A review, some stash and a knit-along

I received an email recently inviting me to review one of the cross stitch kits from Yiota's X-Stitch - www.yiotas-xstitch.com  
I spent a long time on Yiota's website browsing all the different designs she has to offer. Something for everyone is a bit of a cliche, but in Yiota's case it is quite justified, the site offers a huge range of designs in a wide variety of styles, covering almost every subject matter you could care to think of.  There were several designs which caught my fancy, but I found myself coming back time and again to the William Morris designs. I've always had a thing for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Goes with my love of the gothic I suppose. I eventually chose a Morris design called Lily, and sat back and looked forward to it's arrival.
The kit arrived quickly and well packed in a sturdy board backed envelope, and is well presented and thought out. 
The chart is spread across two A3 sheets with a clearly marked overlap, and uses large, clear computer generated symbols, and full instructions are provided. 
The evenweave fabric (all the kits come with a choice of aida or evenweave) is generously sized, with a needle tucked into the corner so that the kit is ready to start right away, and the threads (Madeira) are pre-wound onto cardboard bobbins and clearly labelled by shade number, a real bonus when so many similar shades are involved in a design. 
If I had to change one tiny thing about the kit, I would have liked to find the fabric serged at the edges, but that is quite trivial, and doesn't detract from the overall quality of the kit.
The design itself seems to be a sympathetic conversion of the original artwork, with nice clean lines and subtle gradations of colour, and I'm really looking forward to stitching it. I've got a long train journey coming up next weekend and I think I will probably start it then, so watch this space for updates.

I also got some new hand dyed linens and threads this week from Sparklies, a company I hadn't used before, and I have to say I am very pleased with my purchases. The fabric colours are (clockwise) Black Dahlia, Rainforest, Vireo and Parchment. I particularly love the Parchment colour, I think it will be useful for a lot of things.

Have you seen the Knit-along Deramores are running in conjunction with Rowan Yarns? As soon as I saw this I knew I wanted to knit it, and ordered the wool (Rowan Alpaca Cotton). It came the next day and I started right away. The wool is cloud soft, and knits up beautifully, and I am totally besotted with this wonderful muted damson colour. This is my progress so far. Hope the cold weather doesn't end before I've finished, I need an excuse to wear this.