“Black, white and one colour” embroidery course. First part of first exercise: make patterns, black on white, using a variety of pens.

I found this very relaxing and enjoyable. Just… make marks. Of whatever kind. Then make different kinds of marks. No expectations, no rules. Like stepping back into being a child and just doodling.

I made a bunch of patterns, and could have made more, if someone hadn’t occupied my stash of paper. I took that as a sign to call it a night.

I’ve signed up for an embroidery course for this autumn, in addition to the club I attend.

The club is very much a social thing – “turn up if you want and embroider whatever you want, or don’t embroider if that’s what you feel like today”. It’s fun and pleasant, gets me out of the house, meeting new people, embroidering more than I otherwise would. But a challenge it is not.

The course sounds like it will be really interesting. Titled Svart, vitt och en färg – “black, white and one colour” – it will focus on composition and graphical design in embroidery. I was super glad to find a course with such a modern and creative approach to embroidery – so many courses focus either on techniques and stitches, or particular established, traditional embroidery styles.

Today I went shopping for all the required materials listed for the course. It was a lot. The fabrics and threads made up less than half the list; the rest was all papers and paints and pens and brushes and crafts knife and cutting board and so on. Luckily I can borrow much of the basic stuff, like pens and brushes in various sizes, from Ingrid.

Embroidery club, first session of the term. I continue on my Stockholm embroidery, which is taking an absolute eternity. I’m half-way done at most. But: still enjoying it.

Today’s photo is a close-up showing the technique I use to fill in the crowns of the trees. Random, criss-corssing small stitches, sort of like overlapping rows of very mangled herringbone stitch.

The reverse side of the Stockholm embroidery, with all the loose thread ends. I could have fastened them or hidden them or something, but decided to leave them as-is. It’s working out decently well, although they are in the way a little bit.

Making progress on the trees. I’m not entirely happy with how they’re coming out because they look all flat, but I also don’t know what else to do, so I will keep going. Either it will all come together, or it won’t.

It’s World Embroidery Day today, which I discovered only by chance on Instagram. I just picked up my Stockholm embroidery again a few days ago – I need to make progress before the embroidery club starts up again to avoid endless shame – and continued today. I feel done with all the houses so I finally started on the trees now.

The best light was out on the deck, so that’s where I sat.

Without the discipline and routine of the bi-weekly embroidery club, how will I make any progress on this during the summer?

My Stockholm-themed embroidery is slowly moving forward. It feels like I’ve spent forever on the houses, and especially the little bitty windows. But today I did all of the red house on the left and then, boom, all three of the roofs on the right as well, which felt good.

It feels like the houses are taking forever. I think all I did today was tiny cross-stitch windows. They need to be aligned and more or less equally sized, and they’re small and fiddly. But they’re necessary, to hold down the long stitches of the house facades.

Made a start at the Stockholm embroidery at the embroidery club meeting today.

Yeah, this will take a while.

I’m using Bayeux stitch to fill all that space for the houses. I learned that stitch here at the embroidery club, and I really don’t know what I would have done here instead if I didn’t know this one. It fits so perfectly.