Scottish Thistles

I meet for coffee/lunch about once a month with three wonderful women I am fortunate to call friends. We are all very different but the thing we have in common is that we all have daughters the same age, who are all at the same high school. The girls all know one another and are friends but they are not ‘best buddies’, if that makes sense! So our coffee mornings are spent taking about all the joys and woes of being mums to teenage girls, dealing with the problems of school grades, boyfriends and  break-ups, the girls and their make-up, getting the girls to activities on time, the usual stuff!. This year we have also been dealing with where the girls will be going to college. Since they are all moving away from home I thought it would be nice to stitch them something they could take with them to college. I wanted to stitch something that had a bit of significance behind it, not just something frivolous. I came across a wonderful Joan Elliott design from her book Cross Stitch Greeting Cards. I guess the fact that I am Scottish kind of drew me to the thistle design in the first place, but the words had me sold! “Protection, strength and deep-rooted ideals will be passed on to the recipient of this card” just what these young girls will need when moving away from home for the first time. I have started stitching the first one as you can see…

Now just three more to do (I have to do one for my own daughter too!!)

Now, as a side note, you may be wondering how a lowly weed became the national flower of Scotland. Well the story goes that an invading band of Vikings, intent on conquering the Scots landed at night and were creeping up on a sleeping party of Scots warriors when one of the attackers trod barefoot on a  thistle  His cries of pain raised the alarm and awoke the Scots who duly defeated the Vikings. (Of course!!!)The plant became known as the Guardian Thistle and was adopted as the emblem of Scotland during the reign of Alexander III (1249 - 1286)  And that, my dear blog friends, end the history lesson for today!!

So, I'm not sure how I will finish off the stitching, I could make it in to a card but maybe a trinket pot would be more useful for the girls. The design is quite small only 2 ¾ inches square, so if you have any ideas of what I can turn these into for three college bound teenagers I would love to hear them!

Until next time…happy stitching

Rhona