The Smithsonian Institution Window Crewel Pillow by Mazaltov's

 O.K. I,m back ! I have been flitting about from one project to another , not being able to settle on any one thing . The pandemic has really unsettled me and unlike other people who have taken up new hobbies and learnt new skills during the lockdowns .....I have just found myself ..well ....frozen !

I have a more serious project being prepared in the background , I am still gathering everything I need for that and I need time alone ,solitude , in absolute peace and quiet . It has been very hard to find , peace and quiet and solitude .

So anyway , in the meantime I have found a vintage kit that I can carry with me on our travels , doing a little here and there , now and then . Nice and easy , not worry about it too much .

I,m sorry I don't seem to have taken a picture of the kit in it's packet , I,ll have to take one and  add it later ,  but it is the Smithsonion Institution Window Crewel Pillow by Mazaltov's . A complete unstarted kit , probably dating from the 1970's I should think .

                                                   It turned out to be a right pain ! 

I began stitching it and it seemed to me that the colours were just not right somehow .

I carried on with it according to the instructions . There are only two shades of blue and two shades of green so I thought it must be correct ?

I embroidered the whole of this border in very fiddly whipped stem stich  .

I was thinking to myself " do I stitch this according to the instructions or how it looks on the picture ?

I decided to do it - as it looks on the picture . After all , the picture of the completed design was the reason I chose the kit !

I worked out in my mind that it very much looked to me as if whoever had bought this kit originally , they maybe took one look at the scary instructions and gave up without even starting it ....then maybe they used some of the wool for something else and then when they decided to re-sell the kit , replaced the missing wool with  the wrong colour shades . The wool was all unravelled and I really did need to sort it all out and make each colour into nice tidy twisted skeins .

I cant believe that the manufacturer would have put the wrong wool shades into the kit .

      So , I sorted out the correct looking shades from my hoard .

Unpicked most of it , that pale yellowy green really offended the eye ! I might leave the fiddly Whipped stem stitch , it took me so long to do !

                                          ......   and started again !