Sloooooooow Stitching

 I keep reading about the concept of slow stitching, and my reaction has always been, "when has stitching not been slow?" Yvette Stanton wrote a post about the very thing in the last week or so--all stitching is slow.

Only thing I can determine is that slow stitchers are perhaps doing hand stitching for the first time when they normally use sewing machines.

I've been thinking about it because I have been doing some very slow stitching.

Do you see that very thin green line around the outside of the design? That is stem stitch, using filament silk. Filament silk tends to be very thin anyway, plus the stitches are supposed to be only 3 mm long. 3mm isn't very long to begin with, but when you're working stem stitch, you're only moving half that length forward with each stitch. That means each stitch advances the line only 1.5 mm.

1.5 mm is about the width of a needle!! A little needle!!

So that took longer than I expected.

And then there are the spangles. I have about as much trouble with spangles as I do with beads. No more needs to be said.

I can only work with very tiny stuff for a few hours before I start twitching, so I pulled No Place Like Home out of time out and started working on the house again. This time it's in the correct place.

I haven't worked on 32 count linen very much in the last few years, so stitching with two strands of thread has reminded me why I moved to higher counts. At least this slow stitching moves a little faster on 32 count linen!