Woodland Friends Brooches

Gossamer, as it is called, being the fine web of certain species of spiders, floating in the air in abundance, and lodging on the trees, or the rigging of ships, and on other objects, affords a sign of fine settled weather in autumn, as does the much covering of the ground and herbage by the woof of the spiders in general. In crossing the Channel from Calais to Dover, I have observed that the captains of the vessels have sometimes forboded fine settled weather from the settling on the masts and rigging, of certain sort of web, which we take to be the woof of some spider, though we have observed it to alight on the ships when some way out at sea.

Thomas Furly Forster, The Pocket Encyclopaedia of Natural Phenomena, published 1827

Here at Bustle & Sew we’re not afraid to tackle harder topics, such as when things go wrong! This does happen and if you do make a mistake or aren’t happy with the way your work looks, then don’t be afraid to start over! You can unthread your needle and use the blunt end to pull up the offending stitches or if this doesn’t work for you try using a pair of fine pointed tweezers. Sometimes, if things have gone badly awry you may even need to use your embroidery scissors (those sharp points are really handy here) to cut out some stitches. But that’s one of the positives about embroidery - it’s so easy to begin again, and mistakes are simply part of the learning process.