Controversy comes whether you go out looking for it or not. Any time we have some new kind of crisis, controversy or major misunderstanding, we'll broadcast it here. Consider it a "most embarrassing moments" file. We always appreciate e-mails from stitchers, but are ourselves practitioners of the old addage: "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all." If you have a complaint, feel free to write, but do so remembering there are real people with real feelings on the receiving end of your words. And we always do our best to make things right!
We have had a lot of questions about the Warm Water Wash clothesline design; if you have questions, hopefully we can answer them here.
Warm Water Wash is available ONLY IN KIT FORM through Hoffman Distributing. We will not ever be releasing Warm Water Wash as a chart. However, it is not a limited edition in terms of number, or in terms of how long it will be available for purchase. It is an exclusive kit to Hoffman Distributing, but shops with accounts with Hoffman Distributing may buy as many as they like. Hoffman Distributing does not sell direct to the consumer, so have your shop order it.
The fabric used is 28 ct. Glacier by Picture This Plus. The kit does not include fabric, but it does include full skeins of all of the Crescent Colors for the design and the button pack by Just Another Button Company, and the chart, of course. The retail price is $50.00.
Picture This Plus sells their hand-dyed linen to shops. A shop can order as little as 1/8th of a yard, which we feel makes it nice for ordering purposes. Also, Glacier can be ordered in Aida and evenweaves, so you can stitch on your favorite kind of fabric. Picture This Plus can be contacted through their site at www.picturethisplus.com. We have found them to be really nice to work with, and this color is fab! If for some reason you do not want to use the Glacier, you can use 28 ct. Babbling Brook Jobelan by Wichelt Imports. This color is more muted than Glacier, but it will do fine as a substitute. Or use your favorite color...be creative!
In the late part of winter 2005, we received a rather confused e-mail from a stitcher who was working on Snow Fence (see above). She insisted our graphing was wrong, wrong, wrong, because while OUR fence looks "shaded," hers was going to be solid white. While we tried to poll her on how she was stitching it, she became more and more flustered, and basically accused us of charting something differently than the way we had ourselves stitched it. After a flurry of back-and-forth communication, we all discovered that she was working with DMC and not the over-dyed threads we used (even though there is no DMC conversion on this chart.) Once she understood that over-dyed threads would make something look kind of shaded, she said she was stitching it with her own shading, still using DMC, so her fence would look kind of weathered, too. Good for her! And we were happy that she was, in the end, happy.
We hope to never have again the kinds of e-mails we received after the 2004 release of Pushing Up Daisies. Sue designed this piece to commemorate all of the pets we bury in our backyards -- it's part of life. (In fact, we're still praying nightly for Pippi, our hamster who died about six or seven years ago, at our house - Theresa.) We have found that the reaction to this piece has either been, "Oh my gosh, I love it!" Or simply, "Oh my gosh!" We had comments like: "You need psychotherapy and probably medication," "I can't believe you get your jollies off of pets rotting in the ground" (do they look like they're rotting?), "You're sick and demented," etc. We heard there was quite a bit of discussion about it on some of the on-line bulletin boards, but we also have to say that one of the distributors we have now picked us up as a result of this chart (they loved it!) We hope you'll take this design in a friendly light. We like to think of our pets as they were when they were living...just kind of upside down and not with us anymore.