Greetings and welcome to our newsletter for August 2025!

We won't keep you long as we know you're keen to return to your summer (or winter if you live in a southerly latitude) stitching.

On this month's menu we have kits by newcomer AVA and more from the old guard - Permin and Lanarte. On the pattern side we have new designs from Nora Corbett and Mirabilia, plus a new pattern from Cottage Garden Samplings.


Kits

AVA is a cross stitch maker based in Spain and is now part of the Luca-S group. We're pleased to say that view the AVA catalogue here.

Permin have released their those two new Ib Antoni kits and a 2025 catalogue.


Designs

most recent two charts are again from Christmas Fair Red Collection with Mittens and Sweaters.

conversion chart that you can download.

There are some conversions that we can't find though, and we have had lots of requests for Kreinik #4 198 which is a very pale green. We appreciate that it would be ideal to be able to order all the materials for a pattern at once but it's not always possible if it includes these metallic threads.


Bargains!

There are Lanarte petit point or tent stitch kits in our lightly satirical poem by John Betjeman (English poet and writer, 1906-1984)

"...
And prosperous mice from fields away
Come in to hear our organ play,
And under cover of its notes
Eat through the altar's sheaf of oats.
A Low Church mouse, who thinks that I
Am too papistical, and High,
Yet somehow doesn't think it wrong
To munch through Harvest Evensong,
While I, who starve the whole year through,
Must share my food with rodents who
Except at this time of the year
Not once inside the church appear.
Within the human world I know
Such goings-on could not be so,
For human beings only do
What their religion tells them to.
They read the Bible every day
And always, night and morning, pray,
And just like me, the good church mouse,
Worship each week in God's own house,
But all the same it's strange to me
How very full the church can be
With people I don't see at all
Except at Harvest Festival."

Whether you are a believer or not, regular attender or not, we wish you a warm summer (or mild winter as the case may be) and your stitching projects give you lots of pleasure.