The Alphabet Club – K –

My entry for TAC this month is kind of a double treat, you’ll see what I mean 😉

This first post will be focused on idle nattering – the one coming up shortly afterwards is going to be a LONG post, jam-packed with pictures and finishes, so get your tea ready, grab a snack or whatever you fancy – it’s going to take a while. 😀 

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This month’s letter K is one of those letters that are missing from the Italian alphabet, so I knew I was going to either feature a random letter or something else of my choosing. Luckily my choice of WIP fell on a couple of pieces designed by Lizzie*Kate, no need to improvise too much! 😀 ❉

First I picked up a sweet little pre-finished ornament I bought back in 2011, Merry Little Bird. This project had seen a start at the time and an unfortunate one indeed; the placing of the design on this particular piece is crucial if you want it to resemble an actual bird with the words Merry and Christmas replacing its wings – well, I could swear I followed the instructions to the T but I still ended up with no room to attach the eye/button, plus a pretty misplaced Merry wing. At that point I felt so frustrated at the thought of having to frog it all out, I put the thing away and lost track of it until last year, when I did all the careful frogging, washed the fluff out and prepared to start it all over again; then you know how it is with good intentions and where they can often take you.. 😉

Cutting straight to 2016, the year of my WIPorn plan, I knew this fellow would have to go up on the Christmas tree at the end of the year and I was determined not to wait for December to pick it up, so I took out the prescribed Weeks Dye Works I bought especially for it back in the day and gave it a second chance.

A few details about this design: it’s stitched 2 over 2 with the prescribed Weeks Dye Works threads on the pre-finished bird ornament (it’s made of 28ct. cream linen) that came with the pattern, buttons & beads.

I must say it turned out beautifully and I’m really pleased I invested in three of these ornaments (in my defence it happened during a big sale) so that there would be a jolly flock perched on the Christmas tree.

I couldn’t find the other two semi-kits until last week, when I went looking for another pattern that is now MIA; apparently this is how my stash works: there always seems to be ONE thing I simply cannot find no matter how organised I get and how thoroughly I look — if it doesn’t want to show up, it won’t! 😱

Now just so you know, the two no longer missing birds traded places on the “MIA notice board” with the original patterns for Patches of Life by L’Atelier Perdu – I could find only the working copy for part 2, and sadly that’s completely useless without the rest. Do you too loose things this awkwardly and mysteriously? And do you know of any special trick to fix this utter nonsense? I can use all the help I can get! 😀

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❉ Now for something funny and completely unrelated: I’m writing this while spending time outside in the garden with BaBa, and when you’re with him something odd and funny is always very likely to happen (for instance, just now he stood up on his back paws like a suricate and looked around for minutes 😀 simply hilarious!). Anyway, when we’re outside he usually nibbles on grass from every side of the garden – as if it tastes differently depending on where it grows, and he might even be right, what do I know?! 😜 – well, when he does so, I tell him he’s not being a cat, he’s a capretta.

• capra is the Italian word for goat (in case you’re wondering it’s a female noun, so la capra is the goat; le capre the goats)
• formaggio di capra is goat cheese
• latte di capra is goat milk, etc.

but when you add -etta or -etto to the end of an Italian word, you make an hypocorism (we call it vezzeggiativo); basically you imply that the object the word describes is sweet, darling and small.

The exact same process works with casetta which is the hypocorism for casa (house/home), and disegnetto (a nice, sweet, little drawing).

You’re right, disegno is masculine therefore its hypocoristic form ends in -etto;

casa and capra are feminine therefore their hypocoristic forms end in -etta;

for plurals you have -etti (m) and -ette (f).

– end of random Italian lesson – 😀

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Going back to our K theme, after the bird I picked up another Lizzie*Kate WIP from my goal list for these months and had a whale of a time on part 2 and 3 of Holly & Hearts, the mystery Linda released in 2013. I started mine on November 5th 2014, and chose a 40ct. hand dyed linen & Nina’s Threads in a colour palette that slightly differed from the original, 1 over 2 as usual.

I made a few changes to the original design but nothing too intensive, for instance I knew from the start I would change the quote to the BE spelling of honour, just the way Dickens wrote it 😜

I left it somewhere at the beginning of 2015 with part 1 fully finished, but I was surprised at how quickly the rest stitched up – take a look! 😊

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I leave you here with my official K post for TAC but stay tuned for another EPIC update on finishes tomorrow!

Thank you so much for your interest in TAC and all these nerdy, foreign things 😊

Have a nice start of the week and happy stitching!

Chiara