Hello stitching friends,

The fall edition of the Online Needlework Show is coming up! It will be held September 24-29 this year -- that's a little earlier than previous years, so mark your calendars! This is a wholesale show but everyone can visit. This is a great opportunity to see your favorite designers' latest work, and purchase through your local shop. Be sure to ask if they're participating, and remind them that they must register in advance! Retailers, although there is now a registration fee for the show, ask us for a code which waives the fee!

There's lots of new work in the gallery, including the latest prize winner, Fragonard's Young Girl Reading, which one fairgoer mistook for a painting! There are many other new pictures as well -- have a look!

We are asked regularly what the Floss Color to Symbol Cross-Reference in our patterns is. People say they've never seen that before and aren't sure what to do with it. Ours are the only patterns with this feature so maybe it's not surprising that people wonder. Here's what it's all about.

When you open one of our pattern books, you'll see two tables: the DMC Color Key, and below it, the Cross-Reference. The Key is what you use in stitching; when you see a symbol on the chart, you look for that symbol in the key and stitch with the color (or colors) that follow the symbol. Nothing new here! You don't use the Cross-Reference when you're stitching; we might say you use it when you aren't stitching. Here's a little example (for an imaginary chart that only has three symbols).

Key               Cross-Reference
---               ---------------
+ 501-502         501   + O
O 501-White       502   +
- White           White O -


The Key tells you to stitch any + in the chart with a blend of 501-502. The Cross-Reference tells you that DMC color 501 is used in two symbols, + and O. 502 is used in only one symbol, +. Who cares? Well, suppose you have a lap full of floss bobbins and want to put away the ones you're finished with for a while. You can pick up a bobbin -- say, 502 -- then look at the cross-reference and see whether 502 is used in any symbols you're coming to. No? then you can put it away. Or suppose you are almost out of a color. Rather than searching the Key to see what symbols need that color, you can just look it up in the cross-reference and find out whether you need to go shopping right now or if it can wait.

That's all! Mystery solved. If it doesn't help you, you don't have to use the cross-reference. But now you know why it's there.

Gas
Edward Hopper

Isis

Choosing
George Frederic Watts

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone
Thomas Moran