Floss organizers

Posted on September 1, 2014 by Karen

A while ago I bought a bunch of StitchBow Floss Holders from DMC when I was kitting my HAED Teddy Bear Stocking. The pattern calls for so many different colours that it required proper organization of the floss. I also bought a couple of the large plastic wallets that take 15 StitchBows. I am quite happy with the StitchBows, but I find the plastic wallets unpractical. It is difficult to put the StitchBows back in their pockets and the binder becomes too space demanding and hard to manage when it is open. I really wanted some kind of box that gave me a better overview of my stash. So I spent a couple of hours searching the Internet.

I first discovered that DMC used to make a box for StitchBow storage, but it is discontinued, so my search continued. After a while I found an online cross stitch store in South Korea that had exactly what I was looking for. The shop is called Yeidam Cross Stitch. They had plastic boxes that could take 100 StichBows each. The boxes can be seen here.

I have to admit that I was sceptical of ordering from South Korea, and the payment method was not very good. But the boxes weren’t very expensive, so I decided to take risk, and potentially eat the loss, and I ordered five boxes. That should be enough for the entire DMC line with room to spare.

It turned that I had worried needlessly and the boxes arrived in good condition. They took a while to arrive, but I believe the delay can attributed to transport and customs control.

when I first got the boxes I only had the materials for the HAED Teddy Bear Stocking and the first Passione Ricamo mystery, and I kept each kit in a seperate box.

This is a photo of my kit for the Passione Ricamo Fairy Mystery SAL 2012-2013. I removed the inside tray to make room for the bead jars, but I didn’t really need the tray for this one so it was not a problem.

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This is a photo of the thread for the HAED Teddy Bear Tree Stocking. I managed to fit all the floss in one box. It was a tight fit, but I got it all in and I find it a lot easier to use than the binder and plastic wallets.

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I have since bought more materials and I have found that I ended up using a little bit of one skein and a little bit of another one in the same color for another project, and this annoyed me as well as made it impossible to keep track of what I have. I have now put all my DMC into the boxes in numerical order. If a pattern calls for several skeins of one color over a large area, like a background, I will buy the skeins for that and keep them with the project, but for everything else I just use from the boxes. This is what they look like now.

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Yeidam also has smaller boxes, and I considered buying them for smaller projects, but for the moment I don’t see the need. I bought a DMC Gold Series StitchBow roll recently and I think it will serve my needs for transporting a project and if I want to keep a kit seperated I just use a ZipLock bag.

The only drawback of using the StitchBows is that I have not found a good way to keep leftover threads, so currently I just keep each thread in a small ZipLock with the number tag from the skein. This means that I can re-use the bags later for other threads, but it might get to chaotic and will need a revision later.

As I have recently bought my first silks I think I will use Floss-a-Way bags for those, but I have not made a definite decision yet.

New stash – August 25, 2014

Posted on August 25, 2014 by Karen

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.

Into the Deep – update November 19, 2013

Posted on November 19, 2013 by Karen

Well, at least I have started…

I am not really a fan of stitching a full page before moving to the next page, I like to finish logical pieces or colour blocks before moving on. As I have the entire pattern for the mermaid now I can stitch whatever I want in the order I prefer. This means that I started close to the center, with the tail.

New Passione Ricamo Mystery SAL – Into the Deep

Posted on May 28, 2013 by Karen

After the success of last year’s SAL (Stitch-a-long) Passione Ricamo has created a new SAL. This time it is in nine pieces and it is called “Into the Deep”.

You can purchase a subscription at Passione Ricamo until June 14 at 8 pm central European time (GMT +1). The price for the entire pattern is 12.90 euros. When you sign up you get a welcome message and a list of all the materials needed. The first part of the pattern will arrive on June 15.

Even though I am far from finishing last year’s SAL I signed up for this one as I would not like to miss out on a lovely pattern. I have ordered all the materials except the fabric and I am waiting for them to arrive. I joined the Facebook group of people who are going participate in the SAL, so maybe I will be more motivated to stitch more often.

PR Mystery SAL update, January 6th

Posted on January 6, 2013 by Karen

A couple of days before Christmas I finally finished gridding my fabric for the Passione Ricamo Mystery SAL. I also started stitching a little bit before I remembered to take a picture of the project before I begin. This image was taken on December 23rd.

The fabric is gridded and ready for the first stitches.

I have now stitched quite a lot over the holidays and I am quite happy with my progress. I have finished page 1, most of page 2 and a little bit of pages 3, 5 and 6. I have not started on the border yet, but I want to wait a little bit with that. It is more fun to see the picture emerge. There is currently only sky, but I am looking forward to starting the actual fairy.

Progress on the fairy on January 6th.

Passione Ricamo Fairy Mystery SAL

Posted on September 21, 2012 by Karen

I was very excited when I discovered the Passione Ricamo Fairy Mystery SAL. But then I discovered that the sign up was closed, and I could not participate. I thought it was a nice way to try a Passione Ricamo pattern, which is something I have thought about for a while. Last week I discovered that PR had opened up registration for “latecomers”, so I signed up at once. I don’t know how long this will be available, I cannot find any information about that on the site, so if you are interested you should act quickly. The price is 12 € for the whole pattern, which is paid in full upon signup via PayPal. This equals 1 €/month which I think is very cheap. Today I ordered all the materials for the pattern, so that I can start stitching soon. I am really looking forward to how this will end up.

Edit January 6th: I have now discovered that the registration is closed.

The Occasional Crafter

I stich and blog very occasionally

Category Archives: Cross Stitch