I got a package in the mail from Sew and So today. I finally caved and decided to order two kits for Châtelaines from European Cross Stitch Company, but I also really like the Boudoir Fan, which is a freebie that can be downloaded on the Châtelaine website, and decided to buy the materials for it. This is what I got in the mail today.

• DMC 333
• DMC 3812
• Waterlilies 099 Cocoa
• Waterlilies 131 Banana
• Silk ‘n Colors 073 Green Leaves Lt
• Silk ‘n Colors 112 Wild Violets
• Mill Hill seed beads 02010

I have wanted to stitch a Châtelaine since I first discovered them a while back, and I bought patterns for a couple of the big mandalas when there was a sale, but I haven’t dared to start any of them yet. The main reason is that kitting one up is quite expensive even if you don’t use all the special materials. I live in Norway and the availability of special materials is quite limited, at least I have not seen any of the materials required for a Châtelaine in a shop here and I have to buy them online. DMCs are available, but if I buy online anyway I can usually get them for about half the price of what they cost in a shop here. As Norway is also outside the EU it doesn’t really matter if I buy materials from countries in the EU or the rest of the world. The most important thing to consider is whether you get over the limit of import where you have to pay VAT which is currently around $ 33,50. I really don’t mind the VAT, but you also have to pay a flat fee to the handler on top of the VAT for their processing of the package which is annoying. This means that you have to make sure that the value of your package is under the limit or far enough above the limit so that the flat fee doesn’t become a too large percentage of your of your expense. I had forgotten this when I ordered from Sew and So and I thought the package would be caught by customs, but for some reason it ended up in my mail box without any extra charge. Because of all this I decided I could just buy the whole Châtelaine kits from European Cross Stitch.

I ordered the kits for Workshop 01 – Jessica and Workshop 02 – Rice as well as the PDF-patterns. I received a confirmation e-mail, but I have not received the patterns yet, something that I am not very happy about. I understand that there might be a wait for the materials, but the patterns are electronic files and could be e-mailed at once. Anyway, when I decided to do the freebie and buy the materials for that from Sew and So I also bought the DMCs for the two Workshops and those are the two that arrived today. I tried to order a fabric from European Cross Stitch for the freebie, but I haven’t heard back yet about that either. I plenty of other stuff to stitch in the meantime, so the wait for the materials is really not a problem.