And so, I threw caution to the wind and just cut it. This is a sneak-peek of my new embroidery, Home Tweet Home. Yeah, I like puns. And feathers. And swirls.

If you want to get your stitch on too, I'll be putting this up next week on Monday, the 29th of August and you can stitch along. I have received so many wonderful comments from around the world about my Spring Sampler Stitchery and so many requests for something new -- so this is it, folks. I'm making a 30cm x 20cm stitched panel for a patchwork cushion for our new home. 

When I start a new embroidery, I like to be methodical and plan out all the colours. I like to know what's going where, and there's something very reassuring about neatly stacked embroidery threads in coordinating colourways. I've picked out rather bold colours for this design; I want the feathers to stand out and sing with summer brights. It must be the heat. 

The thing about planning an embroidery like this, is that it never quite goes where you think it will. I start it - and that's where my organisational impulses dissolve. Nothing ever ends up where I think it is going, the colours just seem to flow in a rush of small, sort-of-neat stitches. Blues stack up on greens and purples, pinks dance around the edges of reds. Yellows celebrate their brightness in the centre of flowers or letters or chain stitches. Black and white hardly ever surface. The end result looks infinitely better than the imagined plan.

There's a lot of colour about now. The sun is shining every day and everything seems brighter, like a heavily-saturated version of the formerly wintery world. To celebrate, I've taken to treating myself to flowers once a week. These are my second bunch of peonies. They're bolder, brighter than the last bunch. They have already feathered out like ruffled skirts, and soon they'll be dropping their petals all over my table. But for now, I appreciate them. They smell like summer.