Yubinuki Kit arrived. YAY!!

My kit arrived from Ma Mercerie yesterday and I must say it is a lovely thing to behold.  A lovely printed booklet and two threads, a needle and a finished base that looks awesome.  I have also viewed all the photos and videos loaded by Kat on web-shots. So armed with all this new information I ventured forward to make my 2nd thimble ring.  Here it is!

I used gutermann top stitch thread (which is almost double the thickness of the silk in the kit but has a nice twist is smooth look to it and has a very slight sheen) and made a D10 (10 divisions/sections) and the base is 10.5cm circ. Of course this is too big for even my chubby little fingers but makes an excellent stand for temari.

Why didn't I just use the kit base??? Not that it makes sense actually, but I didn't want to waste the kit on my first try. So I used the kit as an example of how it should look at the beginning. I will stitch it soon.

I can see the stitches need to be more regularly spaced around the ring (but I guess this will come with practice) and I admit I did deliberately widen the space between some stitches because I saw that the gap between the sections were not exactly working out right as I got closer to the end.

My 2 final stitches are very noticeable. The top edge stitching is a bit jagged but not as bad as I expected it might be. The bottom stitches seemed to be more uniform near the edge.  The image above shows the ring topside up... I should have placed it upside down to show the 'good' side but I am subconsciously too honest for this practice and never think of it until I post the pics on the web (and by then I am too lazy to set up the camera, re-shoot, edit, and label again... see there is that darn honesty again)

I believe it was well worth the 12+ month wait between 1st and 2nd attempts at this craft. It allowed me quietly to learn from everyone else and gave me more confidence to start again when I could understand the tools and process better. If I had tried and kept failing due to my lack of understanding (and lack of available information) I would have given up completely.

So my conclusions about my 1st thimble attempt were as follows:
I had used the wrong thread
I had used a too big (thickness) needle
My base was not wrapped thickly enough (and I think it was done in paper not card stock)
My bias binding was sewn together and created loads of lumps
I don't even remember knowing that I had to pad it.

Thanks to all the other Thimble Ring makers that made this possible through your experimentation. Especially Kat for your awesome pics and videos, Debi for you Thimble Thursday blog posts, and Chloe Patricia for your tutorials and excellent idea of selling starter kits.