Dither, dither, dither

In between house projects (the outside trim on the porch windows is complete – yay!), weeding, basic household stuff like laundry, and going to work, I have actually gotten some good stitching time in over the last week or so. 

The semi-rotation has been working well so far, but I’m now about to put it to a real test (more on that later).

I’ve finished LHN’s Season’s Greetings, changes and all (insert quick little happy dance here).

Mary Goodwin has become my weekday evening piece … when I have enough energy or brain left to stitch on what I still think of as school nights.  A few more letters have been added since this picture.

I’ve worked on Goat Load and on With My Needle’s Acorn Sampler Bag, but both these projects have had … issues.

I had picked out two pieces of 32 count linen as possibilities for Goat Load, but rejected first one and then the other after doing a handful of stitches on each – that bitty goat at the top simply was not going to show up when viewed from farther away than one's nose.  So I dove into my linen bin but found no small pieces of 32 in a good color.  Held my breath and cut (eeek! cutting into Larger Linen!!) a 4-inch strip from a nice long, 9 inch wide piece, and started stitching.

And wondered why my stitches looked so bad.

Said a few choice words and checked stitches against my ruler and then said a few more not very nice words – the 32 count was not.  It looks like it's 35 (explaining the problem with how my stitches looked), though a quick check with my little ruler is all I've done.  Hauled out the linen bin once again, this time opting for a darker, unbleached linen in 27-count.  The little guy is showing up better on the darker fabric, and my stitches look much more like nice little Xs now.  

And then there’s the Acorn Sampler Sewing Case/bag.  When this pattern first came out, I was very excited about it and ordered the fancy, called-for linen – Lakeside Linen Autumn Gold in 32-count – something my LNS did not carry. 

I was completely dismayed when the linen arrived in my mailbox – it was orangey-tan.  A quite dark orangey-tan.  Looking at the photo with the chart again, I figured what I received was a dyelot oddity and ordered another piece from a different shop.

With the same result. 

At this point I decided that the particular piece of fabric Ellen used must have been from a much lighter dyelot so the first chance I got, I was off to my LNS.  (Oh, to still have that LNS only 20 minutes away!!  What bliss to have been able to see and feel stitching fabric before I bought it!)   Seriously, does this fabric look dark orangey-tan to you??

Using the photo from the chart as a guide, the shop owner and I picked out two or three possibles, did a floss toss, and I came home with fabric that looks like a very light natural with a barely golden tinge – perfect!!

Since Ellen suggests using a varied collection of specialty stitches for the acorn caps, it seemed best to stitch only the vine to start.  Said vine has a rather long repeat and my eyes didn’t track it nearly as well as it seemed - the right side had an error discovered only after I was at the bottom.  Frog, frog…. 

Not sure if it’s the linen I'm using (which seems very tightly woven) or just that it’s on 32, but this is giving me the same feeling as 35/36 count sometimes does – two strands of floss feels like too much but one strand isn’t enough.  Geez, how many times do I need to change fabrics on this project???

I’m stalled at this point and thinking 28-count in a light natural would be better.  On 32, the finished width should be 5 1/2 inches while on 28 count it would be 6 … and I won’t ever complain about a stitching bag being a touch larger!! 

Thoughts?  Opinions??  Please let me know your ideas on this one!

Now to the test of my semi-rotation.  With the long weekend coming after a Friday spent running around like a headless chicken (short version:  one of my two bosses left at the end of November and we had a candidate in for interviews – guess who coordinated and had to make all the on-the-fly changes?), it seemed the perfect time to start Betsy Davis.  Great reward, right?

Betsy’s been in my stash for a long time, and while I originally bought her with DMC, a year or two ago I decided I wanted to stitch her in silks, and Marsha was happy to sell me the right colors and quantities.

After four stitching sessions – two yesterday…

… and two more today, here’s where Betsy stands.

Why is Betsy a test?  After waiting so long to start her (and I think I’ve wanted to stitch her since I first saw her years and years and years ago), it will be hard to work on anything else!

Thanks for letting me ramble on!

>^..^<

I've been working on stuff.....

I want to thank everyone who commented on my earlier post and made suggestions about what to stitch next – I really appreciate every bit of input!

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know I tend to be a monogamous stitcher.  This can be good because I don’t end up with a lot of WIPs/UFOs, but it can also be bad because when I get sick a bit tired of a project and don’t want to work on it, it can mean not stitching at all.  Which is Very Not Good.

Hand in hand with that particular tendency (failing?), I’ve never really done well with rotations.  But there’s a first time for everything, right?  Perhaps the issue is that any previous rotation I’ve tried has not been structured in a manner that worked for me.

Thanks to my indecisiveness, I’ve come up with a sort of rotation that I think might work.  Either that, or I’ve just found a way to justify starting a whole lot of different project starts!

Since I don’t normally stitch every day, a rotation that assigns each day of the week a different project is … not optimal.  Here’s what I came up with:

As you can sort of see, each project has several lines of empty blocks, arranged in rows of five, and the plan is this:  Every time I work on a project, I note the date in its next open block.  If I feel like working on that same project the next night / next time I stitch, that’s fine, but if I want to work on something different, that’s okay too.  If I work on the same piece five stitching days in a row, I will consider moving to another piece the next time I stitch, but I don't have to change. 

