Le Bonheur des Dames eyeglass case

Well, I took a look at the pattern. It's over one! The pattern is very large, and of course the case won't be. I don't know what count the fabric is, but it may be 28 or 32. So over one on high count fabric. The threads are already separated in the kit (which is nice). A lot of the instructions are in French, with a few select ones in English and other languages, but I can figure it out. The colors are also in French, but I decided that I can look at the picture and figure out which ones are which. I can't decide whether to start this one or do the Valentine's Day ones first, leaving this for after the 14th. I'm thinking -- maybe I'll start it. I am washing the fabric for both the eyeglass case and the Bobbie G "LOVE" design. I am looking forward to doing some stitching! By the way, it is 60 degrees here today (Spring is coming?) and I'm going to walk with Ace (my border collie) to the Subway half a mile away.

"How to Live on Mars"

I am reading an interesting book by Robert Zubrin called How to Live on Mars. It is an imaginary (yet fact-based) handbook for getting to Mars, setting up, getting rich, finding water, etc. Zubrin is a member of a group called the Mars Society (Mars Society) which wrote a declaration in 1998 proposing that we explore Mars and use Mars as a frontier. The book is very accessible and has a lot of drawings demonstrating various concepts and constructs. I am only part of the way through the book, and will probably finish it today. It is possible, that for me, the book is a little too simple. But it is written for the general public and I hope it ends up on the bestseller list. I also hope Barack Obama reads it!

A regular one-year membership in the Mars Society is $50. 

Weather and Phone Calls

Well, it's warming up here a bit.  It's going to be in the 50s and 60s over the next several days. This is a welcome change from 10 degrees with wind. I plan to walk half a mile with the dog to Subway, grab a sandwich, and walk back the half mile. I am really looking forward to the warmer weather. Maybe Spring really is around the corner, but first we need to get past the Vernal Equinox on March 21. 

I feel like I've spent the past two days on the phone. I have talked to my newfound cousin Carl several times (found out my great aunt Clara made a killer orange cake) and also talked to my buddy from grad school for about 3 hours last night. We are going to talk again on the weekend. There is a lot of catching up to do.

Camille is going to learn to stitch!

A few days ago I posted a picture of a design from The Bold Sheep called "Crazy Cat."  I got it for my daughter, Camille, who is 17. She has never stitched before and doesn't know any of the crafts/skills my mother taught me and my grandmother taught her -- and my great-grandmother's incredible stitching skills were never passed down  entirely. I want my girl to learn cross stitch, so I got her the cat kit. I showed it to her today, and lo and behold! She is enthusiastic. She even went through The Bold Sheep catalog and checked off designs that she would like to stitch. I can't express how happy I am that she is going to learn to stitch! Of course she is much older than I was when I learned, but I'm sure she'll be great at it! I washed the fabric to get the creases out, and I'm going to grid the fabric before Camille starts stitching, just to make it easier. Heck, I always grid my own fabric when I stitch. No, it's not because I can't count. It's just harder to make mistakes if the fabric is gridded. So the next time Camille comes over, we'll get to it!

Talked to an old friend

Somebody I went to grad school with.  Nice person. He's not in academia any more (neither am I). He is in Phoenix taking care of his 92 year old mom. It was nice to locate him. I found him through one of his mentors/coauthors. More about him later. He doesn't cross-stitch but he's got an incredible blog!

C-O-L-D!!!!

It's 10 degrees outside.  The lines at the car wash have been endless, so I waited until this morning (7:00 am) to beat the crowds.  Car wash went somewhat well, but there's ice frozen on my side mirrors now, and streaks of ice down the back and top of the car.  That's what you get for having a car wash in the dead of winter!

Bobbie G's "LOVE" design

I received some of my Valentine's Day stitching charts in the mail yesterday.  My favorite is a design by Bobbie G which is the word "LOVE" which includes hand-painted pink fabric.  I plan to stitch the design on the fabric, then do it again on Silkweaver hand-dyed solo fabric.  I'm making this for my two boys for Valentine's Day.  

Relationship between Hidato Puzzle & Cross Stitch

I realized while I was doing a Hidato puzzle just now that Hidato and cross-stitch have much in common. In Hidato, you must find your way through a maze of numbers and every number must be next to the one before it and the one after it. Cross-stitch is a similar sort of maze. The design is printed on a page with a key, and you must figure out how to place the stitches for the neatest, most logical "solution," so to speak. I saw, when realizing this similarity, why I like both!

