I finished the first part of the CloudsFactory Zodiac Sampler on Sunday January 18, 2015. I am very ambivalent towards the zodiac, I don’t believe that the position of the stars and planets at the time of your birth has any effect on how your life turns out, but I have always liked mythology and enjoy the myths of the constellations. As a child I read a series of books called “Heroes and Monsters of the Sky” by a Swedish author called Maj Samzelius. The plot was that the TV broke down at the cabin of a family and to make up for it the grandfather tells the children the myths of the constellations. I loved these books as they told the old myths in a modern and exciting way. Unfortunately the books are difficult to find in Norwegian and I don’t think they were ever translated into English, but they are available in Swedish. Anyway, I have decided to view this piece as a representation of the myths connected to the constellations.

Back to the pattern by CloudsFactory. I decided to start with circle no. 12 as it was the circle closest to the center line, and circle no. 1. l like to start at the center of patterns as it makes it easier to avoid counting errors. If it is not possible to start at the center, like with this pattern, I try to start close to the center lines for the same reason. This means that I stitched two of the circles before I got the January section. I have to admit I am not a fan of the satin floss used in the circles. It is really slippery and it takes a lot of time to get the stitches to look neat, but it has a nice sheen and looks really nice. This is a picture of the circles I did this month before anything else was added.

I believe that each part will consist of three circles with the Zodiac symbol, the constellation and a representation of the astrological sign. The outer circle contains the astrological sign, this month a cute goat with the Zodiac sign flower of Capricorn, pansies. The pansies were stitched with Weeks Dye Works, which seemed kind of pointless as there were a couple of stitches of each colour in the flowers, but it looks nice. Here is a closeup of the first circle.

The second circle is the constellation Capricornus. This was really fast to stitch as it was only a couple of stitches and a little bit of backstitch. Here is a closeup.

The inner circle contains the symbol of Capricorn. Inside the circle of circles there is a red ball and a couple of stars. I have not managed to figure out which planet this is supposed to be yet. CloudsFactory has a pattern called Mini Solar System where the red planets are Venus and Mars, so I am thinking it is one of those. The pattern for Aquarius contains a brown planet which did not really help, I guess I have to wait for more parts to be released to figure this out.

Here is finally a picture of the whole part finished.