So last weekend I went to Bath to meet the super lovely Scruffy Badger for a Freehand Machine Embroidery workshp at the Makery.
It was amazing fun, but I did struggle to control the speed of my machine. It kept going a bit haywire until Susi, the teacher, put me on a different machine. It seemed the one I was on was misbehaving and the foot pedal was not sensitive enough to recognise when I wanted to GO SLOW.
I made the little piece below.
Am thinking I might frame it using an embroidery hoop. You can see ScruffyBadger's amazing creation here. Check out the lace on the knickers, awesome!!!
Now freehand machine embroidery has so many possibilities creatively. I want to try more. The drawback is my machine doesn't have the capacity to drop the feed dogs (the little spiky teeth that push the fabric forwards). So it seems I am starting to reach a point that my lovely machine is just too basic for what I want to do. Perhaps it's time to look in to upgrading my machine......
On Monday I started a 6 week beginners knitting and crochet class at the Folk House. So far I have learnt to knit and purl. We haven't learnt to cast on yet so I can't start making anything. But I know what I want to make once we have covered the basics. hand warmers!
Now lovely blog readers as Christmas is coming up and I want to start writing my Christmas list, can you recommend any good books for beginner knitters? I want to start with a few simple projects, with a variety of stitches and I like the look of chunky yarns. I know Karen has recommended The gentle art of knitting, and I do like the look of it.
Also recommendations for pieces of kit I may want to get, and good yarn suppliers would be ace.
Oh also last weekend I made a new Kelly skirt (you can see a sneak preview on Scruffy Badger's blog). But it's in the wash at the moment, so that blog post will probably have to wait till next weekend, so I can show you pictures of it in daylight.
