Hello and Welcome!

 

Hello and welcome!

I've been thinking about starting a blog for a while now, but over the last few weeks I've really felt like the time is right to create an online space for me.  I've had this blogging narrator voice in my head for weeks, constructing sentences, making stories, talking, talking, talking and bursting to be released.  I expect this is as a result of not sharing my projects, thoughts and opinions on social media since July. I deactivated my Instagram account due to my perceived (and probably quite real) feelings of overwhelm and pressure.  I stopped myself from deleting it in case I regretted it. Five months later the jury is still out but I have reactivated it. I have found I appreciate how it has been a record of the last four years of my life and I'm very glad of the friendships forged there. I certainly think I've been more productive and more 'present' since I've stopped being on Instagram but I've also felt a lot more isolated, disconnected and sometimes a bit adrift too. My 'real life' friends, a couple of close IG friends and my family have been a lifeline over the last 3 months. Once summer was over and the situation with the pandemic worsened again I could feel my mood dip a bit. I just hope that now I've actually got this blog together the voice in my head doesn't go silent and I get 'blogger's block' - if there is such a term?

I expect that I will be tweaking things on here for a while as I get to know how it works and how to use the many tools that are in a blog creation platform. This is apparently the simplest to master and I am sooooo "untechie" it's unreal but, with a bit of jiggery pokery, online tutorials, advice from a friend (with a very successful blog) and practical help from Chris I've managed to put together a very simple one. I think...times have certainly changed from when I worked as a competent PA in central London in the early 2000s!

If any of you follow me on Instagram @stitchy.kate then this will be pretty much the same type of thing. I hope I can write in a lighthearted and chatty way.  I'm sure I'll make some blunders, accidentally publish total nonsense - not this post of course ;) - and change bits and pieces as I go.  I think if I waited until everything was perfect then I would never publish it. So here it is in all its imperfect glory.  

So recently I've been making some embroidered floral hoops for my folksy shop which you can find here.

I started off making one as a birthday gift for a close friend who lives in London. We usually see each other around our birthdays every year - some time between September and November.  I mostly meet her in London and we go out for lunch and often visit Liberty for a spot of retail joy. This year due to "you know what" we couldn't. I really liked how it turned out so I spent the next two weeks making some similar ones to put in my etsy and folksy shops.  I got very obsessed with colonial knots and chain stitch and they are now the basis of many of my embroideries.  If you happen to be a "Stitchy" person then you'll understand that when you find the stitches that just speak to you, you just know.  I've flirted with seed stitch, split stitch, running stitch and pallestrina stitch and I really love them all but these two are my go to for any work now.

Along with the embroideries for sale I've been making some secret Christmas gifts and some Christmas cards, which I'll post about soon. This week I'm going to try not to panic about just how much work I still need to do on these gifts and get them posted off in good time.