November New Releases

Two new charts for November.  If you ran in to me on the Trail of Orts Tour, you will recognize the Spot On set of mini-mandalas that I brought along.  Susan at Red Gate Stitchery makes these very cool little drilled pendants of wood and acrylic and my thoughts immediately ran to tiny kaleidoscopic jewels that would fit just perfectly. You can ask your favorite LNS to stock or special order the pendant blanks, or you can buy them directly from Susan in her Etsy shop. The chart is $10 and should be available from your favorite shop.

DMC and a few hours to make a sweet little necklace!

 The Stitchers' Village is sponsoring a series of charts themed by asking where several designers' ideal home would be.  Ink Circles was #3 in their series, with the chart Village Square. (Rosewood Manor and Glendon Place were #1 and #2.)  "My village home is in a small town full of parks and trees and flowers. I can easily walk to the bookstore, the stitching shop, and the pub." I stitched it in Gloriana's Bluegrass Silk (you'll need 2 skeins) and Picture This Plus Icon Belfast linen, but it will obviously adapt to many a combo.

Village Square - #3 in the the Village Home series.

So, wherever it is that you call home, I invite you to pour a mug of your favorite brew (be it coffee, tea, or beer) and sit for a while and stitch. I'm pretty sure you deserve a little break.

Fan Love

I was recently delighted to see that the number of likes on the Ink Circles Facebook page had grown to the 3000 mark. I decided that this deserved a big thank you.

About this time, I was sharing some photos of stitching on wood and a friend (waves at Julia) pointed out that Red Gate Stitchery's skinny bamboo blank looked perfect for a T.A.R.D.I.S.

Occasionally there is a minor kerfluffle to bring it into the light, but many stitchers do not realize that practically every chart they see that pays tribute to a movie, a TV series, a superhero, a band, a song, anything to do with an empire run by a mouse wearing pants, etc., needs to be properly licensed to be legal. The ferocity with which the trademark holders swoop down on you depends on a few factors: their own in-house legal budget, how prominent/obscure the violation is, how much they think the artist is going to make, and whether Mercury is in retrograde.  Licensing is extremely expensive and really inhibits the commercial level cross-stitch designers from getting in the game. Swarms of hobbyist designers play (or are) ignorant and put up infringing charts for sale on Etsy or their blog or wherever.

So, absolutely no TARDIS charts coming from me. I offer instead a complimentary chart of this generic substitute: Perfectly Ordinary British Police Box. ( I really did look it up to ensure that a generic version did exist and they weren't invented just for the show.) No trademark. No money changing hands. No problems.

Click here to download my PDF.