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When you have your fabric all sorted and on the frame but no kit as it's still on its journey from Lithuania
I managed to get the stitch count from looking at the stock photo, the needle is marking the centre point with excess material rolled up at the bottom.

I understand the enthusiasm for getting ready to start a new piece

Are you going to mark the centre with a thread or marker pen so it is not lost?

Jo

I just took the needle out and the hole is sufficiently large enough for me to see where it is

Don't loose it

I am good at loosing things

Jo

Oh no I have a little Wrendale tin for all my needles

Meanwhile I've been stitching this one 'Crackers about Cheese'...

This is most certainly going to be adorable! Great start!

Carole

I love this one.

Jo

P.S. It was the hole I thought you might loose if it closed up

Steam.Jo wrote: Mon Aug 29, 2022 2:57 pm P.S. It was the hole I thought you might loose if it closed up

Sorry Jo! Confused.com

So the beginning of Riolis Juicy Apples #1938 - being used to Bothy Threads and the basic 2 strand cross stitches and maybe some half stitches and back stitch this one is going to take me a while. It's mostly 3 stranded cross stitches, but also some are combined colours, 2 strand crosses, 2 strand half stitch, 1 strand crosses and 1 strand half stitches. You can see in the photo the fuller 3 strand crosses on the bottom and "normal" 2 stranded at the top as an example. By luck I found a video on YouTube on how to start with 3 strands which has so far worked great! I usually do the loop method you see. I'm sure once I've done a lot more it will be a nice effect having the 3 stranded crosses to make it look fuller. I also have a cross stitch planner coming which I'm going to keep a record of all my projects

I think you will find it interesting working with three strands Nicola You can't use railroading to get the threads to lay flat so you might have to resort to some sort of layering tool.

I've been doing a fair bit of combinations of multiple colour threads over the last year and whatever you do don't do as I first did where there was two of one shade plus one of another: I made the mistake of pulling the two out as a pair which of course twisted round each other and that horrible twist always seemed to lay on top of the material for everyone to see . I found I had to pull each strand out separately and then combine them as a three strand thread and that way they twisted and untwisted as a set so it made it possible to get them to lay flat

Jo

Thank you so much for the tip Jo! Yes I may have to look into getting a layering tool from somewhere my stitches aren't perfect but I'm hoping they'll get better as I go along and get a rhythm going

Good start on the apples. I agree totally with what Jo says about multiple threads. I had gotten used to stitching HAEDs and mostly doing single strands on 28 count fabrics that when I started the afghan which is an 18 count fabric and uses full and fractional stitches and multi color threads it took some getting used to. Back to when Teresa Wentzler was my favorite designer. Doesn't take long to get used to it and while it does take a little longer, it does make the stitching more interesting (IMHO).

Looking forward to lots of updates!

Carole

Thank you so much Carole!

Your fattest tapestry needle will do for a laying tool temporarily. Or even a knitting needle, I'm told.

Progress pics of my two WIPs

Both are lookin good . The mice are absolutely adorable

Carole

Both are coming along nicely and the Bothy threads ones are just so much fun and so cute

Jo

As usual, your stitches and your progress are impressive. I need to do more stitching. It’s not that my stitchy bug has left me, I’ve just been doing a lot of traveling. (In the course of three weeks, I went to California, Washington, D.C., and Hawaii. And the fourth week, a friend from California was here for four days.)

What kind of stitching planner are you going to use? I’ve been looking at some and also thought maybe I can just make my own using either Excel or a paper calendar.

I bought this one Debby

Good progress on both projects
I have not done a project where some stitches are 2 strands and others 3. Interesting.