Thread palette

When I'm stitching, and especially when I'm stitching something with a few colours, I tend to have several threads on the go at the same time.  In order to keep them tidy until I need them again, I use a thread palette.

This is not a technical item - for the Banner, I've been using a piece of plastic that came in packaging for something or other, with holes punched in it, and the thread numbers written on in pencil.  I can then loop the threads through the holes, which stops them getting lost or tangled, and stops me from getting them mixed up:

While somewhat improvised, it's always worked fine, but even so, when I saw a mention on The Unbroken Thread of properly made ones for sale on eBay, naturally I popped over for a look.  Even more naturally, I bought a set:

They're made from MDF, with circles cut out in two sizes; I suppose the bigger one would be better for wools rather than finer threads.

According to the blurb, thead numbers can be written on in pencil and rubbed out again, though I must admit that when I tried that it smudged rather, though not too badly.

As luck would have it, the one with the smaller holes had exactly enough for the various threads and combinations that I'm using, so it couldn't have worked out better!

I can see I'm going to get a lot of use out of these over the years.

The very last wood avens

An even shorter post than last time, I'm afraid, as I've about run out of things to say about the flowers by now.  So, in amongst the latest crop of domestic catastrophes (my oven burst into flame, and subsequent investigations have turned up some expensive wiring problems), I have managed to battle on with the sewing.

And here are the very last wood avens:

Not long to go now - just two more sheets of flowers.

Second-last wood avens

A very quick post: there are a lot more wood avens on this panel, and I'm doing them on two sheets.  Here's the first, with the green sepals stitched:

Then with the yellow petals:

And completed, with the central area filled in with French knots:

There are (obviously) six flowers on this sheet, but just five on the next one, and then that's something else that can be ticked off the list!

Final (and fewer) ferns

Things have been really hectic at work leading up to a new product launch, which happened today, but which won't be of much interest to you unless you happen to work in the construction industry.  Late nights at the office have meant rather less time for sewing, but I've done bits when I can, and am very happy to say that I have now done the last ever ferns.  Even better, there were not only fewer of them than for the last couple of panels, but fewer than there ought to have been.

What do I mean by that?  Well, you may recall that throughout I've been hopeless at either tracing or stitching the right number of leaves, and ended up with more than I needed.  I saved these up, however, and the spare leaves make up most of two whole ferns:

All I needed to finish them off are a couple of trefoil tops and an extra leaf.

A also had a spare transfer for one fern (I miscounted an entire fern at one point), so I just needed to make new transfers for three full ones and the additional bits:

Going out with a flourish, I managed to miscount the number of leaves on one of them again, but at least I spotted this in time (or at least I think so; we may find I've gone hopelessly wrong one last time when I come to stitch them to the background).

Ironed on, framed up, and ready to go:

Outlined:

And finished!  Hooray!

(By the way, apologies for the ungrammatical 'St Cuthberts Banner' label; the new version of Blogger insists that the apostrophe in the label is an '&' and won't allow it.  Go figure.)