Where to find Hidato Online!

Hidato™ Daily Adventure
Play Games
at Shockwave

More "not-stitching" but something cool!

I was working away on my blog today when I received a phone call from somebody I didn't know. He asked for "Candy" and I said, "This is Candice." Nobody but my parents call me "Candy" and it drives me crazy. Anyway, it turned out to be my first cousin Carl B. from Rochester. He hunted around for me on the internet and then called information for my number. I met Carl once.  He was about 11 years old and I think I was 21. My sister and I had visited my uncle and his family on our way to Niagara Falls. We spent the night there and had dinner. They were very nice to us. 

Carl is a really nice person. We talked for a long time and I promised to call him back. We both have children older than I was when we met. I didn't realize it was that long ago that I met him and his sister Eve. My uncle Al died in 1988. Carl says his dad was his best friend. My dad and Al did not get along, for a variety of reasons. They had very different experiences during childhood. Carl and I were able to fill in some gaps in our ancestors' stories, and I promised him that I would get onto my other (not in use) computer and download the genealogy records I have accumulated. Then we can compare notes and fill in the blanks. I am so glad I did research on my family. Carl didn't even know that his grandma's ancestors came over before the Revolutionary War and were from Holland. I think he will be amazed.

Okay, this isn't about stitching, but maybe some day I will be able to stitch at least a skeleton of a family tree.  It would have to be awfully large!

Hidato

Although I usually write about cross-stitch and other crafts, today I am going to write about a game invented by an Israeli mathematician named Gyora Benedek. The game is called Hidato and it is a number/logic game which involves filling in blanks on a number grid (sort of like Sidoku) but rather they are filled in order. I am having a great time with this puzzle and own the two available puzzle books by the inventor. (They are at Amazon.com.) I am attaching a picture of a Hidato puzzle as an example. There is a learning curve, and the puzzles start easy and end hard. But by the time you get to the difficult puzzles, you've pretty much gotten the pattern wired. I am to the point that I can almost do them in my sleep, and I imagine when I finish these two books I will be ready to move onto something else. I do hope Gyora Benedek publishes more Hidato books. I am hooked.

Here is Gyora Benedek's bio and a very interesting story about how he came to invent these puzzles because he saw a school of fish while skindiving!

http://www.amuniversal.com/ups/features/hidato/bio.htm

January Cross Stitch Crazy

It takes a while for the British magazines to get here, so I just recently got the January issue of Cross Stitch Crazy. Of course, somebody visiting Barnes & Noble stole the free gift that was in the package with the magazine. I could kick myself for not checking first.  Most of the designs in the magazine aren't interesting to me, but I like one that says "Forget the Gym.  Stitch Yourself Slim," featuring a slightly chubby woman surrounded by delectable goodies, sitting cross-legged on an exercize mat, stitching. The design is shown as a pillow, which I think is pretty cute. It has a really nice border, which is the one thing that makes the entire design appealing. The pattern is rather simple, although the instructions say it would take 40-50 hours to stitch. I don't think there are any partial stitches (let me check): yes I am correct. Whole stitches only, but there are some French knots (see my blog entry on doing French knots). And there is a lot of backstitching. The design looks cute though, and might be worth stitching.

There is one other section of the magazine featuring a fairy alphabet. They show an example of a stitched name, and it's quite nice. It would be great for a little girl's door, but I know adults who like fairies (heck, I like fairies) and I thought of making one for a friend in New Zealand. Each letter takes 4-5 hours to stitch, which means a five-letter name takes 20-25 hours to stitch. The nice thing about this alphabet is that there are very few design repeats. So often, when they do an alphabet, they have only a few designs for the motif with the letters that they repeat too often -- I reject those.

By the way, the January issues of the British cross stitch magazines still include Christmas designs. This issue is no exception. I guess they come out well before Christmas in England. 

So that's it for the January issue of Cross-Stitch Crazy. There may be other designs in there that you like, but these are the only ones I would consider stitching. I'm looking forward to the February issue, and this time I'm going to make sure nobody stole the free gift!

