A Quaker Pinkeep

Although I didn't post all summer due to a lack of blank CD's (to back up all photos), I was busy stitching. I made this pinkeep for the HOE Summer Quaker exchange, but realized that I did not like the floss colors against the background. The background isn't really blue-grey--it's more of a mottled neutral. The reverse is covered with the batik yellow fabric that you see.

I gave it as a birthday present to someone with a summer birthday. They never responded, even to say whether or not they liked it. It took me a long time to stitch this with my aging eyesight. I have to wear magnifying glasses.

Memo to self: I will cross-stitch handmade gifts only for family and close friends who appreciate my work.

I took the pattern from an issue of the digital magazine "The Gift of Stitching."

Katrina's Pinkeep

This is the front of the pinkeep and the matching scissors fob that I made for Katrina in the Hooked on Exchanging project. It is DMC floss on (about) 32 ct. linen. The chart is a LHN/CCN collaboration from The Gift of Stitching magazine (a back issue). The entire pinkeep is sewn together, not glued, including the ribbon.


Here are the reverse sides:


The initials are taken from a Dover Publications book, Charted Monograms for Counted Cross Stitch.

The Gift of Stitching Magazine

I purchased and downloaded one back issue of this magazine. It was a simple and fast process. After saving it to my hard drive, I saved it to a disk. It's definitely worth the money. Even if you disregard one minor project, and take into consideration that I received only one part of a 4-part sampler series, the patterns are still worth over 3 X the cost of the issue.

I'll use one small project for an ongoing stitching exchange, another large project featuring cats as a birthday present to finish by July, and other smaller items as gifts.

I bought it to test the quality. I had wanted to download it and send the issue on a disk as a present to another stitcher (after erasing it completely from my computer), but that is not allowed. If you want to gift someone, you must know their email address as well as their street address, so that they can get the subscription information electronically. Only the subscribed person is allowed to download and use the issue(s).