Tales from Periphaeria

Would you like to stitch without having to spend money for the supplies and the design? Would you love to be an important part in bringing a new cross stitch design to market? Would you love to work with a cross stitch designer? Would you be able to stitch against deadline?

Would you want to tell your significant other that you just have to stitch because you are actually working?

I have the solution for you: I am in dire need of model stitchers!

Since Periphaeria Designs was born my life has changed so drastically that I just don’t have time to stitch much, but as I did and do design and have wide design stash just waiting to be stitched I need your help.

If this sounds like something you might want to do here is how it goes with me:

1. I will provide you with everything you need to stitch the design: fabric, floss, needle and the design. After you are done you will get to keep the chart and leftover materials.

2. You commit to stitch the design and return it to me by mail. You don’t need to finish the item, I will do that.

3. You commit to keep track of how much floss you use and report that to me and look for charting errors in the designs, of which you will inform me.

4. You are not allowed to publish pictures about the design before it has been published. Which means no WIP pictures, but I will provide you with picture (and the design in its official form) after the launch.

5. Naturally you will not share the chart itself with anyone, not in printed or electronic form, not prior or after the design is published.

6. I am not able to pay actual money, but you get project supplies for free, keep the excess floss and there is also fame: you will be credited in the design information as a model stitcher.

7. I may ask progress pictures from you to be sent through email.

It may sound awfully strict, but actually isn’t.

If you find yourself interested I would love to hear from you at periphaeria (at) email dot com (at and dot written as corresponding symbols).
Please include also the following information:

1. Link to your blog (I love a stitchy blog as much as any other stitcher!) or online photo album – or attach some pictures to the email – containing your stitching work.

2. Are you able to stitch

1. using silks or specialty fibers
2. with beads
3. on linen
4. over one, and on how high counts?

3. How fast stitcher are you?

4. Do you have time constraints (family, work etc.) or do you have nothing but time in your hands? (This is not a selection factor per se, I just need to know.)

5. Are you confident stitching big projects, especially under deadline?

5. What is the highest count you can work on? (I use fabrics up to 40 count.)

Please note that you have to be able to stitch on evenweaves as I never use aida in my models.

I am especially looking for people who could do big projects in reasonable amount of time when needed, but do also need stitchers for small projects.

Any questions? Want to try your luck? Just email me! (Only emails. Comments regarding model stitching will not be answered – I need you to be able to understand directions, you see. )

I was asked what Å, Ä and Ö mean. Those are the final three alphabets of Finnish (which is my native language) alphabet and they are used in our language (basically Å is not used in Finnish, but Swedish does and it is our second official language).

Ä and Ö are very difficult vowels to pronounce for anyone who hasn’t got Finnish “from their mother’s milk” (as we say it).

The thing is that there are no, that I am aware of, alphabet samplers with all Finnish alphabets in them so I have decided to change this.
When I was designing “Star Sampler” my initial thought with the ABC was that as the sampler itself is influenced by my origin it should also carry my native alphabet to make it “right”.

Those of you who wish to discard those last three letters can, for example, add their monograms and year there (the official plan is to add the date and monograms into the hollow space in the bottom border), or maybe make a border out of the motifs bordering Å,Ä and Ö; like this:

There are tons of possibilities and only limitation is your creativity. (Person who asked about the letters had a great idea to replace them: she replaces the alphabet with her husband’s, son’s and her own name. )

There is, however, an ABC biscornu with all Finnish alphabets in it and that is the “ABC biscornu” from my last design launch.

I have just got the questionable honour to report my first copyright infringement to a $SERVICE_PROVIDER. Does this mean that I am famous now?
I knew, when getting into designing, that there will be people who will steal from me like that, people who won’t respect my right to my intellectual property as I know there are designers who are so plagued by this phenomenon that they use most of their days reporting infringements and not doing what they are good at and what they love: design.

If you purchase my designs, never share them with anyone and respect my copyrights I thank you. If you have the mental spine to preach for the artist’s right for their creation, I am more than thankful, as the world needs you, us, needlework designers need you to help us to spread the knowledge.
If you purchase my designs and “share” them, or if you only stitch my designs without paying a dime of the think of this: would you steal the fabric and floss you use? No, because it’s a crime, as much of a crime as is stealing the pattern, stealing those few cents from the artist who created the design you love to stitch.

