Frederick the Literate Cross Stitch Project
Hello friends,
I recently began a new cross stitch project, Frederick the Literate, by Dimensions. This cross stitch kit has been a unicorn project of mine for years, but until recently I haven't been able to get hold of a copy of my own. When I usually try to track it down, it's always out of stock in New Zealand.
Luckily one of my sister's found it available on Spotlight's website, and it was on special, so I bought it immediately before it sold out. After waiting for what felt like forever, and dealing with courier issues (who nearly lost it), I cracked the kit open and got started.
The kit contains two of my favorite things, cats and books, so I was especially excited to start stitching, even though the background aida was black in colour...
As typical with Dimensions kits, the thread was on cards, so I used a hole punch to make space for threads in progress. And since Dimensions often use combined threads, I had to come up with a plan to deal with these mixed threads as well.
And this is my progress with Frederick the Literate cross stitch project so far. The books on the top row, in the middle, are in progress. I never do any back stitching on a project until the end, so right now the books are looking pretty blocky. It won't be too long though before I start cross stitching the cat, which I'm excited about.
Luckily this cross stitch project isn't too big, so it won't take too long to complete over the coming months of autumn and winter.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
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Gotland Fleece Project - Scouring, Washing, and Storing
Hello friends,
Back in April 2023 my husband and I went on a road trip to the Mackenzie country to celebrate our wedding anniversary. On the way home we stopped off at The Oamaru Textile Emporium (TOTE) to do a little crafting shopping. I'd been eyeing up their raw fleeces online, and spent some time in the store when I got there, going through all the raw fleeces they had available until I found the one I'd been looking for.
I've wanted to process and spin a Gotland sheep fleece for a while, and they had this beautiful chocolate grey fleece in the store. It came home with us, making the whole car smell quite sheepy as we traveled back to Dunedin...
When we got it home, I took the fleece out of it's plastic bag, and laid it out to see exactly what I had bought.
Back when I lived in Wellington I belonged to Creative Fibre New Zealand, and was an active member of the Tawa Fibrecrafts group. One of the many benefits of belonging to Creative Fibre NZ is taking part in one of their many courses, including one I attended on choosing raw fleeces, sorting them, and processing them.
I was very happy with the fleece when I laid it out, there were no second cuts, the fleece was in great condition, and all the unspinnable parts of the fleece had already been removed for me.
I invested in two books, The Spinner's Book of Fleece by Beth Smith, and Camaj Fibre Art's The Art of Washing Wool, Mohair, and Alpaca by Mary Egbert. These two books told me everything I needed to know about scouring and washing gotland fleece. Recently, now in 2025, I decided to scour and wash the Gotland fleece using Unicorn Fiber Power Scour, which is a wonderful detergent for scouring and washing unwashed fleeces. It's very gentle, but also removes all the dirt and lanolin from a fleece.
Filling a 6L tub with 60˚C water from out of our laundry room tap, I mixed in the calculated amount of Unicorn Scour Power mentioned on the bottle, and added the Gotland fleece which I'd put into laundry bags, and left each bag one at a time to gently soak in the scouring mix for 15 minutes.
As you can see from the photos, the scouring water turned a very muddy brown during the process, as the dirt and lanolin was removed from the fleece.
At the end of 15 minutes I lifted the laundry bag full of fleece out of the dirty water, and very gently squeezed out all the excess liquid. I then rinsed out the plastic tub to remove all the dirt and liquid, and then filled the tub back up with clean, hot water. I put the laundry bag back into the tub to rinse out the fleece for a minute with gentle swishing, to help remove even more dirt and lanolin from the fleece. At the end of this, I lifted out the laundry bag, removed the clean fleece, and then spun it in a hand-cranked salad spinner until it was as dry as it could be. From there, the fleece was placed in plastic containers which had good ventilation holes, they were laid out in the sun over the next couple of days until the fleece was dry.
