August 18, 2007
Country folk
Living in a rural village in England is an experience! Although I've never lived in a city, our current village is much smaller than anywhere else I have called home.At one point we had 40 houses and 107 inhabitants, but the number of both has gone up a little, recently. The "newcomers" try hard to fit in and be treated as one of the locals but they have a long wait ahead of them.
My children are treated as locals because they were born here but although we have lived here for almost 26 years we are still considered "newcomers".
An easy way to spot if someone is a local is by their pronounciation of local village names. If letters are missed out then the chances are that person has lived in the area for quite some time. How would you say Winwick for example? Did you break it into two syllables, win and wick? Apparently it should be spoken as win - ick, missing out the W. Similarly, Catworth is locally known as cat - uth, and Buckworth is buck - uth.
I can get my head round these but the next one has me beat. Listening to the villagers talking about row - all how is a "newcomer" supposed to know it is spelled Rothwell?
Add in to the equation that I wander round the village with digicam in hand snapping all sorts of weird photos and I guess the locals will always treat me with a certain amount of suspicion. What is a needlework designer to do?
What's new on the site
I've added a new cross stitch freebie on the site of a cute little pink elephant. More new things below!
Exciting news!
I have been working hard on transitioning the site over to the new format. Thanks again everyone that helped me to choose. It takes longer than I expected to re-do pages, as when re-reading them I find ways to try and make them clearer and easier to understand.But there is something new on the site that has me really excited. Site Build It! who host the site released a new tool yesterday that will allow YOU to add your own pages to the site! Don't worry it is as easy as falling off a log.
Throughout the site I will be adding pages that contain an invitation to submit your own page. The first one to go up can be found under the new Show and Tell button on the navigation bar. This is the place for you to give honest feedback on any of my designs that you may have stitched. Whether it was a kit, a freebie or even the sampler we have been building here in the newsletter. You can easily upload a photo and then add some text into the box to tell your own thoughts on the quality of the charts, kits or instructions I have provided. Had a problem, tell everyone about it, found something really good you can sing my praises. (Hopefully there will be more of the second!)
Wait! There's more. You will also be able to add comments to other peoples pages. Share their joys or sadness. Give them hints if they have a problem. Ask them questions. It is all so easy a child could do it.
In time this should build up into a useful resource that new potential customers can check out before parting with their money. I am trusting that my hard work and hopefully good customer service will pay off and many of the comments will be favourable.
More exciting news
Recently I received an email from a lady in Australia who had visited the site and wanted to know if she could interview me for a book she is writing on successful women on the web. I was delighted to be picked and had an long and interesting chat with Sandy Forster last Wednesday morning starting just after 8.00am our time. I'll let you know if my "case study" is picked to be included.
Up the garden path sampler
Sad news I'm afraid. This is the last band in our samplers. Don't worry though we will do it all again with a new whitework piece soon!I heard from Erica, who has not only stitched all the bands so far but has done it three times over! She is stitching one for herself, another for her Mum and I'm not sure who the third one is for. She kindly sent me photos of all three for me to share with you. I have set up a page with a poll so you can vote on your favourite just for fun. My favourite is the blue one, how about you?
Right shall we get on with the final band now? You will find the chart below with the bottom of last months in place to aid your counting.
The yellow crosses represent the fishes eyes and can be worked as crosses or you could attach beads
The diagram below shows the order to stitch the fish. Just follow the red numbered stitches in each section. The red stitches are then coloured black in the following section and you once again work the red stitches. Continue until the fish is complete.
Please tell me no-one else thinks my fishes look like Christmas crackers?
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See you next month,
Regards,
Carol
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