A Pouch

For ages, I haven't shown you anything related to our lovely craft activities, and I know that these were the reason why you follow my blog. So I will pick up things I did some time ago like this pouch. The carnation motif was inspired by old German linen embroidery, but also by Turkish embroidery which often shows flowers in lines, then changing direction in the next row. Many years ago, I saw an exhibition of Turkish embroidery in the Altona Museum, Hamburg. Such things can hardly be found today, maybe because people think it is not "modern". The only craft I saw being done in Turkey 20 years ago was bead crocheting for head scarves. But there are cute things being done -- still done or again? Google "türk elişi".
In the case of my pouch, I took elements from Turkish, but also from Estonian style -- Google "eesti käsitöö". I used sock wool, split in 2 plies. I found the color changes very helpful to create irregularities and coincidence patterns. This design followed a necessity: I did not find embroidery wool at that time; and it is an easy calculation to find out that small skeins of new crewel wool are way too expensive. So I thought if I buy a 50g ball of 4-ply wool, I have a real lot for little money. And variegated yarn, if the cuts are not too short, means to have a wide range of colors from just one ball. The only thing that adds more work is to unwind the snippets and to split them into 2 plies.
 In the end, I added a few sequins, one on top of each flower, as the Estonians used to like it.

I added some advice against the cold.