Sloooooooow Saturday Stitching

 I've done a little--a very little--on a diaper pattern on the goldwork project.

Why so little?

One word.

Olympics.

More Gold

 I made myself stitch today, and I have more gold.

Definitely not my best work, and I noticed some twisted stitches only when I looked at the photograph. Unfortunately, where they are would mean taking the whole thing apart. I've decided this is definitely a learning piece, so the errors will stay as a reminder in the future.

I have a horrible feeling that I'm going to have a lot of reminders in this project.

Olympic Stitching--Not!

 This is all I've managed to stitch in the last few days.

Pitiful, just pitiful.

I literally cannot tear my eyes away during some of the competitions, especially the gymnastics. This means that I can't watch my stitching at all, so I've just decided to watch and not even think about threading a needle during certain sports.

At the moment, though, Dearly Beloved is watching fencing, which I do not understand. Everything happens super fast, then a bunch of people in blue suits go look at a computer screen, then one of them comes up a short flight of steps and waves a hand, and then the fencers start over again. Dearly Beloved and the Big Kid used to fence, so he gets what's happening and has tried to explain, but his explanations sometimes go back to the Middle Ages in France and Italy and beyond. I glaze over after about the first 15 minutes of the lecture.

And I still have no clue what's going on.

I may actually get some stitching done today.

Wild Hair

I started on the next motif on my goldwork class. I think it's having a bad hair day.

It is quite possible that I was more than a little distracted by the Men's gymnastics team finals since my bricking is a little wonky. It is also quite possible that I can't stitch in a straight line, which has me somewhat concerned since the next motifs involve diaper patterns.

Carmen is going to get some attention this afternoon once my back unkinks, then there will be more spiral trellis stitches in my future tonight. Or maybe not, since they're going to show the show jumping event in equitation, and there may be more fencing before that.

I'm about as athletic as a potato, but I do love watching the Olympics, especially the more obscure events. 

One of these days, I'll tell you about Dearly Beloved and the Big Kid fencing in front of our house.

Spiraling

 I really am going to talk about stitching, but I have to take you on a trip down memory lane to get there.

I was a child in the 50's--I know, ancient history. At that time, foul language (aka "technical terms") or cuss words were simply not heard or allowed in polite society. When my father needed to express distress, he usually said "dagnabbit" or "dadgummit." My paternal grandmother would say "Heavens to Betsy" or, if the situation was especially dire, "Merciful Heavens." Mother never said anything--she would just huff quietly.

But my maternal grandmother, who was perpetually angry about something or another, would mutter under her breath, "Oh, the dibble."

The what?

I asked Mother once what a dibble was. She told me to look for it in the dictionary. It wasn't there.

Anyway, one summer The Saint, my two older cousins, and I were all at Grandma's for a week. I have no earthly idea why we would all be there at the same time. Grandma didn't particularly like children and really didn't want to spend time with any, but there we were.

It had been one of those days when "Oh, the dibble" had been uttered more than usual and we had been sent outside. The subject of dibbles came up. We were all confused and bemused by the term. My cousin Wylie, who was very quiet, but who had ears like a fox, said he was going to try to find out. He went back inside, where he apparently startled Grandma into a dibble fit and she had sent him back outside immediately.

"She isn't saying dibble," he reported  "She's saying, 'Oh, the devil.'"

Well, calling the name of Old Scratch was just about as bad as any cuss word we could imagine, and to realize our strict and stern Calvinist Presbyterian grandmother was invoking his name was more than we could comprehend. I do recall we were all on our best behavior the rest of the week.

And what does this have to do with my needlework?

There are 34 spiral trellis stitches on this half of the stitching book. I thought, maybe I could frame up the other piece of linen and do the accessory bits before I tackled the 34 spiral trellis stitches for the other side. Then I looked at the charts.

And almost every single additional part of this project also has at least one, if not more, spiral trellis stitches included.

I have only one thing to say about that.

Oh, the dibble!

Olympic Stitching

 Maybe I should have titled this Olympic Non-stitching. It is very hard to stitch when your eyes are glued to the screen. I can knit without looking at my knitting (unless it's a complicated lace or cable pattern) but I cannot stitch without watching where my needle is.

I managed to finish one of the small dividing bands and work the final one on this page of Carmen.

So, that's four pages down and twelve (I think) to go.

Carmen is a very big girl.

Going for the Gold

 Except for the body and the antennae, my butterfly is stitched.

Most of it was done while I was watching the opening ceremonies of the Olympics this afternoon. I had a brief and fleeting thought that perhaps I should try to stitch a motif for each day of the Olympics, but I stomped that idea flat. 

Stitching plans never work for me, as we all know.

Anyway, I had four threaded needles going, plus all the strands of gold passing thread which then had to be plunged to the back and sewn down. By the time I finished doing all that, I felt like I had competed in the Olympics.

I may look for something really simple to stitch tonight, something definitely non-Olympic.