My hope is that this not-really-a-rotation will satisfy my desire to plug away at one thing, but also spice things up a bit and keep me from getting tired of whatever I’m working on.  And I might even get more projects completed.

So far, this non-rotation rotation has generated two new starts.  That’s two new starts in one week.  And there are several more projects ready to go and just waiting to be added to the list.  I just need to make sure to keep at least one small project going so that I get an occasional finish.

The new starts?  Mary Goodburn and the Acorn Sampler Sewing Case - pictures soon!  Goat Load is kitted up and waiting its chance, and the Cluny Unicorn is all contained in its own tote bag but needs a bit more prep work.  Silly me did not realize that NEARLY EVERY SYMBOL on the scary, solid -coverage chart is for a BLENDED needle.  When that little item of information finally hit home, I ordered the floss label stickers that go with the chart.  These dodads go on one’s floss bobbins and show the chart symbol plus the DMC thread numbers that make up that color.  I’m thinking a weekend afternoon playing paper dolls putting stickers on floss bobbins is in order before putting a needle into this mammoth project.  Gridding at least a section of the fabric may also be in order. - do you ever do that?

I’m also thinking that Betsy Davis needs her own bag as she is currently in a very thick pocket folder and will no doubt require more space once begun (I know I have more tote bags somewhere…).  Yes, I’m itching to start working on her too.  Perhaps I’ve gone crazy in my old age.

Or maybe I just want to make some more progress on my far-beyond-SABLE stash.

>^..^<

Jane Turner, afterword

As you can see, Jane Turner is now proudly hanging on the wall.  She’s in the living room, just beside the room’s entrance.  Not where I had envisioned her, but Wonderful Husband pointed out that in my chosen location, rather than catching my eye each time I walked by, she would be shadowed and invisible for a good portion of the year.  Sigh.

I did mount her myself, probably more from paranoia than any other reason – I couldn’t even think about handing her over to anyone else without getting queasy!  Here’s the frame I picked.

I used to use unflavored dental floss to mount needlework, but thought I’d see what was recommended and after some internet research, decided on using perle cotton.  After getting my work space prepared, I did the requisite blocking and measuring.

And pinning to the foam core…

… and repinning after turning things front side up.

Of course Harley wanted to help.

Giving in to my overachiever side, I decided that the "recommended" single looooooooooong strand of perle cotton lacing left-to-right and another single stand top-to-bottom was the best way to handle mounting Jane.

Have I mentioned that Jane's 24 inches tall?

I don’t know how a professional laces needlework onto a backing board, but I figured that over time, in-out-in-out would be a lot better for Jane than a single stitch passing through the linen, since this would put much less stress on specific spots in the fabric.

Starting in the middle allowed me to estimate the length needed for the other half - I tried to keep count of how many "pulls" I took.  And it worked ... pretty much, anyway.  I’m pleased with how little of the perle cotton was wasted.  It took nearly an entire ball to do the job.  The full ball below is for comparison so you can see how much was used, and the loose snippets are the bits that were cut off.

Of course the corners are miter-folded.

After a couple of hours (oh, my tired back!), she’s ready for the frame!

Wonderful Husband helped by drilling tiny holes for the small screws used to mount the hanging wire.

Do you get the Scarlet Letter’s newsletter?  If not, this may seem a bit odd.  When the Grace Kemish sampler was from her frame, Marsha discovered that dozens of bay leaves were inside the backing/dust cover.  The stitcher must have known they are a natural bug repellent.  Cool, huh?  Adding some seemed like the right thing to do (hey, it worked for Grace for 200 years!), and we have a *big* container of bay leaves, so I figured, why not?

I filled out and used the little tag supplied by The Essamplaire, and added a brief note of my own, then glued the dust cover to the back of the frame and weighted it.

I may not be making quilts any more, but I know how to put my book and magazine collection to good use!

And here she is in all her framed glory!

Would you believe after all the care taken in getting the stitching mounted properly on the foam core, all the pinning and repinning and checkingcheckingchecking, I didn’t turn the frame over before putting on the backing paper??  Argh.  Yes, I think she is the tiniest bit crooked in the frame.  I will remedy this at some point, but don’t have the heart to do so right now.

>^..^<

Oh look, an FFO! (yes, really!)

Thanks to Rachel at Ten Hour Stitcher, I’m hoping to Fully Finish several things I’ve had stitched for … a while.  So far, so good – today is the first link up/posting day and I have something to share – woohoo!

Though far from the oldest item in the unfinished ornament pile, I’ve wanted this little guy for my tree since 2003 when I stitched him up for an ornament exchange.  The chart was a freebie though I’m not sure if it can still be found – it has a 2001 copyright by K. Elaine Kramer Designs in case anyone is wants to go looking.  I finally got around to stitching one for myself in 2016, starting August 5 and finishing the 28^th  (this was a “take a quick break from Jane Turner” piece). 

