Category Archives: Châtelaine

Waiting for my first Châtelaine kits

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On August 18 I placed an order for two smaller Châtelaine kits from the European Cross Stitch Company. On my order, I tried to add an extra piece of fabric for another project. I got an automated reply that my order had been recieved, but I got no confirmation or price for my special request. I also did not receive the PDF charts I had ordered for a long time. As I felt that I wanted some feedback on my order I contacted the European Cross Stitch Company with some questions. I got a swift and friendly reply where Cindy told med that they don’t process orders for charts before the rest of the order is ready to send out, and that my extra piece of fabric had been added to my order.

Two things confuse me about this practice:

1. Most, if not all, Châtelaines calls for DMC threads as well as all the special materials. You can find the required materials on the Internet, but I would prefer to look at the actual chart when ordering these threads to avoid errors. As I live in one of the most expensive countries in the world I usually order materials online, and when the materials for a Châtelaine finally arrive I want to be ready to start. It takes a while for an Internet order to arrive, so I want to place it as soon as possible.

2. When I make a special request on an order I really want a confirmation that it has been received, whether it is possible to fulfill and the price, even if I don’t ask for this specifically.

The whole point of this rant was actually to say that I received my two PDFs in my inbox on September 15! I assume this means that my materials have been shipped from the European Cross Stitch Co. (no e-mail with information about this either). I didn’t want to pay for the express delivery, so I don’t expect a tracking number, but a “Your package has been shipped”-e-mail would have been nice. Anyway, I read through all the instructions carefully and tried to figure out the pattern at once. I can’t wait for the materials to arrive. Normally this takes from 1 to 3 weeks: 1 week in the USA, 1 day to cross the Atlantic and an unknown amount of time at customs. When it clears customs the package should be at my post office the next day.

New stash – August 25, 2014

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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.
New-stash-2014-08-25.jpg

  • 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.