The rest of the cross-stitch

For anyone who wondered, the bluebells are the flower which can be identified to species: Campanula rotundifolia. The second word refers to the round leaves at the base of the stem. Otherwise known as Scottish bluebells. (There are two of them; just below them is the single English bluebell, a bulb which used to be called Scilla non-scripta.)

The color of the flower is not right — it used to be a big deal trying to find the right flower colors for embroidery — everywhere I went I'd be looking for different brands. It would be really frustrating that all the stores in town would carry the same brand. Then they would suddenly all switch to the same different brand, undoubtedly when their common distributor switched.

Now that I dye, I could have any color I want, sort of*. But I haven't been doing embroidery recently. The problem with dyeing in order to do something else, like making the colors for a quilt, is that dyeing itself is so fascinating that it just takes over. (I never did get back to that quilt whose colors were the occasion for my finding out how to begin to dye colors I really loved.)

*I could have any color I want, sort of It isn't as easy as that to get a specific color. If it's a color I've done before, maybe I can repeat it. Depends. There are some subtleties of temperature and delay that are specific to certain colors. Until I figure them out, colors may not be repeatable, despite good record-keeping.