My friend Charlie

I call him "Happy Charlie" because he is always so positive and smiles all the time. Charlie doesn't have a job right now, like a lot of people. I think we all know somebody who doesn't have a job, don't we? Anyway, Charlie is a very generous person. For example, he drives homeless people to church on Sunday, visits children at a hospital, and he helped me hang my pictures, put together my bookshelf and wine rack, and recently he put together my fish tank stand, which was a real challenge. Charlie came and picked me up at the hospital the other day. Then he stayed with me until my daughter Camille came over. Charlie and I watched movies on TV and he said it was a very relaxing afternoon. I was still recovering from the anesthesia from the surgery.  It was so good to have him come here. The only funny thing was that the nurse at the hospital suggested he help me get dressed, and Charlie isn't that kind of friend! We both got a laugh out of that!  Of course Charlie stepped outside while I dressed.  It was really funny.

Who is Nimue?

I got curious about who designs the Nimue patterns.  This is what I found at the website!

Nimuë, is a person : Annaïck Chauvel
Cultural engineer and artist, She became the Director of  Centre de l’Imaginaire Arthurien (Centre of the Imaginative World of Arthur) at the Château de Comper at the age of 25.
For ten years here in the  mytical  forest of Brocéliande, in Brittany, she organised meetings with many academics, writers, painters, photographers, illustrators, film-makers and other creators of imaginative works.
Some became her friends, and when, in 2002, she decided to create counted cross-stitch designes on the thermes dear to her, Celtic Mythology, the Marvels of the Middle Ages, the fairy-tale World, and the Legendary world, naturally it was the works of her friend that she interpreted in embroidery.
The Matière de Bretagne (Arthurian Cycle) is the breeding ground for her inspiration.

The best collection of wedding samplers!

I have been looking at wedding samplers on various websites, and I finally found the mother-lode of wedding samplers.  They are on the Abc Cross Stitch website.  There is a drop-down menu which lists weddings as one option, and there are (get this!) 17 online pages of wedding cross-stitch! I am going to remember this for the future.  The website is http://www.abcstitch.com.  Go for it!

Nimue designs

I love Nimue designs.  Mostly they are elves and fairies.  There are two named Mic and Mac (try looking that up on the internet and you get lots of computer sites!).  Nimue is in France, but they are sold her by ABC Stitch Therapy (I haven't found any other place).  I did send an email to Nimue in France to ask how to buy the designs directly through them.  The website is in French and the order page appears only to take French addresses.  Anyway, I have attached here a couple of Nimue designs I ordered from ABC Stitch.

I think these designs are really charming.  I have loved them for a long time but have never ordered any.  I like the one with the musicians because I play flute, banjo and tin whistle and love Irish music.  It is too cute!

Progress on the hand

I actually got into the car today and drove to Walgreen's, bought sodas, nuts, a few other things, and drove back.  I took my old-lady-shopping-cart and filled it up, steering it with one hand.  The woman at the front desk came and opened the door to the lobby for me, and I brought everything upstairs.  So my hand hasn't been much of a handicap today.  It's probably partly because it's my left hand, and I dread the day when I'll have to have the right thumb fixed -- I know that day will come because they both started aching at the same time.  Only the left turned into a trigger thumb at this point, but the other thumb is inevitable.

I can even type at the computer!

I think this thumb business is hereditary.  My mother has had both her thumbs repaired, and my maternal aunt has a painful thumb now.   They both waited longer to have their thumbs fixed than I did.  I didn't want to get to the point of it being incapacitating.  

The pain isn't incapacitating.  In fact, there's hardly any pain.  It could be the Celebrex they gave me -- I have to take it for four more days -- that's keeping the pain at bay, but I did take an oxycontin this afternoon that I had on the shelf from a previous injury.   The hard-core meds they gave me at the hospital cause various side-effects (in fact they gave me a pill to counteract one of the side effects of the pain pill), and thus I haven't been taking them.  But I haven't really needed them.  I think I would do okay with my hand even if I didn't have any pain medication.  I think that's amazing.  It could also be that I have a high tolerance for pain.  When my mother had surgery on her thumbs, all she did was complain.   I'm not like that.  Apparently my grandmother had a high tolerance for pain.  Maybe I inherited something good from my maternal line, in addition to the lousy stuff.   But my grandma had Alzheimer's and I sure don't want to inherit that!

So the hand is doing well!  The bandages come off Tuesday, but I still have to make sure I don't get the stitches wet.  I'm seeing the hand doc on the 10th and then the stitches will come out!

