New year's stitching

I may not have been doing minis but I have been busy stitching over the holiday. I think I mentioned the other day that I'd crocheted a scarf ...

 The last thing in the world that I needed was another scarf but I just fell in love with this yarn and couldn't resist. I got the pattern free from Ravelry and, although I'm really only a beginner when it comes to crochet, it was really easy to do.

My local branch of the Embroiderers Guild has just embarked on a two year project on 17th Century embroidery, the end goal being to produce enough work to stage an exhibition which we hope to set up in a number of different venues in the future. We started out just before Christmas gathering images of 17th century designs and putting them together in workbooks. I thought I'd show you just a few of the pages from mine.

The tree of life is a recurring theme and many of them contain a whole range of little creatures so I worked this cute snail and butterfly in blackwork as a tiny sample to add to this page. He's a much friendlier snail than the ones in my garden which eat my vegetables!

Many old paintings contain wonderfully detailed images of the clothing of the time, many of which were embellished with blackwork, embroidery and lace. This page includes another sample of blackwork - this time showing acorns and oak leaves.

I'm not too sure what form my final embroidered pieces for the exhibition will take but I'm fairly sure that at least one will be worked in my favourite needle lace. Here's a sample piece I worked of a very stylised leaf.