Testing, 1, 2, 3. Testing, 1, 2, 3.

Is this thing on?

::tapping the mike::

Is anybody out there?

Let's see if we can make this thing work.

It's been a long time, nearly two years since my last post. Sounds sort of like the beginning of a confession, doesn't it?

I'm back! Did you miss me? You might wonder whether I've been stitching. The short answer: Yes! And now for a longer answer.

I've been stitching a lot, just not finishing a lot. Those things that I've finished, I've generally given away. I've been stitching counted canvas almost exclusively, though I've done the random counted thread piece here and there. Lately, I've been doing more painted canvas, something I thought I'd never get into. But as I've learned more different stitches and techniques, I've found I rather like it.

Here's some of what I'm working on right now:

Nearly finished is a painted canvas piece I started as a shop model when I still had Scarlet Thread, the store, Chilis Small by Terri Medaris, distributed by Sundance Designs and available through your LNS. For years, it's been languishing off in a corner, waiting for me to rip out the basketweave I'd started doing for the background and decide what to do instead. I finally realized that I now know enough different stitches to tackle it, so I spent an evening frogging. This was one time I didn't say, "How hard can it be." I hate ripping out backstitch! Takes way too long. Anywhere, that brought me to this:

Ahhh. I decided to stitch the yellow and orange background with a thin thread, Pure Palette's Soy Luster, using a light-coverage stitch. I had found the perfect one in Father B's 21st Century Book of Stitches, by The Rev. Robert E. Blackburn, Jr. (which was distributed by Rainbow Gallery when I had the store and should be available through your LNS). It's called the Background Stitch and is similar to the Diagonal Tent Stitch Variation. I loved the way it allowed the background painting to show through and added an element of texture.

The next step? How to do that ribbon-like border.

I started browsing my books as well as Stitchplay Design's Building Blocks for Needlepoint, a wonderful notebook series by Carole Lake and Michael Boren that lets you play with a variety of threads while learning wonderful stitches to increase your stitch vocabulary. After my comprehensive search and conferring with a friend while we were at her chemo session, I decided on. Wait for it. Cross stitch. Yes, you read that right. The other basic, a cross stitch. I think it's working wonderfully, using one ply of Caron Collection's Watercolours, stitching each cross stitch as I go, and cutting out whatever I don't like of the overdye.

What do you think? (Funny what different lighting conditions can do to the colors. This is pretty accurate.)

So I hope to finish this very soon.

In the meantime, I have a lot of WIPs! I have three counted canvas class pieces, a couple more painted canvas pieces (maybe more), and a new counted thread piece. That's correct, a new counted thread piece. Have I got my linen groove back? We'll see. I did get it on a scroll frame and stitched a bit to be sure I could handle what I bought yesterday. I have had the pattern since I opened the shop and finally decided to get the fabric and thread. What did I select? Oh, just a piece of 40-ct linen and a skein of overdyed silk floss. Stitching one ply over two threads, using a magnifier and light. Yeah.

I'll try to be more regular in my blog posts to let you know what I'm doing on my other WIPs, including more pictures. I'll also try not to start anything new. But I make no promises. I've got a lot of new things lurking in the corners, looking at me reproachfully.

Kthxbai.

It's Finished!

     It's happy dance time! I finally finished stitching "Stella Polaris" by StitchPlay Designs, a cyberclass I started in June.

     Isn't she pretty? I really love the way this worked up. I used Caron Collection Watercolours Wheat Fields as the basis for the colorway. Although the purples are definitely part of my usual color palette, orange is rarely something I go for.

     Those of you who are familiar with my stitching history are probably astonished at the speed (yes, I call this speed) with which I finished this piece! Once I grasped that silly double fan doubled stitch, it was smooth sailing the rest of the way. It was mostly a matter of making the time to stitch. In fact, I finished it in a marathon session Sunday night/Monday early morning. I could see the end and decided to stitch as long as I could without making mistakes. (No, I didn't go over this with an eye for finding any mistakes. Any mistakes are personal design decisions, à la undocumented features in computer software.)

     So what am I doing now? I'm so glad you asked! At my ANG chapter meeting on Thursday, we started Marilyn Owen's "Ornament Quartet" from the Chapter Project Book. We could choose one of four different designs (or all four, of course). I selected the string art design (no surprise there). Here's my progress (all done last night, as I had to rip out what I had done at the meeting because the thread wasn't right):

     I'm using one of Nature's Palette's beautiful hand-painted canvases, Coffee Metallic, as my ground. The threads are Planet Earth Fiber 6-Ply Silk Hand Paint, Gloriana Princess Perle Petite, Kreinik #8 Braid, and Caron Collection Soie Cristale. The starting point for my thread decisions was the Planet Earth silk. After Dawn and my visit to the TNNA market in Baltimore a few weeks ago, I contacted Planet Earth and requested some samples. This is one of the ones they sent, and I just swooned! I needed to use it, and right away. How fortuitous that the chapter project called for a 6-strand floss. I had also wanted to use this rich brown canvas, and they played very well together. I pulled the happily coordinating Princess Perle Petite from another WIP (which someday I may get back to and for which I'll have to get more of this), then picked up the Soie and Kreinik (thanks to Donna for having just the right color to convince me that my first choice was wrong).

