Stash

Stash is an integral part of any enthusiastic crafter's life. You never know when xyz will come in handy or when you'll get an inspiration for something, so you tend to stockpile leftovers, hoard old buttons and so on. My whole stash is contained (barely) in around ten boxes, umpteen bags, eleven magazine racks and an entire bureau. At some point I will tidy up a bit and take a picture of my "workstation" (which really is only a workstation for jewellery making, everything else gets done in front of the telly!) and shelves.

Stash has a specific pertinence to cross-stitchers - it's very rare to come across a stitcher who doesn't have at least a couple of kits put away to move on to. I have several types of stash - prepackaged kits, WIPs and chart-onlys, the latter of which also refers to the gods-awful number of magazines I have and desperately need to do something with before they take over the house. That's all a bit nebulous because there are so many in the magazines which I want to do that I should technically be stitching until I'm 378, but you still can't stop buying stash...

Here is a list of my prepackaged kits, at any rate. At some point I'll photograph my embarrassing number of WIPs and you can all shout at me to get them finished before I crack open any of these:

• John Clayton Owl In Flight, on aida
  
• Heritage Stitchcraft/John Clayton Black Mulberry Leaf, Downy Birch Leaf and Norway Maple Leaf, all on evenweave - I plan to frame this as a triptych
  
• Derwentwater Designs Delphiniums and Foxgloves, both on linen
• Bothy Threads Row of Fairies on aida.
  

Actually that doesn't look like many but there's a minimum of two years of stitching there (given my couple of hours a night), and that's not taking into account my doing round robins and other projects. I've got three or four chart-onlys in that box as well - the Desiderata and the Kwan Yin I mentioned in previous posts being two of them; they're both huge.

I love John Clayton's artwork - I'd love to stitch some of the International designs and the rest of the Birds in Flight series as well, but I'll no doubt be 40-odd before that happens!