SASHIKO IN FRONT OF WORLD CUP

I started this sashiko sitting on a plane back from the UK. I didn't get a chance to stitch is again till the World Cup. When England played Argentina I picked it up again and started stitching, in-between listening to my family screaming at the TV.

Same sampler — the Daruma panel, 34cm of blue cotton with the asanoha grid printed on it, so there's nothing to mark out and nothing to set up. Same long sashiko needles. I've written about what's in the pouch already so I won't do it twice.

What I didn't say in that post is the bit that actually catches you out.

ASANOHA IS NOT ONE PATTERN, ITS THREE

Asanoha means hemp leaf, and the finished thing looks like a field of six-pointed stars. What it actually is underneath is three sets of straight lines crossing each other at angles — and you stitch them one set at a time.

So you work every line running one way, right across the panel. Then you turn the whole thing and work every line running the second way. Then the third. The stars don't appear until the last pass, which is either very satisfying or very annoying depending on how much of it you've done wrong.

That's the whole difficulty. You are not following a picture. You are following one direction over and over, and the printed grid in front of you is showing you all three directions at once.

WHICH IS WHERE THE FOOTBALL CAME IN

Eight hours on a plane, I had nothing else to look at. On the sofa I had a match on, and I kept looking up.

Every time I looked back down my eyes went to the wrong line. The grid is dense and the lines all look the same, and if you're half a beat away from the fabric you will absolutely start stitching along a line running the wrong way. I did it twice. Both times I got about four stitches in before something looked off — not wrong exactly, just off — and both times I had to unpick.

The second time I put the needle down and actually watched the game for a bit, which I should have done in the first place.

THE THING THAT HELPS

Always stitch in complete rows, and don't stop mid-row. Follow the numbers on the side of panel showing which lines are completed first.

If you finish a line and put it down, your eye picks the next line up easily because you're starting from an edge. If you stop halfway across, you come back to a partly-stitched line in the middle of a field of identical lines and you have to find your place all over again. That's when you go wrong.

I'm also still doing the thing where the back has to match the front, which I know adds hours and which I am not negotiating on and it's going well, although I plan to make it into a pillow so I won't even see the back once its made up.

WHERE IT'S GOING

I wasn't going to make a pillow when I started it — the plan was just to have something to do with my hands — but a 34cm square is almost exactly a cushion front, and it seems a waste to finish it and put it in a drawer with the others.

There's a third one coming. I'm running out of places to sit.