Stay-cation Day 5

I'm almost halfway.

I'm surprised I got this far today.

I had a little bit of a learning curve using the silk purl. I've used purl purl in goldwork, but the silk purl is--how do I put this--a lot livelier. There were a couple of times that we were engaged in hand-to-hand combat. I wanted it to do one thing. It wanted to do another.

I finally pulled out the big guns--my goldwork tools--and the sight of the burling irons (big tweezers with wicked sharp pointy ends) tamed the beast.

And then there were issues with the Tire silk used to couch everything on this project.

I love Tire silk. I adore Tire silk when it comes to couching gold in goldwork pieces. I am so taken with Tire silk that I have three unused spools in my stash so that when the Zombie Apocalypse arrives and the needlework and sewing shops all  close and stitching supplies are not available, I will still be able to work on projects from my stash.

But the card of Tire silk in the kit has misbehaved. I don't know if it's a batch of silk that was silkier or what, but it would not stay in the eye of the needle. First I tried doing that lasso thing around the eye of the needle. The silk laughed at me and loosened itself completely.

Then I decided to show it who was boss so I literally tied it in a knot around the eye. At this point, it was rolling on the floor and LOLing itself into hysterics.  It immediately untied itself.

Of course, those were the knots I wanted. It was very happy to tie itself into knots.

This went on all day.

So, after that, I've decided to do what I did last night when I still felt like stitching but didn't feel like taxing what was left of my brain cells.  Mary Otter, who was going to take the week off, came out of her pillowcase last night.

Tonight I'll either lay more bricks--or maybe I'll fill in a window or two.

At least I won't have to do it with Tire silk.