Bloody bastarding fucking French knots...

[Zoidbergonthehalfshell]

That is all.

Thanks, I feel better now.

Yes, sewing, especially embroidery, is the one thing guaranteed to make me swear.

Yes indeed. I always start off full of enthusiasm at this masterpiece I'm creating, but after I've done about six knots, and they've all come out different sizes and not at all where they were supposed to be, I start to lose my decorum a bit.

One of my New Year’s Resolutions this year was to learn to embroider - I can do some very basic stuff but not much. I want to make a sampler.

On the back of this thread, I will not be starting with French knots!

Very wise! It's actually a cross stitch kit. The clue is in the name...so why tf am I wrestling with these bastards? Why do the instructions tell me to turn a perfectly nice piece of cross stitch into something that could have been used to upholster one of those bobbly 1960s armchairs?

Apparently colonial knots are easier?

I have a 15% success rate with french knots so really should go youtube colonial ones!

Fucking french knots...I feel your pain. I've been known to discard lovely kits because the bastard things are needed. I still break into a cold sweat over the memories of creating the perfect knot then watching the bastard go through the hole in the fabric to the wrong side.

Ooh, I shall have a look at those, thankyou!

I resorted to buying a pack of teeny black beads from Hobbycraft, as my success rate was under 1%

I feel your pain

I have vowed to never attempt a French knot again and now use seed beads. They look slightly different but are much neater and don't cause me to throw things across the room in frustration.

I was going to suggest beads! But then remembered how much I hate beading, even more than french knots, and didn’t want to be the cause of much swearing in the Zoidberg household.

Hello my almost doppelgänger!

Oh! Thanks for this, I thought it was just me.

Youtube videos? French knots aren't that hard. The key is to pull the thread gently through the centre so you're not pulling the whole knot with you.

I used to spend half my waking hours embroidering and did hundreds of samplers, I used to switch to a thinner needle- finest I could get the strands through the eye of. They were still bastards.

I love French knots! But I've always found them easy, maybe because I have long nails and can hold down the little bugger with my thumb nail while pulling the thread through.

As someone said do colonial knots, I don’t do French knots now at all

Colonial knots are easier to unpick if they do go wrong.

It's you!

How have I got to this great age and not heard of a colonial knot? I’ve been cross stitching for nearly 50 years and had given up on French knots. i thought it was some sort of character flaw that stopped me making them. Now I have an alternative. Thank you

Beads!

You are geniuses! Thankyou!

I was stitching yesterday and I got knots in the thread...I hate that, I was doing really well, and suddenly the damned DMC got a knot in it! Who needs french knots when your thread will randomly do it for you?

I once had to embroider an autumnal tree, using only French knots for about a million leaves and half a million berries.
I did French knots in varying sizes and many many colours. It got a bit tedious but looked really good.

My people! I am incapable of French knots despite many attempts to learn with You Tube tutorials. Must investigate colonial knots and see if I'm rubbish at them too.