Yes , long hot Cornish summer days are here again ....and the local beaches are full of happy families , ice-creams , buckets and spades , sand castles , surf -boards and sun cream !
Not for me...I,m sitting in our summer house in the shade with a fan on to cool me down and enjoying some stitching time ... it's too hot to do any gardening .
I,ve completed quite a bit more and am putting in the little details .
I thought I,d try and embroider the veins on the Pansies .......
........well , I wondered if I could ....I,m using crewel wool..which is quite thin ...thinner than tapestry wool ....
....but still too thick for the delicate veins . So I thought I,d try splitting the crewel wool . It was a bit fiddly but not impossible !
It didn't have to be perfect , I just wanted to give a suggestion of them being Pansies .
This would probably look better worked in embroidery cottons or silk ...fuzzy wuzzy Pansies ... lol !
Crewel wool is not really all that happy being split apart , as you can see in this pic...but it can be done ...it is not too bad if you use a much shorter length than usual and be very , very gentle with it .
I,ve added more flowers and outlined some of the basket to make it stand out more .
I always have a little Robin following me when I ,m gardening ...so I put him in from another vintage embroidery transfer .....and pots with Pelargoniums...blue Lobelia .
Then I thought......bees !
Bzzzzzzzz .... By the way , the Red Hot Poker flowers I worked in Bullion stitch with my chenille needle .
I sought advice from Mary Corbet over at https://www.needlenthread.com/ about a suitable make of needles ....but I think the American Bullion Needle size numbers seem to be different to ours over here in the U.K.
Then I discovered Tulip Hiroshima Bullion Knot Needles "Big Eye"..these are brilliant and make nice straight bullion knots ...unlike the ones I did with my Chenille needle .......however ...I like the way the knots turned out sort of fat at the bottom and more like Kniphofia flowers ! See what I mean in the pic above .
Now I have several packets of ordinary Bullion Knot Needles in different makes and sizes AND these lovely Tulip Hiroshima Bullion Knot needles to play with !
..............then I got carried away and maybe put in too many bees !
Sometimes it's just nice to get carried away ..takes me away from thoughts of things going on out there in the world . Happy here in my own little world !
