Autumn Pumpkin Wheelbarrow Diamond Painting Kit

There is a week in September when the light changes and you suddenly want the house to smell like cloves. Projects have a season too, and this one starts about then.

A weathered wooden wheelbarrow sits heaped with pumpkins in rose, orange, cream, sage and plum, which is more colors than pumpkins usually get. Heather and wild berries spill over the sides, a plaid blanket is folded in among them, and a lantern flickers at the edge of the frame while maple leaves drift past. The palette is dusty rather than bright: harvest color as it actually looks in late afternoon, not as a candy wrapper prints it.

Twenty-three DMC colors from 152 to 3860 is a lot of range to spend on one wheelbarrow, and nearly all of it goes into the pumpkins. Rose beside plum beside sage, each shaded rather than flat, which is what keeps a pile of round objects from turning into a pile of circles.

The details

• 45 x 45 cm (18 x 18 in)
• Full coverage, round drills
• 23 DMC colors, DMC 152 to DMC 3860
• Adhesive canvas with printed symbols and color legend
• Sealed, numbered, DMC color-coded drill packets
• Stylus pen, grooved tray, wax refill and tweezers included

Straight talk

Roughly 25 to 30 hours, so if you want it on the wall for Thanksgiving, start in October. Round drills are forgiving and 45cm leaves room to work, which makes this manageable as a first or second kit. What arrives is a kit and a rolled blank canvas, not a finished picture, and the canvas needs a night under something flat before you begin. No frame included.

By the time it is done the weather will have finished doing what you were waiting for.