     There's not much more to this ornament. The Walnetto is repeated on the other three sides of the center motif, there's a Brick Couching stitch filling in the sides, and Mini Crescents fill in the corners. Will I finish this as an ornament? Stay tuned. You never know.

     I'm also still plugging away at "Carnival" from Seminar. I do love this piece and hope to finish it in the near future. Now if only I could apply myself to "Stars for a New Millennium."

     Kthxbai.

Post-Seminar Catching Up

Goodness! Has it really been over two months since my last post? I'm chagrinned. I haven't been doing a lot of stitching. It's been somewhat sporadic, with bursts of energy followed by stagnation. I'm not sure why, although I have been reading a lot. In fact, I spent most of August reading because I managed to borrow four (or was it five?) books from the library (having intended to just pick up one that was on hold) and had to finish them all within three weeks. Yikes! I managed to get them all back on time, but I did end up quitting one after about 100 pages because I just couldn't get into it.

On to the stitching news.

I made pretty good progress on "Stella Polaris" for a few weeks, before getting bogged down with the double fan doubled stitch. It wasn't the under, over, under, over, then go down (or is that over, under, over, under, then go down?) that got me so much as having three threaded needles going and keeping track of what went over or under which color. I tried doing this stitch at my Tuesday night stitching group and had to quit early on. Then I never went back to it. As it turned out, I was psyching myself out about this. Once I applied myself on Tuesday last week, I managed to complete the first of four large diamond areas containing this stitch. Huzzah!

I'm very happy with how this is turning out and hope to press ahead and finish it up in the next few weeks.

The last week of August was wonderful! I attended my first ANG National Seminar, held in Philadelphia this year. It was a drivable distance, so I and two friends decided to make it our first but we hope not last. We spent five days immersed in the world of needlepoint, surrounded by hundreds of people who understood our fascination with threads, canvas, and the artistry of needlework. If you have the opportunity, you simply must go at least once in your life!

I took two two-day classes, leaving a day free between them. The first class, I and my companions all took together. Toni Gerdes taught her stunning design "Carnival," the beauty of which wasn't truly apparent until we got in class and opened up our kits. The threads and canvas were stunning in shades of pink, coral, yellow, blue, and green, all pulled from the Caron Collection Carnival Watercolours. This is where I am after the two-day class and a couple of short stitching sessions:

Even this picture doesn't do justice to the colors of this piece. Our canvases had the outline drawn and several key points marked by slightly enlarged holes. This made it so much easier to get right to stitching, since a great deal of counting was eliminated. Thank you, Toni! She was a great teacher, giving us many great tips and explaining things thoroughly (sometimes more than once). Note the large diamond-shaped area in the upper right portion of the canvas. Does that look familiar? It should. It's a variation on the double fan doubled, and I'm sure that doing this one finally made it clear to me how to do the one in "Stella Polaris."

The other class took me out of my comfort zone. "Purple Mountains and Golden Wheat" is a beautiful landscape designed and taught by Lynn Payette. I learned how to iron! Seriously, the whole first day was spent ironing Wonder Under onto lots of little rectangles of sheer fabric in a range of purples and golds, then figuring out which fabric would go where to create the mountains and fields of wheat that formed the base of the design, cutting each piece to match the drawing on the Congress Cloth, and finally permanently fusing the fabric to the cloth. I didn't actually finish this up till the next morning. This was what I took the class for. I wanted to learn how to do this, how to visualize and then execute the effect. This is what I had done at the end of the second day:

Probably doesn't look like much, does it? Let me put the viewfinder included with our kit in place.

I think that's a little better. As you can see, I didn't get very far with the stitching. I did learn a great technique for beading that keeps the beads firmly in place along with how to make a cord from rayon (shudder) floss. But I spent most of my time creating the landscape base. Lynn is a very interesting and patient teacher. I feel like I really learned a lot about the process of creating this piece and hope to implement the technique in other projects. Will I ever finish this? Probably not. But you never know.

Btw, here are the completed models for both classes.

As you can see. I have a long way to go. I do hope to finish "Carnival," and you never know, I may get inspired to finish "Purple Mountains."

Kthxbai.