Hello Japan

I've had quite a few books joining my craft bookcase recently so this is going to be another post about a book :P Hope you're not bored to death:P Last Thursday this landed in my mailbox:

 - a parcel from Japan! Inside a quite unusual book in Japanese:

And a lovely piece of origami was attached with a few words of explanation. How cute!

The book is a collection of simple cross stitch motifs - just as I like them!

Here are few exemplary projects to stitch.
A nature-themed and home-themed stitches, lovely in natural greens and browns:

Something for the kitchen:

American style, sort of West Country look: (I love these!)

Rustic stitches for nursery:

There are plenty of botanical motifs in the book:

... in various styles...

Some projects for celebrations, cards and tags:

I spotted a couple of spelling mistakes. It's been pointed to me that the Japanese people are famous for misspelling English words and not paying much attention to it. Well, this book is a perfect proof of it.

Kitchen and food theme again:

Monochromatic samplers. I love simple stitches like these!

Floral borders:

Hearts and wreaths:

Sweet borders for various projects:

All the instructions are in Japanese, which is of course illegible to me. But I'm already familiar with the cross stitch techniques so I'll give these instructions a miss.

Basically this book is divided into 3 parts. 1st part shows the ready stitches, middle part is all about the explanations and how to stitch and the 3rd part is black and white charts for these projects.

I really like this funny Japanese collection of cross stitch patterns. I'm hoping to use some of these designs in my stitching projects in the future.