To end this with a funny anecdote: Guess was I amazed when I read the latest The Gift of Stitching and noticed that Helga Mandl’s design published in the magazine uses exactly same clover than a design combo I have designed a while ago and which I am currently model stitching for St. Patrick’s Day?
Great minds think alike, it seems and I had to send a courtesy email to Helga right away, just in case there won’t be questions of imitation. (In this case it’s fortunate that motifs, like clovers, can’t be copyrighted as such, only the final design.)

Yes, I am publishing a set of St. Patrick’s Day’s designs soon!

Firstly, I am happily amazed by the response the Mystery has got. The newsletter subscriber list is getting very long very fast so I hope we can see many versions of the sampler stitched!

Secondly, if you are curious to get some sneak peeks about the Valentine’s launch visit Gallery’s Works-In-Progress album.
Some of the teasers are rather blurry as for some reason I haven’t been able to get sharp pictures lately… ah well.

Now, I will make brew some strong coffee for myself and prepare the designs for sale – keep thumbs up that it is sunny tomorrow so I can get some lovely daylight pictures of the models!

Happy New Year to you! I hope your year will be prosperous in every possible way and stash fairies will grow your stash!

I just heard that One Star’s Light Needlework Supplies will have a 25% off from your entire order sale at 23rd of November!
The coupon code to get the 25% off will be posted to OSL’s website at 12:00 AM on Friday and good through 11:59 PM. (OSL is located in PA, to help you deduce the appr. time.)

As an old and satisfied customer of One Star’s Light I can really recommend the store (I wouldn’t post this otherwise!) and Jenna has really yummy selection (the Crescent Colours’ silks are to die for ) in addition to her good service and fast shipping.

You can’t miss a GOOD sale can you?

Those who know my personal blog also know that I am a meme addict… but I was tagged as Lady P. by Kristina from the Lekker Threads so here it comes, a meme:

The rules:

1. You have to post these rules before you give the facts.
2. Players, you must list one fact that is somehow relevant to your life for each letter of your middle name.
3. If you don’t have a middle name, use the middle name you would have liked to have had.
4. When you are tagged you need to write your own blog-post containing your own middle name game facts. At the end of your blog-post, you need to choose one person for each letter of your middle name to tag.
5. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

I have two middle names, but I choose the shorter one: Kirsi (which means, by the way, amaranth blossom in Hindi).

K – Kind. When I trust someone I am a very kind person.
I – Introspective. One of my favourite past times, in addition to cross stitching, is to analyze myself.
R – Realistic. When I don’t have my feet firmly in the air I am very realistic.
S – Sweet n’ sour. I am person of extremes and contrasts.
I – Intelligent. Because I know that I am intelligent.

I tag only four people, all of them are either in the needlework business or are heading into it.

Tag goes to:
Leena from Violarium
Jenna from One Star’s Light Needlework Supplies
Linda, a budding designer.
Heather from Independent Needlework News

If you want to be the fifth one, feel free to self-tag yourself.

… and Periphaeria Designs’ next launch will accompany it!

I promise you rather autumny set, spiced up with a… wintery ornament set which will look great on wherever you wish to hang them and for whatever reason you wish to decorate your home.

I know that September may be a bit early to launch winter designs, but this way those of you who celebrate Christmas/ Yule will have enough time to stitch the whole set without stressing about it.
I can also say that I haven’t forgot you who celebrate your festivities on southern hemisphere… stay tuned, secrets will be revealed in coming Saturday.

I will be offline from 6th to 14th of August as I take my dears with me and head to my mother’s cabin for some peace and quiet (and loads of stitching time!).

I will answer emails and handle the orders when I come back.

Lesson one: if it’s printed in States the card stock and the paper are the same size. If it’s printed in Europe, at Periphaeria (by me), the card stock is a bit shorter than the paper used for the chart and instructions.

Like this:

This is nasty aesthetic problem and we, me and my printer, are working on it. Whole problem would cease to exists if I could find suitable card stock from here, but after spending whole night surfing local stores’ sites I am not very optimistic when it comes to finding a quick solution for this issue.
I’m sorry about this, but at least you can comfort yourselves with the fact that you can say when it’s printed by Lady herself.

For some reason I have had this odd nervousness about my latest batch and how the prints turn out. For no specific reason, I am just annoyed by the fact that these have been prepared for the print whilst I was still configuring my system after OS re-installation (you got to “love” Microsoft’s updates when they mess up your whole system, right?) which also meant that my software related working environment changed quite drastically – only thing which remained the same was the designing software.
My new virtual printer has caused most of the stress because I had to start to use it out of the blue, I had no time to play around with it before preparing the files. It’s really a pain in the backside, but then… if there had been any problems with the outcome I am sure that my printer would have notified me.

