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Thursday, 4 November 2021

November TUSAL and my Stitching Library

    


It's TUSAL time!

Here is my TUSAL jar with two of my current projects:


On the right is my Stoney Creek 12 Days of Christmas.  I am catching up with Day 10 from last month and then moving on to Day 11.

On the left is our current Just Nan SAL Sampler.  We chose Christmas Elegance and have three months to stitch this one as it's a big one.  Only 12 bands but some are very large, like this first one:

stitched on 28 count off white evenweave

I'm stitching with White Perle #8 on off-white fabric so it's quite difficult to see in a photo.  But once I have added the colours and beads it should be OK.  It will certainly catch the light across the texture which is why I opted to use the charted Perle and not 2 strands of DMC cotton as I sometimes substitute.



What's on my Shelf?

This is a new feature I'm going to include on my TUSAL post until I run out of books! I started a Page on my Happy Dance blog for my Stitching Library and realised what a huge task it was so decided to break it down to one book per month. For the next four years...

This month's The People's Choice will be "Funny" so I looked for my funniest book.  I think this one comes under "Funny-peculiar" rather than "Funny haha"!

Title: The Art of Hairwork.  Hair Braiding and Jewelry (sic) of Sentiment with Catalog (sic) of Hair Jewelry (sic)
Author: Mark Campbell edited by Jules and Kaethe Kliot
Publisher: Lacis Publications
ISBN: 9780916896317



As you can tell from the imaginative spelling, this is a reproduction of an antique book from 1875.  Apparently, Mark Campbell was "frequently urged" to produce this book, such was the popularity of hair braiding at the time.



Basically, you acquire some nice, long, straight hair.  Set it up on your "braiding table" use lace bobbins around the edge and a weight in the centre:


Then you follow these simple instructions, to produce a braid which feeds down the hole in the centre of the table:


It's a combination of lace-making and French Knitting I suppose.  There are 112 different ways to braid the hair illustrated!

Once you have your braid, you can make these beautiful brooches or hair clips:


Or even beads to make necklaces!


They suggest combining different hair colours to make pleasing combinations, so make sure you have friends with a variety of hair colours happy to donate to a good crafty cause.


Finally, the Halloween Trick or Treat Blog Hop will be revealed on 7th November, so you have until then to keep guessing,






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6 comments:

  1. A Patchwork of Crafts5 November 2021 at 20:01

    Oh love that book in your collection, whilst I have used hair intentionally in my cross stitch projects in the past this is certainly a step beyond that.

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  2. Vickie5 November 2021 at 20:24

    Stoney Creek 12 Days of Christmas is coming along great! Christmas Elegance is looking very pretty. I would never have the patience to work with long strands of someone's hair!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. diamondc5 November 2021 at 21:19

    Jo: Lovely stitch design, I do not have a tusal jar maybe I should.
    The book you chose is a hoot, I had to giggle.

    Catherine

    ReplyDelete
  4. Leonore Winterer7 November 2021 at 11:42

    Great work on your stitching, and the book is quite...interesting! I think you'd get some odd looks if we went around wearing a hair-brooch today. But I assume many of the techniques in there can also be executed with yarn of some kind!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Denise :)7 November 2021 at 13:49

    Your 12 Days project is lovely! The book on stitching with hair is hilarious! Funny-peculiar, indeed!! :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Wendy30 November 2021 at 10:31

    The technique is kumihimo. You can do it with various cords and yarns or even wire.

    ReplyDelete

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