Prelude to Peace

     My friend and business partner, Dawn, and I decided we needed another BAP, so we signed up for Jim Wurth's Prelude to Peace cyberclass through Shining Needle Society. The class officially started about three or four weeks ago, and true to form, I'm behind already. So what, you may ask, have I gotten accomplished so far? I'm so glad you asked.

     This is the design in its original colors of blues, browns, and neutrals. As is my wont, I felt the need to change the colors to something that would better suit my personal color palette. Jim's colors are lovely, just not to my taste. Dawn concurred, so we went on a quest to an LNS to pull his threads then find our own versions. (Yes, I know, we have our own personal warehouse in my basement where we keep the merchandise we sell on scarletthread.com, but we don't have every thread known to mankind as yet. Keep stopping by; someday we hope to.)

     After about two hours, we had most of our threads selected, with just a few we hadn't settled on. So we decided to wait till our patterns arrived to see where and how the missing threads would be used. And waited. Other participants in the class were chiming in on the group site as they received their packages in the mail. Dawn and I both spent our days watching for the mail. And watching. And waiting. (This is a recurring theme for us. We never seem to receive mutually awaited items at the same time.) Once our charts arrived in our mailboxes, it was a simple matter to select those last threads, the neutrals for the center section.

     Here's what we each came up with:

     I chose reds and grays, the actual red hue more a result of its being the only one for which I could get the requisite number of shades. I would have preferred a little less pink, but I do like this. What you don't see in this picture is the floche, which we had a little trouble finding at first but finally discovered online and then at another LNS. We opted for additional grays for the neutral colors. The thread types give the grays more variation due to texture, so I think it will work up nicely and retain the integrity of Jim's colorway. My canvas is Pewter.

     Dawn chose a brighter series of blues and went with mostly the same grays (which we decided on mutually). Her canvas is Opalescent White.

     My question for Jim will be, Peace or Pandemonium?

     I know you're wondering, just what have I done besides pick out the colors after all these weeks? I have actually put in some stitches and hope to add more today, as I suffer with an annoying cold (and oh, how I suffer! hahahahahaha). So far, I've accomplished most of the borders for the left and right center diamonds, the areas covered in our first lesson. The second lesson was posted last weekend, covering the top and bottom diamonds. With a little dedication, perhaps I can at least be farther into those two diamonds before the third lesson arrives.

     Gah!

     Stay tuned. If I make some progress in the next day or so, I'll be right back with proof. Btw, Dawn has made much more progress than I have but fears she may need more of the Flair before she's done.

     Kthxbai.

Catching up!

     Yikes! It's been a long time since I posted. Sorry about that. It's not that I've been lolling around, resting on my laurels (well, laurel). I've been busy with the online store, also trying to destash a bit (sadly not enough) on eBay, and sometimes having a life. I have been stitching a bit as well. Anyway, without further ado, here's what I've been up to.

     The Ro Pace workshop had its good points and its, well, not-so-good points. Good: Ro's introductory lecture about how she came up with the initial design for the class piece, Memories, was fascinating, especially when it came to how she made the design look totally different by simply using different colors. What started out as Tide Pool morphed into Bed of Pansies and Rose Garden, following one modification with two colorways, then Solar Flare with another modification using just two color families. I worked on Solar Flare and attended just the first day of the workshop. My progress was small, but based on the rest of the class, about average or maybe slightly better than average. But what I did that one day was all I needed to learn in order to complete the piece, as the whole design is a tessellation based on just one segment, or cell, that's rotated to create a four-cell tile that's part of a four-tile quadrant, and so on. Here's where I got, and I've gotten no further.

     What you see is two cells, which are actually the lower right corner of the piece. I just rotated the image to be perverse and satisfy my need to work from the top left corner outward. (I really did work on it in the proper orientation, otherwise I would have been totally confused.) I quickly decided that the best way to work this would be to rotate the chart rather than the canvas, as I would have spent more time moving the canvas around on the stand than actually stitching on it. Orienting the chart and canvas are major with this piece. I'm relatively pleased with what I did, though there are a couple of things I have to rip out because I found I didn't get a stitch quite right. One, the Diamond Jessica, is a stitch that I've done many times, but I just didn't remember the ending correctly and the diagram wasn't clear on that. I've since referred to a diagram and explanation by Michael Boren and now know what to do. The other is the Waffle stitch, which I blithely did, then discovered in a subsequent comment by Ro that I had done incorrectly. However, she didn't point it out to me at the time, when she came around to check on everyone's progress. I would have appreciated a closer look by her that would have led to the correction at that time, rather than when I was long past that point. Sigh.

     You may have noticed the basted outline. That was the prework, and shows the outline of one quadrant. If you click on the picture, it should go to a larger view, where you can see the outlines of the four tiles and, within each, the outlines of the four cells. I think I'll be removing the basted outlines once I finish each tile. I find them obtrusive in the red.

     Moving along to the Stitch of the Month mystery piece, I'm working away on the October stitch, and it's still October! I'm not sure I'll finish it before the end of the month, but at least I'm in the month. I'm enjoying this, even if it is a bit repetitive. It seems to be going quickly.

     The last catch-up bits are actually only tangentially related to stitching. Each of my stitching groups is anticipating the birth of a baby. In one, the Tuesday night group, one of our regular stitchers is having her first child, Isadora Rose, in December. I attended a joyful, exuberant shower a couple of weeks ago on a beautiful fall day.

The proud parents-to-be!
Yes, that's a walker. Samantha fractured her foot!

     There were three gifts made by members of the stitching group (that I can recall): a monogram, a bib, and two delightful stuffed animals.

     I didn't get pictures of the other two gifts, but aren't these adorable?

     The Thursday group has a grandmother-to-be, so we had a shower for her grandson because she'll be outfitting a nursery in her home. We took a break during our regular stitching day for the festivities and had a blast. Joan received some lovely things, among them some hand-knitted items for Little Bit.

Me and my good buddy Joan.

     That would be the cute little stuffed Eeyore modeling the baby cap knitted by Ferol and the booties knitted by Candy. So cute!

     We do have a good time and good friends in our stitching groups.

     Kthxbai.