I'm listening to Pandora Radio -- The Rolling Stones are singing "Angie."  I love that song.

Other crafts I do

Besides cross-stitch, I have dabbled in a number of other crafts.  First on the list is origami.  I have been doing origami for at least a decade.  I haven't done any in a while, although a bunch of my cranes ended up on the building's Christmas tree this year.  There is a woman in the building, Niki, who also does origami, but we haven't been able to get together yet.  I talk to my buddy John in California, who does TONS of origami, and is very inspiring, but mostly we talk about funny stuff about language, math, computers, bowel movements (! I'm not kidding!), food, and a bunch of stuff.  He is really great at origami, modifying existing models and getting on folding jags where he folds the same thing over and over using different modifications and materials.  

Another of my crafts is crochet.  Again, I haven't done it in a while, but I'm aching to, and I'll include some of my crochet in this blog.

I spent a lot of time learning calligraphy.  I'm not nearly as good as I used to be.  I used to wake up and do calligraphy every day.  I got really good at Celtic calligraphy.  I don't do the fancy cursive stuff, though.  I like using fatter pens.  All my calligraphy stuff is in a drawer in my desk.

I've done scrapbooking but I don't know where all the stuff is.  I was doing a scrapbook about my trip to Vienna with my parents, but I wish I'd brought the stuff along to Saint Louis so I could finish it.  

I sew.  I just acquired a sewing machine and cabinet from Craigslist but I haven't touched it yet.  I want to make crazy stuffed animals/people/things.  I have 8 ties in a bag that I picked up at Salvation Army to make an octopus.  I also shrunk a wool sweater to make a silly cat.  Haven't made it yet.  I really need to get this sewing machine going!

I have some gift wrapping books which came in useful at Christmas.  I used some of the methods to wrap Christmas presents as well as Birthday presents for my daughter's birthday, which is two days after Christmas.

I also bead.  I'm in the middle of a bracelet.  Beading is MUCH faster than cross stitch and crochet.  I enjoy beading a lot.  I am also buying a necklace and earrings from the wonderful beader Phyllis Dintenfass, who was featured in Beadwork magazine last month.  I just fell in love with it.  It's $375 and I'm paying her one month at a time.  I've already made one payment -- two to go.  Phyllis was one of my beading teachers.  I can really bead anything at this point but I like taking classes.  Classes are a quick way to pick up new beading designs and to be motivated to get something done.

I've also dabbled in bookbinding.  I would like to get back into that.

So I do/have done a lot of crafts.  I wonder how many other people there are who have started and continue to do a lot of different crafts.

Phyllis Dintenfass's work may be seen at http://www.phylart.com.

Pinn-Stitch -- Thai Stitching Company

I just discovered a unique cross-stitch site from Thailand, with all kinds of patterns not to be found anywhere else.  There are Buddhas and other Asian, Chinese and Indian gods and idols.  There are adorable easy charts of pairs of Asian couples wearing Kimonos -- I think they are Japanese.  There are lovely landscapes.  Difficulty of charts takes the entire range of products they offer.  I ordered a chart of a Japanese mother and daughter in Kimonos, and the shipping was on $5.00 airmail.  The chart was $8.50.  Everything is sold in US dollars.   

The website can be found at http://www.pinn-stitch.com.  It's charming!  Go for it!

The rat and the hand

I have my son's little brown rat on my shoulder, and my left hand is in a bandage from the surgery.  The rat is wiggling inside my shirt.  I don't know what she's doing in there -- maybe cleaning herself.  Pet rats are very clean.  They are meticulous.  I love this rat.

I am able to type with the bandage on.  The surgery wasn't bad, and I don't have to take pain medication because my hand doesn't hurt enough to go through the hassles involved with the medication.  The medication is actually worse than the pain.  If you don't need to take a powerful pain killer, why bother?  The only thing I didn't like about the surgery was recovering from the anesthesia.  That was hard.  My surgery was done like at 9:00 and I was in recovery until around noon, sleeping most of the time.  I barely remember going into the operating room.  I have a vague memory of somebody putting an oxygen mask on my face, and of moving from the gurney to the operating table.  The anesthesia stung a little when it went into my hand, but I had been warned about this, and I was hardly aware at that point.  I remember it for a couple of moments, and then the next thing I remember was being in recovery.  Charlie, who had picked me up from surgery, stayed with me until 4:00 in the afternoon, when Camille came over.  Camille spent the night and left late morning, then came over this evening and had pizza.  She also brought me sodas and ice cream (the breathing tube left my throat sore).  Charlie and Camille have been really helpful while I have been recovering, doing things like walking the dog for example.  I am lucky to have people who care about me.