Once dried, I placed most of the Gotland fleece into a brown paper shopping bag, and put it away in storage.
I flick carded a small sample of Gotland fleece remaining, so I could check the quality, and as you can see, the resulting clean fleece has a beautiful crimp, and the colour is a dark smoky grey/brown colour.
The handle is very soft, and over the coming months, I'll slowly flick card and then spin up some Gotland fleece singles. From the resulting yarn, I think I'll make a cozy winter jersey.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky.
Winter Aurora Cabin Cross Stitch Project Update
Hello friends,
Each winter I pull out my Aurora Cabin cross stitch kit by Dimensions, and stitch the lovely aurora and snow scene while the weather is cold. I never feel like stitching it in the other seasons, so it's now my winter cross stitching project.
At the beginning of winter I was only 25% finished, but now at the start of spring I think I'm at around 66% finished. I'm hoping to get the Aurora Cabin cross stitch project finished next winter.
And now that it's spring, I've begun a new cross stitch project, another Dimensions kit, Victorian Charm. My sister and I are both fans of the TV show Charmed, and this cross stitch kit reminds us of the house in the TV show.
Our plan is to stitch on this together over the spring and summer, and see how much progress we get. Luckily the aida fabric is a dark navy blue, so we don't have to fill in the night sky in full cross stitch. And I've made a very small start on this so far.
As this is a small project, not as big as the Aurora Cabin kit, I should make some good headway this year.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky
Framing Two Cross Stitch Projects
Hello friends,
Recently during our vacation at home I got a chance to frame two recent cross stitch finishes, Tonight We Ride, and also Gathering Acorns. Due to their shape and size, we didn't have any appropriate frames in our stash, so I had to pop along to Spotlight to hunt for some. Luckily they had a sale, so we got the frames for half price, and then I framed them using my normal cross stitch framing method.
The Tonight We Ride cross stitch project ended up in a big frame, as it was a weird size. I'm not sure where to put it yet, but it really looks great.
Luckily the Gathering Acorns cross stitch project was a standard size, so it was easy to frame, and it looks adorable on our bedroom wall.
I'm making great progress on my Dimensions Aurora Cabin cross stitch project, and I'm over halfway through now, but I doubt I'll get it finished before spring.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky.
May Handmaiden Spinning Fibre Club
Hello friends,
Today I'd like to share with you my May Handmaiden Spinning Fibre Club subscription, and how it looks now all spun up.
May's Handmaiden Fibre club, in autumnal shades of white, brown, orange and red, arrived all prettily wrapped up in tissue paper, and contained 100 grams of 80% machine-washable wool/20% nylon, a small plastic sock stitch marker, and a pattern for making Tinker Bell slippers. I decided to spin it up fine so I could make socks, so I broke the fibre braid in half to make a 2-ply, and then pulled out my trusty rimu drop spindle and got to work.
I love spinning with my drop spindle, because it's the easiest way to spin up super fine yarn for making socks, and it also increases the spinning time, which I find very relaxing. It took me a couple of weeks to spin up the two fine singles, and I loved the slow changing autumnal colours on my drop spindle as I spun.
I transferred the singles of yarn off the drop spindle and onto two spinning wheel bobbins for plying. Once that was done it didn't take very long at all to ply up the resulting 2 ply yarn on my Majacraft Suzie Pro spinning wheel. I prefer plying on my spinning wheel, as my drop spindle can't handle large amounts of plied yarn.
The plied yarn was in general fingering weight, and the autumnal colours were very pretty. After the plied yarn rested for a couple of days, I set the yarn by washing it in luke-warm soapy water.
The yarn is now all dry, and waiting to be knitted up. The final yarn is 2 ply, and is 265.5 m long.
Once a couple of other knitting projects are completed, I will be knitting up this hand spun yarn into socks.
Have a wonderful day
Julie-Ann
Want to discuss my post? Feel free to chat with me on Instagram or Mastodon or Bluesky.
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