Well, when September launch comes out I have got to know to my new software enough to not worry about things like this.

The Journey

I was watching one movie by Hayao Miyazaki some time ago and got an idea for a BIG design (we are talking of tens of thousands of stitches) from one tiny detail in said movie
After maturing it for a while (I had to, because I got the idea in midst of my deadline anxiety) I have got my hands to it and have spent few nights by designing it – it always goes like this: “I’ll just add this thing and go to bed, it shouldn’t take longer than 15 minutes…” And after 2½ hours I notice that I am still awake and that fifteen minutes is long gone.
I am not complaining though, I love how the design finds its form in front of my very eyes, I love the way it occupies my thoughts. But I can’t help being afraid of the phase when it’s time to model stitch it, because it is bigger than anything I have ever finished before (I have one personal WIP which is bigger than DIP, but it’s only ~20% done – after one year )… This is one of those moments when I understand those designers who use software generated previews instead of the model stitched pieces.

Of course I could find a model stitcher for this, but for some reason I feel that it would break the intimate connection I have with the design. It has grown into me, and even the thought of a model stitcher for DIP is like a thought of giving my child away (not that I had any).
I know, it sounds rather silly. It sounds even sillier when I say that I have no issues to sell the chart after DIP is done. Maybe it’s the journey we, DIP and I, are making together which prevents me from giving it to be model stitched – as sometimes the journey is as, or even more, important than the destination.

A friend of mine said that she is amazed by my productivity, on how designs just seem to pop out of my head.
For me it’s just something that happens, just like sun rises in the morning (though today it’s hiding behind rain clouds).

I think that for the person oneself creating something, in my case cross stitch design(s), is like having red eyes (no, no, no… mine are blueish grey). For most people it’s something mystic, but for the person with red eyes they are just eyes, they have always been there. They may be unique, but are just eyes nevertheless..

Admittedly I am lucky because I’ve been dragged to museums, historical sights, theatres, exhibitions and galleries since I was a tiny toddler. I was lucky to get in a school where I was taught about the designing, all the tiny bits of it which do matter – and I was taught that creativity is just like any other tool, it gets rusty if it’s not used, that creativity is just another skill, you can’t master it if you don’t practise it on daily basis. (As someone has said: Creative process consists from 99% of hard work and sweat, and 1 % of inspiration.
My intention is not to diminish the gift of creativity, but it really is just another tool: we all have different kinds of tools, some are better crafted than others, some are tended with love, some are abandoned. But we all have that little spark in ourselves, we just need to feed it and listen it.) I have been lucky to have supportive friends and family members who have believed, and do believe, in me. And I have been lucky to have friends who have been the reason for me to get onto this road, and that I have friends who have also been there and helped a dream called Periphaeria Designs to come true.

Anyway, personally designing is usually the easy part in the idea’s way to finished design. Somehow those little squares just make sense, they just want to group into odd forms, they want to develop to other things… and sometimes they want to keep me awake whole night long.

If you ask me one necessary characteristic of a designer I give you mania(/hyperfocus). You don’t have to have it, but some manic tendencies are really G-d sent when you have tons of ideas, but your body wants to go to bed, or when deadline is approciaching fast and you are only half done with everything. That is when you bless that tendency – even you sometimes curse it when you keeps awake at night because you can’t sleep in middle of an idea storm.

I admit that sometimes I do wonder where it all comes from, but lately I have realised that I can’t keep my eyes open without absorbing influences from my surrounding world. Nowadays I can’t even watch movies without thinking “now that is one interesting form…“. Actually I find it rather amusing even though it can be annoying if you concentrate on thinking of some form instead of following the story.
I also admit that I have my moments of fear, because losing what I have found would be a great loss to me (even it is also a great stress factor it gives more than it takes).

Due the high volume of spam posts on gallery images I have removed the function to comment and rate from guests, so, from now on you need to be registered to voice out your opinion and vote.
Registering is simple (hover your pointer over the @ on the menu to find the login link afterwards) and doesn’t bind you to anything. Your email won’t be used for soliciting or it won’t be delivered to any third parties – though it will be used in case I need to contact you on a matter considering gallery.

This is an unfortunate occasion, but it is better than begin to ban per IP. I apologise for the inconvenience.

And remember:

…who is having problems connect to Sitesled?

I have begun to seriously consider registering a domain and getting a decent host. Anyone have any good, reasonably priced suggestions?