Halfway through the year already. How did that happen?
The aerial map is filling up so quickly.
2024 so far
June days:
June
I really like the way the days are such different shapes on this year’s template. It feels like life. Some days feel longer or wider than others; some days have sharp corners; some days have crossing paths. Some days feel like running just to stand still.
June, detail
Some days were too hot.
June, detail
Every day, as always, just choosing thread and colour, letting stitches fall wherever they land. Marking the passage of time.
June detail
Today we can see the back of June.
the back of June
And tomorrow, July. Between times, the cloth lives in this cover. Part embroidery, part patchwork. If you missed it, you can read about the making of the cover here
The last day of May and another monthly block complete on this year’s stitch journal, marking time and witnessing the passage of days.
the year so far
May always feels like quite a long month to me but they all fly by in the end.
31 days in May
No real plan, as always. Just threading a needle and placing a few stitches every day. Watching what happens.
May, detail
Some of the stitches end up looking like footprints. Which is just what they are, really. Steps along tracks and paths that lead somewhere.
May, detail
People often ask about the curly/loopy stitching around the edge of some of the blocks. It’s just silk boucle yarn couched down with a fine thread. Nice effect with very little effort.
May detail
I’m easing into a more summery palette for this middle section of the year.
May, detail
As usual, I don’t always like every single block. It doesn’t matter. Each block only functions as a witness; it doesn’t have to be beautiful. We can’t undo the moments or go back in time and change the past, which is why I don’t ever unpick the stitches I don’t like. It is what it is, we acknowledge its faults, and we move on. As soon as each stitch is completed, it becomes part of the past and therefore can’t be altered. It can be very therapeutic to accept the imperfections.
The other side always interests me. In some cases I prefer it.
One of the challenges of being self-employed is that you have to do All The Tasks, including the tasks you don’t enjoy much and the ones you aren’t very good at. In addition to that, the less creative tasks (admin, accounting, stock control etc) seem to take a disproportionate amount of time, leaving less available ‘creative’ time. It’s merely an observation, not a complaint; I’m very happy with where I am, but also I’m often surprised by how little time or space there seems to be for my own work to grow and develop.
For me one of the tasks on the ‘meh’-list is self-promotion and marketing, so when someone is kind enough to do this for me, it really makes my day.
Jen has very thoughtfully taken the time to produce a really lovely response to my Intuitive Daily Stitching course here – a glowing review and some very lovely words. (Following the link may result in a pop-up asking if you want to subscribe to Substack – just click ‘no thanks’ and you should be able to see the post.)
If you haven’t already, you can sign up for the course on my Teachable site here.
It will probably be a while before I dye more fabric or threads, so what’s in the shop is currently all there is. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I may never be able to keep up with the demand for thread (it’s physically impossible for one person, I had mild repetitive strain injury from winding the last batch) so new thread will happen as and when I can fit it in.
For now, I need to set aside some time to read, gather some thoughts, and start some new work – more of which later.
This year’s overall plan was for it to look something like an aerial view of fields, a visual depiction of time and space. Each block is time taking up space, a few stitches marking the minutes that make up a life as well as a dimensional area on the cloth.
April daily stitching
I don’t generally set out to depict ‘an event’ or anything representing what happened that day. It’s usually just a few stitches to mark the passing of that time.
April daily stitching, detail
It’s not meant to be a way of remembering the minutiae of daily life, but a bigger picture of the way time (mostly) passes without us even noticing. It’s the opposite of ‘wasting time’, if there can be such a thing. It’s about noticing and honouring time, because time is what allows us to be present here and now.
April detail, random swirly back stitch with silk perle 8
And really there’s no such thing as ‘now’. As soon as you’ve formed the concept of ‘now’ the moment has passed, to be replaced by another, different moment. And you can’t grasp that one either before it disappears to be replaced by another. The moments continue, if we’re lucky, for some years until they cease. Time really is all we have, from our limited human perspective. It’s days in a life, unbelievably fragile yet tenacious.
