It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s some new DMC, and I’m feelin’ good!

Big news, stitchers! DMC, one of the most popular cross stitch embroidery thread manufacturers, has just released 35 new colors! Yeah, it’s like Christmas in November! Crikey, it’s like Christmas in November! It’s November, for floss’s sake! I’d better start stitching and knitting! Who’s idea was it to start blogging every day in November? Oh, yeah, that was me.

The new flosses are all numbered from 01 to 35, which is a little weird to me, since I’m used to my DMC floss coming in numbers of three and four digits only, but I think I’ll adjust (that’s a joke, by the way). They are not replacing any of the old colors, just adding new ones, which brings the total DMC collection to 500 even. And, yes, I have every one. And, soon, these will be mine too. Oh, yes, they will.

These are the first new colors in four years, which is great, but I’m still getting used to the old colors and I can probably count on one hand the number of patterns featuring  the 2013 colors that I’ve stitched since their release. By the way, in researching this blog post, I found it extremely difficult to follow the trail of new and discontinued DMC colors. In particular, it was frustrating that the DMC site doesn’t have a master list somewhere. Are you listening, DMC?

In fact, until I started poking around to write this post, I didn’t even realize that some of their colors had been discontinued several years ago. Mercifully, I found this handy-dandy chart on someone else’s site (sadly, I now can’t find the site again or I would definitely give credit where credit is due — you, sir or madam, are a beacon of light in the darkness, and grateful stitchers everywhere thank you for your service):

But back to the latest additions… In short, while all new colors are welcome, the new set makes three great contributions to the DMC line-up that are worth pointing out:

• there’s a nice set of grays that don’t have a purple (or any other color) tinge to them. Just a straightforward mix of white and black. Anastasia Steele would approve.
• there are more options in the purple range, particularly reddish-purples
• there are now many more yellowy-green and greeny-yellow options. Although why they needed to add another shade of “Nile green” (whatever that is), I’ll never know. I think I’ve had my skeins of 561-564 and 954 since far back into the last millennium and never ever used them. Oh wait, there was that one disastrous Chinese dragon project. What the hell was I thinking? (I was young, it was the eighties, and the the color wheel hadn’t been invented yet).

I’m also fond of the new mocha browns and the oranges (because, you know, pumpkins), although they do remind me of some of the old colorways. In particular, the browns remind me of the 838-842 range, but then, those have always been some of my favorite browns, so OK. (Full disclosure: like every other stitcher in North America, I am still awaiting my very own set of the new colors, so I am writing this post based on the pics on the interwebs).

A more thorough and informed discussion of all the new colors is available (from someone who has seen the threads in person) on Lord Libidan’s blog. I’ve been out of the cross stitch loop for a while now, so I wasn’t familiar with Lord Libidan, but I will definitely be following his work from now on even though  He is, according to Mr. X Stitch, the “Jedi master of video game cross stitch.” I love that many of his designs create 3D robots and Transformers and lots of other characters I don’t know precisely because I’m not a member of the gaming community (I have enough trouble keeping up with the communities I am a member of). However, you don’t have to be a gamer to know that cross stitch desperately needs an infusion of youthfulness and trendiness in order to thrive in the same way that knitting and other crafts have been.

Cross stitch finishing, of course, has always had an element of 3D (ornaments come instantly to mind), which brings me to an uncomfortable final thought: I wish more contemporary female designers were getting the kind of attention garnered by these two “manbroiderers”  [Yeah: no granny count! Yuck: why do men need their own special label anyway?]. Seriously, I looked. But I will save my extended thoughts on this subject for a later post. After all, winter is coming and the long, dark night of NaBloWriMo is full of terrors.