The rat has settled down on my shoulder, quiet and still.  I know my son will really love her when he gets her.  I will have her for another week, but I really want him to see her as a baby.  She's already growing.  I have been checking to make sure there is a little bump in her tummy from eating food, but I don't see her going up to the next level for her food and I don't see her drinking water.  I know she is eating and drinking though.  She is a very happy rat.  She doesn't have a name yet but I've been calling her Lily.  

I have a good life.

What's your favorite Valentine's design?

I've been looking at small Valentine's Day designs on 1-2-3 Stitch.  There are three web pages of hearts, Valentine's sentiments, love symbols and (the ubiquitous) reds and pinks.  I'm not going to tell you my suggestions -- just that I'd love to make a couple of quick designs for my sons and their amores.  What would you suggest?  What Valentine's Day designs are your favorites?  I'll reveal mine soon!

My trigger thumb and surgery tomorrow

I am going in for surgery tomorrow on my trigger thumb.  Apparently trigger finger or trigger thumb is caused by inflamation around the joint and tendon.  Mine has some sort of related cyst on the place where my thumb joint meets my hand.  That's very common.  Trigger thumb is called digital tenovaginitis stenosans.  Tomorrow I am going to be knocked out and my doc is going to do the surgery.  Since I have diabetes, I get the first slot in the morning, which means I have to be there at 6:30 am, and I'm not thrilled about that.  A friend of mine (I call him "Happy Charlie") is coming to pick me up at noon, around the time I will be out of recovery.  We will need to go to the pharmacy to fill the prescription for the pain medication, then off to my house.  At some point my 17 year old daughter Camille will relieve Charlie.  I need to figure out what kind of "loose clothing" to wear tomorrow, and I'm not sure I have anything that will work, except maybe my pajama top.  I might try that.  I don't know how big the bandage on my hand is going to be.   It would be a drag to have to split open a shirt just to get my hand in there.  Maybe the pajama top is the right thing to take.  I could always replace the pajamas, right?

I don't have a picture of this right now, but I'll take one and post it.

Sale at The Bold Sheep

The Bold Sheep is having a 3-for-2 sale.  Buy two patterns or kits, and the third is free.  The free one will be the one that costs the least.  Besides cross-stitch patterns and kits, The Bold Sheep also carries tapestry kits.  A lot of the designs are the same as the cross-stitch designs, but there are some different ones.  They carry both baa-ginners (beginner kits) and regular kits.  Some of these are really pretty!  I'm going to try out tapestry myself and I plan to use a baa-ginner's kit.

The trick to the French knot

I had a lot of trouble with French knots until I learned the trick.  The trick is to keep your thumbnail or finger on the knot as you pull the needle through.  The knot must be against the fabric when you do this.   That's all there is to it!

I have looked for a picture on Google Images for exactly this procedure, and I can't find any that show it the way I do it.  I just know that I haven't had any problems with French knots since I started using this method.  Try it!

Gridding Aid from 1-2-3 Stitch

A couple of years ago I wrote a blog on how to grid cross stitch fabric to make stitching easier.  In fact, I can't stitch without gridding.  It makes it a lot easier to count and prevents mistakes.  It is especially useful on evenweave fabric, although I need a magnifying glass to make sure I get the rows right.  I always use a thread color for gridding that contrasts with the fabric.  This is done with regular sewing thread, by the way, and not floss.  After you're done stitching, the threads pull right out.

Well, 1-2-3 Stitch (www.123Stitch.com) carries a product that makes gridding easier.  It is called Easy Count Guideline and runs for $7.83.  It looks like the grid can be inserted without a needle, and appears heavier than the plain sewing thread that I use for gridding.  I haven't tried this product, but it does look useful.

La D Da cross stitch

Another one of my favorite designers is La D Da.  The designer is Lori Markovic.  She does great stuff.  This one is called "White Cat" and is done with Gentle Art Sampler Threads.  This was one of the first La D Da designs I saw and I really liked.  I don't have a white cat (I have an orange tabby instead) but I love this design and would love to stitch it some day.  A good place to buy La D Da designs is 1-2-3 Stitch online.  She has a lot of options.  Strange, I haven't looked at La D Da in a long time, but there don't seem to be any recent patterns.  I am wondering if Lori has moved on to other things.  Anyway, all of the La D Da designs are what I would call "primitive."  