April detail
I don’t know anything about cosmic time, or astrophysics, or geographical time, but I do know time definitely seems to speed up as you get older. Stitching it down doesn’t make any difference, but I suppose it probably makes me feel a bit better about it. I still don’t know where it goes.
April, the other side
If you’re interested in learning how to make something similar, my online course is available here.
And that was March. We’ve already lost an hour today here in the UK for British summer time so time is flying a little faster this weekend.
March on the stitch journalMarch
As always, a little stitching every day. Just to catch the moments and tie them down somehow, so they don’t fly away unnoticed.
March detailMarch detail
91 days of 2024 and the top third of this vintage linen cloth is filling up nicely:
Looking back
April lies ahead. The blankness of the space for the future always startles me a little.
April
I like to keep the back of the work accessible so that I can see where I’ve been. Sometimes I like it better than the front.
the back
Next month I think it will be time to make the Janet Clare artisan apron. I got the pattern and planned to start on it late last year but the house move got in the way. I’ll have a look for some suitable fabrics in my collection and will share my progress once I get going.
Artisan apron by Janet Clare
In the meantime, today is a family day at home enjoying the rest of this bank holiday weekend.
There were many ups and downs, but February brought us the new home for which we’ve been waiting.
new home
Most of the month was spent fretting, phoning estate agents and solicitors, and preparing.
February daily stitchingFebruary (detail)
Moving day itself was something I never want to experience again. We ended up having to exchange contracts and complete on the same day, which didn’t exactly go according to plan but we did finally get our keys at just gone 4pm. And here we are at last – it could have been worse, and in a few days the stress and fatigue will be just a memory.
Want to see my new work room? Here it is:
second bedroom
We’ve been focusing on sorting the kitchen, bedroom and bathroom so that we can function while we attend to the rest of the unpacking, so neither of us has unpacked our work spaces yet. My room is about 11 feet square, slightly bigger than in our last house. It’s north facing so will be cooler in the summer with more consistent light, and the view is mostly the surrounding back gardens. Our garden is tiny, but relatively private.
My room also has fitted wardrobes on one wall:
work room cupboards
Easily adaptable for thread and fabric storage. My first job will be to paint the walls, and possibly the floor – there is a very dark red/pink carpet, which I don’t like. Dark flooring tends to absorb a lot of light, which means you can’t always see colours as they really are. I’d like to paint the floor white, if the floorboards are good enough. If they’re not then I’ll think about a pale laminate floor instead.
You can see it will be a while before I can return to work, so the shop will remain closed for now. I’ve been looking forward to this since October and I want to enjoy organising it so I’ll take the time to get it right. It will take as long as it takes.
The entire month has passed in a blur of thread winding, dyeing, sorting and labelling, a task that is still very much ongoing.
But daily stitching counts the days and maps the path, creating lines of progress and marking the days in which standing still for a time becomes restorative.
January days
I’m loving this year’s template. I like the way every day is a slightly different shape, as they are in real life. Some days are short and fill up quickly; some days have awkward angles and sharp corners; some days feel a bit longer than they should.
January, detail
Looking back, I notice a lot of running stitch trundling along, charting a path and counting steps.
January detail
I think it’s probably my favourite stitch. It’s so versatile and can be very expressive. I like the way it moves forward one step at a time, putting one foot in front of the other just to keep going. I also like its simplicity and its capacity for trust. It doesn’t always know where it’s going but somehow it finds its way and ends up where it’s supposed to be.
I like the quietness of January, where nothing much happens. I enjoy the pale, muted colours of winter and the gentle light. I know some people don’t like the grey days and the long nights and are glad to see the back of it.
the back of January
Tomorrow is Imbolc, which marks the start of spring in the pagan calendar. It’s still cold, and the nights are still long, but you can see the light starting to change and there are snowdrops gamely battling on through the cold. Spring is on the way; you can smell it in the air.
In the meantime, I am still sorting through thread and fearing that I may never get to the end of it. But myself says keep calm and carry on and it will be done soon. If you’re waiting for thread, please keep an eye on the shop; all being well, the update will happen in a couple of days or so.
It takes time, I find, to get to know a new cloth before you can do the right thing for it. The new stitch journal for 2024 feels very different from the previous two years, despite being exactly the same vintage French linen. The main difference is its shape. It’s exactly the same size and scale – i.e. twelve A4 pages – but setting the monthly pages in a 3 x 4 grid formation is making it feel ‘bigger’ somehow.
Four days in January
As always, I don’t plan any day’s design in advance; it just happens in the moment. Sometimes that means unintentionally stitching something I end up not liking much. I’m not keen on the raincloud, for instance. The advantage of intuitive stitching is that it really doesn’t matter whether you like what you’ve stitched or not, nor does it matter if the stitches are wonky or irregular sizes. Some days it just is what it is. The point of it is to record time mindfully, so there’s no need to worry about how it turns out. And definitely no need to unpick.
3rd and 4th January
If you’re following my 2024 template, you can of course stitch the blocks in whatever order you choose. Personally I prefer each day to share a border with the previous and next blocks, so that they form a continuous stream of time.
I made a short video of yesterday’s stitch, weaving a new path between rows of herringbone stitch:
weaving between other stitches
And I’m also working on some other new beginnings, more of which later.
One day ends and a new one begins in the unbroken chain of time that makes up our life. It really doesn’t matter what day you begin this kind of practice; all the days join up regardless of the occasion.
1st January in progress
This year I’m using my 2024 template, which I’m imagining as a kind of map of the year. I sometimes think if life came with a map we’d probably all get to where we want to be a lot more efficiently. But I guess efficiency isn’t everything and I’m glad I ended up taking the long way round – the scenic route, I suppose we might call it.
As always, there is no plan apart from the template; each day will decide for itself what it wants to be. This practice, for me, has always been about witnessing the passage of time rather than marking events or occasions. I don’t often feel the need to remember what happened on a given day; it’s enough to know that I acknowledged the time passing.
I have no idea how this cloth will look by the end of December, but then I have no idea how my life will look by then either. It will be a voyage of discovery and an adventure as always.
a beginning
I’m using the same vintage metis (linen/cotton blend) as the last two years. You can often find this kind of fabric online by searching for vintage metis, or vintage French bed sheet. I’ve only just noticed that I’ve left it in its natural state, whereas last year I dipped it in tea to dull the whiteness a little. I’ve marked my outlines with plain old biro, because I know all the lines will be covered. If you’re stitching along and (for example) you want to leave gaps between the blocks, then you will want to use a less obtrusive method for marking out your daily sections.
To begin, I’ve done a very simple whipped running stitch in perle 12 cotton and silk, with a fine textured yarn couched around the edge, to suggest a ploughed field ready for sowing some seeds.
day one: running stitch in cotton, whipped with silk thread
I’m easing back into work-mode from tomorrow and will be thinking about all the seeds of ideas that might take root. I hope some wildflowers blow in as well.
And that’s that. I hadn’t anticipated when I started this in January that this year’s stitch journal might become a cloth book, but now I can’t see it as anything else.
2023: the year of the book
I’ve had a few messages recently asking if my PDFs or my online course include instructions for making the cloth book. They don’t, but there’s a blog post here that might help you to see how to make something similar.
New Year’s Eve inevitably encourages reflection on the days that have gone. There have been winter-into-spring days:
January/February
Spring days:
Early March
Long summer days:
June
Flowery summer days:
July
Early autumn days:
August
Autumn-into-winter days:
October
Actually let’s linger here for a moment as I think the leaves are my favourite:
Autumn leaves
Early winter days:
November
And ending at the beginning, in the winter:
December
Thank you so much for taking the time to visit and read my blog throughout the year. An especially huge thank you if you have purchased my PDFs, threads, fabrics, and online courses in the last twelve months – you have made it possible for me to make a living doing what I love. I’m enormously grateful to each and every one of you.
Tomorrow I’ll be starting on 2024, using my new template. I have no idea how it will work, but I’m looking forward to finding out. (A brief description of how I made the cover for it is here.)
2024: land ahoy!
I hope 2024 brings peace, joy and fulfilment to you. And – of course – some happy stitching.
