Lace days and a huge thankyou

The thank you first. This goes to Natalia of  http://scarletsailsminiatures.blogspot.com for sending me this book as the prize in her giveaway earlier this month.

It's a great book with lots of designs to stitch. I've managed to narrow it down to just four which I have to stitch as soon as possible. One of them I think I shall do at the scale described in the book so I need to buy supplies for that one as it's worked in Appleton's crewel wool - a thread I don't have in sufficient shades. The others I shall reduce in size and use stranded cotton on a finer canvas than the 18tpi recommended in the book. 

Now ... what are 'lace days' you ask? I have a good friend who is as keen on working needlelace as I am myself and we decided that we would get together every Monday to work on our lace together. Our first lace day was this week and we stitched from around 10am until 3.30pm - with breaks for cups of tea and lunch, of course.

So I thought I'd share with you what I'm working on at the moment ... I have a box which I plan to cover with silk fabric and applique these sycamore seed designs onto the lid. There will eventually be four pieces of lace - one for each corner.

This is the bit that I did on Monday - the picot edging to these 'leaves'. I'm really pleased with the way they're turning out and love the design that this variegated thread is making as I work around the edge.

And this is the book from which I got the patterns. Sadly out of print now, as all the needle lace books seem to be, but I got this copy from Amazon marketplace - second hand but in perfectly good condition.