Bonheur Des Dames Eyeglass Case

Bonheur Des Dames, a French company, has the greatest designs.  I picked this one to show because it is so delicate and lovely I couldn't resist.  I would love to make one.  It appears to be on blue linen evenweave, which would make half-stitches possible.  I haven't ordered anything from Bonheur Des Dames in a long time, but I'm going to order this one.  I need an eyeglass case to keep my reading glasses close at hand.  (No, I don't wear one of those chains around my neck!)  Look at the delicate flowers on the case.  Aren't they charming?

P.S.  I did order the kit for the eyeglass case from the company.  It is expensive (in Euros) as is the shipping, but I'm looking forward to receiving it and stitching it.  I don't know how long it will take to get here, but I'll let you know.

SPAM

I got this horrid SPAM from somebody advertising their webpage about making the most of the economy (or something like that) asking me to link to their page and write a blog about it.  This person found my private email address and wrote to me there.  I can't believe she did that.  (Or was it a he?)  I find this really annoying.  People looking up my email address instead of using the blog.  Can you imagine?  I tried to write back telling this person not to email me again, and the email address was set to nonresponse.  I thought blogger was supposed to protect us from this kind of SPAM.

Beginner Cross Stitch Kits from The Bold Sheep

I have been in the market for a beginner design for my 17 year old daughter.  It occurred to me to go to The Bold Sheep website (link in my sidebar) and see what they have.  The Bold Sheep is a British company, and although they have both patterns and kits for more experienced stitcher, the beginner patterns are all kits.  I understand European kits have a greater allotment of fabric than US kits, so I thought I would try this out for my daughter.  It is on 8 count Aida with bright colors and sooo cute!  Designs from the bold sheep are cute, fun, relatively easy, small and have a variety of charts for several different levels of stitcher.  

The price is in pounds and it looks relative expensive, with costly shipping added.  I hope she appreciates it!

British Cross Stitch Magazines

I have a vast collection of British cross stitch magazines.  Most of them are in storage in Wisconsin, which makes them impossible to access, since I live in Saint Louis.   My favorites are Cross Stitch Crazy and Cross Stitch Card Shop.  Some of the other British cross stitch magazines, such as Cross Stitcher, don't appeal to me.   If I want a big design, I don't want one that is stitched on Aida in whole stitches, with tons of backstitching just to define the edges.  That is why, for big designs, I prefer charts from, say, the US or France or Ireland, and I stitch them on hand-dyed linen.  I don't do kits, either.  There are a lot of references to kits in British magazines.  I don't understand kits.  I don't understand why all the threads are not already sorted and labeled in some kits (Dimensions kits would drive me crazy for this reason), or why the fabric pieces are always so skimpy and almost always white, or why they use boring brands of thread rather than hand-dyed thread, which I prefer.  I do like Cross Stitch Crazy and Card Shop because the designs in them are small.  I don't mind stitching something on Aida in entirely whole stitches with cheap thread if it's something small and quick, although small and quick for some of the designs in these magazines means up to 50 hours.   They do have "one nighters" which for me would take a week because I just can't sit down and stitch for four or five hours straight -- unless it's Monday and I have an iPod full of new podcasts I could listen to for hours on end.   If I could read and stitch at the same time, that would make me happy.  Okay, so I could (and do) download Audible.com books and listen to those.  That kind of multi-tasking would make me happy.

So back to the British cross stitch magazines.  They are fun to look at.  They are fun to read.  Sometimes I find nothing in them I would want to stitch, but there's a lot more in them than designs.  They are almost cross stitch gossip magazines.   They're very entertaining and fun.

I get my British cross stitch magazines from the racks at Barnes & Noble.  The only problem with buying them at Barnes & Noble is that oftentimes some idiot cheap stitcher will have already stolen the free gift out of the plastic wrapper.  It's not that I really want the free gift (I almost never use them), but it does take some of the fun out of it.   It's important to check that the free gift is still in there when buying the magazines sold in wrappers.  

Now I'm off to fantasize about stitching silly little designs in the latest issue of Cross Stitch Crazy.