Framework framed

Well, it was already on the stand and all the stuff for it was at hand, so . . .

the framework for Journey is all set up.

After I've been working on linen for awhile, it takes me a bit to get used to canvas, especially how much more quickly the canvas works as opposed to linen.  Well, of course it does--I'm working on something with 18 threads and big holes to the inch as opposed to 45 threads and all but nonexistent holes to the inch. And I don't have to balance the magnifier on my head and continually push it back into position when I work on canvas because I can see without it.

Perhaps I should have included more canvas on the Overly Ambitious List.

Just a few more strands

Well, since it was already out and I don't have to use additional magnification and I can count today, I worked a few more strands into Journey.

I may just leave this on the stand for a day or so. I'd like to get the whole framework done so I can start doing the fun stuff.

A friend of mine once said that when she wins the lottery, she's going to hire someone to do all the counting to set up her geometrics so she can just fill in the middles. I think I could find a better use for my lottery winnings!

One strand

That's all I've managed to do in the last two days. I've worked in one strand.

Last night was our ANG meeting. It was a stitch-in and catch-up with everyone since the holidays. I took David McCaskill's Journey to work on.

Between the talking and catching up and counting and recounting since I apparently lost the ability to count to twelve last night, I managed to get one strand stitched.

And, come to think of it now that I look at the picture, I didn't completely get that strand worked in.

Sigh . . .

Tonight Dearly Beloved and I have been discussing food. We are planning a trip. When we go on trips, Dearly Beloved plans food. He reads restaurant reviews. He looks at locations. He asks for recommendations from friends. Or if we're returning to a place we've visited before, he ponders previous experiences. Tonight he's been pondering. It has taken my stitching time this evening, since I have to listen to the ponderings and musings and must also offer my opinion.

And since I still apparently can't count to twelve, perhaps that's a good thing.

Hidden Mysteries . . .

I'm working on Hannah Thornbush.

You start with a motif that looks like this:

And then you work detached buttonhole over it like so:

Pray tell, why would you go to all the trouble to stitch that light and airy little design and then cover it solidly with buttonhole stitch?

Darlene O'Steen mentioned in a class I took from her umpty-leven years ago that it was not unusual to find double running motifs inside a design element which could only be seen on the back of a sampler. On the front, there was usually some kind of overstitching that hid the motif from view.

As I was stitching, I wondered if there was some kind of code hidden in these motifs. The period in which these samplers were stitched was politically perilous, so could the girls who stitched them be hiding a message within the sampler?

It suddenly occurred to me, in a slap-up-side-of-the-head-duh moment, that I read way too many murder mysteries.

These samplers were stitched reversibly.

Reversibly.

And they weren't framed. They were rolled up and kept in workbaskets to serve as pattern records in a time when books and printing were horribly expensive and rare. So if you wanted to see that double running motif, you simply looked at it. And at the same time, you could practice your needlelace stitches to fill a variety of shapes on the other side.

Sometimes the simplest explanation is the most logical.

I need to remember that.

I won, I won, I WON!!!!

I won the scissors stand that was the prize for the last day of Tricia Nguyen's 12 Days of Christmas giveaway!!!

To say that I am excited is an understatement!  You must understand, I have been craving one of these stands for years, but the practical Scots-Irish Presbyterian who lives in the back of my head always whispered in my ear that I could buy a yard of linen or a pile of silks that I could then use for my embroidery for the price of the stand.

I've hinted to Dearly Beloved that this would be a lovely gift for a Special Occasion, but his view on needlework is that I'm going to figure out a way to rationalize what I want and get it for myself anyway, so he goes for something else. It doesn't make any difference now, because I WON!

(I very rarely, in fact, pretty much never, win anything, so please pardon my loss of decorum.)

(Maybe you should also forgive my assumption that I ever have any decorum anyway.)

I doubt there will be much embroidery tonight. I'm busy auditioning scissors to see which pair deserves to sit in the stand.

another goal met

I met another goal for January for the Overly Ambitious List yesterday.

All the little designs around the cartouche are filled in with tent stitch.

It took all afternoon and part of the evening to finish four flowers and eight leaves, thus reinforcing the decision to avoid tent stitch when I stitch the panels for my casket. If I did tent stitch, it would take me until I'm 104 to get the designs I want to do done.

As I already have to live to be 385 to finish what I've already planned, I don't think I should add that many more years to a project.

Ann Lawle's whitework band--January goal accomplished!

I put the last stitch into Ann Lawle's whitework band last night:

And because I was too lazy to put this away and grab another project from the Overly Ambitious List, I started the Montenegrin band that divides the next section from this one.

I've decided to work a band a month on this sampler, which should see it finished by the end of October. I think that will keep me from burning out. This isn't the biggest sampler in the works, but some of the bands are a little complex, so I figured this would be the best way to tackle it.

I'm not sure what I'll work on today. I was hoping for sunshine so I could pick up Hannah Thornbush, but it's pouring buckets and extremely windy. Our lights have flickered a couple of times, so I may not be able to stitch at all. Even better, I may not be able to vacuum . . .