then there are the scissor restrictions and lack of space and lighting and so on. So if I took kits with precut threads then I could leave the ends hanging and just cut them off when we arrived. Good theory.

But, I forgot to think about beads. Both the kits I selected had beads in them, and I wasn't brave enough to try beading on an aeroplane - especially one where the seatbelt sign kept coming on due to turbulence. The kids loved the turbulence - coming in to land they were treating it like a roller coaster - arms in the air and squealing with delight every time the bottom fell out of our stomachs and wanting more. Not sure too many other passengers agreed with them.

Anyway - both kits I took were from Sue Hawkins. The first was a brooch - I did all the stitching up to the beading bit and then put it aside.

The second is a needlebook and I was supposed to bead the gecko first and then do the tent stitch. So I started on the tent stitch - didn't get too far though.

Of the two kits the better one to take was the brooch - partly because there were only two colours to deal with - the multicolour and the navy for attaching the beads. This meant there was very little colour sorting to start with, and once stitching I didn't have to think about changing colours.

The needlecase had a lot more colours to sort - somewhat a challenge in aeroplane lighting, and of course wanted me to bead first. The tent stitch also proved almost too small for me to easily do on the plane.

If I was going to do this again, I'd think first and not take anything with beads, but otherwise I'd stick with something small and few colours like the brooch. Sue Hawkins has a number of kits that would be suitable, so it wouldn't be hard to pick something.