Still testing.

There are things that we see, or use, that look easy. Easy as pie, and they are convenient and quickly picked up or quickly used, and nobody ever thinks about how much work has gone into them.

Take a book, for instance. It has contents (hopefully!) and a cover and a price, and there is writing and cover artwork and editing and layouting and printing going on before you can pick it up and settle down for a nice read. Or a film - even if you know that there will me much, much more that is filmed before the cuts reduce it, it's still something different to experience it yourself.

The same is true for something like an embroidery kit. Which tells you that I am still working on it - this iteration, there is tweaking and testing of the pre-drawing, taking still more notes about what needs to go into the instructions, and testing of how well the frame works for all this. I'm also testing the needles that will be included in the kit and making exact notes of how much thread is used for which of the parts. Meanwhile, the fabric for the final version has been sent off to be dyed, and I want to have finished this second prototype by the time it gets back here.


It's not the final pre-drawing, but pretty close to how it will be, both regarding shape, size and placement. The frame on a closer look (and especially upon touch) is obviously not real wood, but it looks very nice in combination with the dark blue fabric. As I want the kit to be so complete that you can get started right away and end with something that can be used as decoration without further ado, this frame is the perfect solution even though it's very modern.

And this is how the embroidery looks at the moment:






As you can see, I have not progressed so very far. I hope to find a bit of time this evening, though, so that I can at least finish the middle leaf!

The cat, meanwhile, is thoroughly un-impressed: