Crewel: 21, originally uploaded by punquin.

It’s been so stressful around here, paying for two houses at once, so I’ve been taking time away from my computer to do crafty projects to relax myself. On the house-selling front, we are accepting an offer today. But, I won’t relax until we are past all possibility of the buyer backing out. Can you believe we’ve had 7 written offers before this? They were all too low, and didn’t respond to our counters. This buyer actually accepted our 5k higher counter offer. But, this post isn’t about that. It’s about my craft projects.

Anyone who knows me well enough personally, knows that I love to bead jewelry. Unfortunately, I haven’t really had money for beads lately. I did buy a $5 1 lb. grab bag of glass beads. You end up with a lot of broken, misfit beads, but you do get a lot of fun and interesting beads as well. So far, I’ve made three necklaces using those beads, and leftovers from my stash.

One project I’ve wanted to do for over a year is a crewel/jacobean embroidered bag. i have a bag my mom made that I love, love, love. Unfortunately, it is probably 30 years old, and the fibers are starting to degrade, I want to take apart the bag, do some repair work on the needlepoint, and frame it. But I also don’t want to loose my bag. So, I am making a recreation. Two recreations, actually. I will be doing one in the original colors, and one in vibrant colors of my choice. The design I am working on right now is the vibrant one. I am loving this kind of needle work. All the women in my family have done needle arts (in fact my aunt owns a store in New Mexico for it). I’ve enjoyed it, but get frustrated having to count to follow the patterns. I inevitably count wrong. This style of free embroidery that needs no counting is perfect! And, I don’t have to make a million X’s like in cross-stitch. There are so many interesting stitches.

I’ve been taking photos of my project as I progress. Here are a few. If you want to see more, just head over to the the set.