As with the “original,” this is stitched on 30 or 32 count blue something, one over one.  Both times I wanted to make his tail sparkly but couldn’t manage either time because not one fiber I tried matched the image in my head. 

Here’s my very own Peace Dove, who will grace my Christmas tree come December.

And if anyone’s curious as to how the first one looked, they were very similar – here’s the give away one.

Happy stitching AND finishing!


>^..^<

TUSAL February 2019

CLICK HERE to go to Sharon’s It’s Daffycat blog to read all about the Totally Useless SAL and discover why I’m posting pictures of thread snippets, otherwise known as orts.    

  

The Silly Stitching Calendar for 2019 says that I’ve had 14 stitching days since the last TUSAL check in, and this netted a nice little pile of orts … including the tiny, crinkly tell tales of frogging.

Still working on Catherine Theron’s 1840 Town House Sampler.  I’ve made several changes – some intentional, others unplanned.  The frogged snippets were one of those unplanned changes that I was going to leave in, but the more I stitched, the more out-of-place the color looked.  I had changed the lighter green since the supplied color didn’t show up on the linen, and had put all the candidates away before realizing the simple dividing bands use the same color.  Not paying enough attention, I grabbed the wrong color and didn’t realize it until the first two dividers were stitched.  Sigh.

Happy stitching to you!  I’m so glad you stopped by to visit me today!

>^..^<

TUSAL July 2018

CLICK HERE to go to Sharon’s It’s Daffycat blog to read all about the Totally Useless SAL and discover why I’m posting pictures of thread snippets, otherwise known as orts.    

The Silly Stitching Calendar says I had 11 stitching days since TUSAL check in last month.  All the orts are from Jane Turner – and that’s the last time I’ll say that!  

What I kept thinking of as not-quite-orts - threads a bit too long to really be considered orts - were tucked into one of the sections of my project thread box so I could use them when I needed to do just a small number of stitches.  I sorted through them and the ones laid out straight will be wound back onto the appropriate bobbins while the rest join Jane's other orts.

Here are ALL of Jane's orts since I started working on her in 2015.  Rats - I forgot to take a picture of them in their pretty little jar.  Oh well, they're all together in the big ort jar now.

For anyone who hasn’t already seen Miss Jane in all her glory:

Jane provided all this month’s orts because I haven’t stitched since I finished her – that’s TWO ENTIRE WEEKS!!  (*gasp*)  Besides going to work, I’ve been reading, weeding, and working on a couple house projects with Wonderful Husband. 

And trying to figure out what to stitch next.

Happy stitching, everybody, I’m so glad you stopped by to visit me today!

>^..^<

Three years

Jane Turner has been my companion, my friend, and my tormentor for the past three years. 

On June 28 in 2015, I took the first hesitant stitch, attempting Holbein, aka double running, stitch for the very first time.  One could argue that the starting date should be adjusted since the instructions directed using two strands of thread for ALL stitching … which made the double running motifs in the first band look like misshapen blobs.  I frogged first the peach flowers and – after stitching all the peach flower outlines with one thread – removed the dark blue ones also.

I recorded start and finish dates for each band as my original expectation was that I’d want to take breaks between bands and stitch something else, maybe an ornament or scissor fob or some other small thing.  But that happened only once since with each band finish I was excited about starting the next one.

Wednesday night, three years to the day after starting, Jane was complete!  This was not planned as I was really hoping to finish last weekend, but when it got to be the 27^th, I was determined to finish, no matter what the clock said!  Even though I went and ordered her frame yesterday (thank goodness for coupons!), I’m still having trouble believing she’s done, that I she’s not waiting for me to do more stitching.

Sixteen bands and 14 different stitches*, Jane measures 7 inches wide by just under 25 long on 36 count linen.  I had not begun using my Silly Stitching Calendar when I started Jane or I could add up how many days I worked on her … but that would probably be way too obsessive, wouldn’t it?  Probably someone who has the luxury of being able to stitch for an hour or two each and every day could have completed this sampler in six months or maybe less, but I am a slow stitcher who usually stitches three or four times a week so I guess three years isn’t too bad, even if my 2017 goal was to finish before the turn of the year.

And here she is.

Closer shots of the large bands with the twinned brands that bracket them:

Because Jane filled in so many of the motifs in the various bands (bands that are not filled in on samplers similar enough to Jane's to have been taught by the same instructor), it’s fun to speculate about why – was she a really fast stitcher?  Was her family well off and could afford more silk threads, and even a metallic thread for her name and date?  Was she simply an overachiever, a 17^th century Type A?  

I think it's interesting that Jane used black thread blended with a very fine silver metallic thread for her name and the date - there is no black (or metallic) anywhere else in the sampler.  

Thank you for happy dancing with me, and for indulging me by reading to the end of this very long post! 

>^..^<

* Here’s a list of the stitches used in Jane Turner sampler – the ones I knew before starting are bolded.

Holbein / double running

Satin

Trellis

Spiral trellis

Bullion

Couching

Encroaching satin

Detached buttonhole

Colonial knots (my addidtion – couldn’t manage that large flower and petals in spiral trellis)

Chain

Montenegrin

Stem stitch

Marking cross stitch

Cross stitch over one thread