Getting My Ass Kicked

Yesterday I struggled with these white clustered fly stitches. Initially I tried to do both layers before moving on to the next one but the counting was really kicking my ass. Finally I decided to do all the outer ones first. That way all the counting would be consistent. Then I came back and easily did the inner ones. 

The blue crosses were very easy. I did long stitches and anchored them with the yellow cross stitches. These were all done while I was watching TV.

There is one counting error but I defy anyone to find it. Then I did the parallel diagonal faggot stitches, the leafy ones on the right and diagonal stair step stitches.

They were followed by the 'stars' which also required a lot of counting but after a couple, I got the hang of it.

With them completed, there were blue fly stitches. The pattern was changed slightly to improve the look. Instead of the crosses being 2 threads out from the centre, I made them three threads out.

I'm pretty happy I got so much done on this project over the last two days.  

The pattern in that empty space to the left involves a whole bunch of those long-tailed chain stitches with more needle weaving - different the previously done. I thought I'd start those with fresh eyes tomorrow.

I overbought lettuce the other day while shopping. Even though we had tacos only a couple of days ago, we're going to have tostadas (chalupas?) tonight using tostada shells (flat, crisp corn tortillas), ready made, packaged and for sale at the local grocery store. 

If I remember, I'll take a photo of the ones I'm going to make. They're so easy to make with seasoned ground beef (I use this recipe for my taco seasoning), refried beans, diced fresh tomatoes and onions, shredded cheese and lettuce, sour cream, and avocado. The avocado I bought today isn't ripe enough so I've been researching ways to quickly ripen them. It looks like a few seconds in the microwave oven will do it.

Alternate Retreat

After StitchNorth, I decided to take a pass on our autumn guild retreat at Elim this weekend. I have mixed feelings about it. I'm happy not to be isolating from Skip for a week, doing lots of rapid tests, and being concerned about being exposed to folks who might not be fully vaccinated or wearing well-fitting masks. On the other hand, I miss seeing all my stitchy friends in person and know they're having lots of fun being away, stitching a lot, eating meals they don't have to plan or prepare or clean up after.

Instead I am stitching in tandem at home and I've been getting a lot done. 

I finished all the Hardanger stitches on the Durene Jones bee scissor fob, found appropriate fabric for behind the open work, and added the HotFix rhinestones.

Then I made the cord, and put it all together.

I also added the bling to the triangular scissor case and have it all ready to assemble. Those Greek crosses, dove's eyes, and wrapped bars took most of the afternoon.

I finished the snowflakes on the Moonshine Cabin and added HotFix 'stars'.

They're really sparkly.

My plan is to paint a 10" hoop and mount the piece for hanging. Nothing fancy. Click on the arrow to see all the twinkle.

I've been adding letters to my Token of Fall. I should be able to complete this by the end of the weekend.

Sock Wash Day, etc.

I keep a special laundry basket for my hand knit socks and wash them all when it's almost full. Wool socks can be worn two or three times before they need washing. Most of the socks don't shrink so can go in the wash individually or in a lingerie bag. A couple of my socks don't have as much nylon content and like to felt so I stretch them out when I pull them out of the washer. Then I put them on my large sock stretcher to dry or at least to stretch out. 

Front row socks: Monkey, Practice Makes Perfect, generic ribbed, helix , felted helix.
Second row: Business Casual, striped ribbed generic, striped ribbed generic, business casual, scrappy.
Top: Katwijker frok

Once they're dry they go back into one of my two sock drawers. 

I have one pair (Helix socks on bottom right) that just felt too much. They're so pretty and will be hard to part with but will go to someone who appreciates sturdy, hand knit socks and has smaller feet than I do. 

I finished what I've been calling the 'drab, ribbed' socks. They're sized for a woman's foot.

They're not that pretty but will be very cozy on the feet. I have started another pair of women's socks, turned the heel and am halfway finished the foot of the first one. The generic pattern I've been using makes them easy to knit (3 x 1 ribbed leg and stocking stitch foot) while watching TV. 

Unless a sock pattern really grabs me, I'll just continue knitting the ribbed socks as I use up my vast sock yarn stash.

I got the birds and chimneys done on Moonshine Cabin during my Monday morning stitching Zoom chat. I first stitched both birds the wrong colour and had to pick them out and re-stitch. No biggie.

I got most of the 5-stitch snowflakes done, will finish the rest, and start HotFixing the individual snowflakes. The bird's eyes will be black HotFix 'jewels'.

Yesterday Skip and I went up to Port Perry to collect our finished tax returns. For lunch we went to the restaurant at Sunnybrae Golf Course. The menu is still pretty limited but it was nice to dine out. We would have liked to dine outside but it was too cold for comfort. Fortunately we were the only patrons inside. Then we came home and both had a good nap.

Moonshine Cabin Progress

I finished the trees and leaves. 

It's always good to take a picture of the stitching to 'proofread' it. I just noticed I'm missing one leaf. There is another area that is not a perfect mirror image of the other side but I'm not going to fix it.

I just need to add the chimneys, birds, and the 5-stitch snowflakes. I have plans to do the 1-stitch snowflakes with HotFix 'bling'. There are a lot of them so we'll see if I actually go through with that or not.

I picked this up today while I was on my Crafternoon chat as the latest new stitch on my Wessex Hussif would have required too much concentration.

When I finish Moonshine Cabin, I would dearly like to mount it on the ash veneer IKEA Mallgroda.

Unfortunately, it's currently unavailable in Canada, even to order online. I may end up just mounting it into a hoop.

Almost Halfway

I finished up the last two white long-tail woven chain motifs to complete that section.

I then tackled the rest of the diamonds and stars section by adding the blue cross stitches in the centre of the 'stars'.

I finished the next section with all the white stitching (lont-tail chain and fly stitches), the blue x's (long-tail chain stitches) and yellow centres. I elongated the vertical bar on the yellow 'smyrna-esque' stitches to make them stand out a bit better.

With that section finished, I'm almost halfway finished the stitching of the Wessex Hussif

With the layer upon layer of stitching, it is quite dense and uses a lot of floss/thread. The pattern says I require 60m of the coordinating colours and my spools have 50m. I really think 50m will be enough. Fingers are crossed.

Shopping for Stitchery Stuff

 I got the Sulky thread I needed at Kim's today so I should be good for the rest of the Hussif.

While there, I bought 3 John James gold plated #26 tapestry needles and a fat quarter (metre) of some 28ct Zweigart white Cashel linen. I have some items I've been adapting and designing and I just needed a bunch of fabric for any projects I might want to stitch up.

At guild last night, Kim and Meagan showed us lots of new things that had come into their shop. One chart many of us ooohed and aaahed over was Spring Quaker by Lila's Studio.

I love the little village in the basket. It could certainly stand alone.

I also bought Matter in Hand by Jeannette Douglas because I liked all the stitching motifs.

Skip got his 4th COVID shot this morning - his second booster. I'm booked for May 11. Hope I'll feel a bit more comfortable being out and about after the booster. 

I had lunch at a chain Italian restaurant today and was the only customer so no concerns about aerosol COVID bits near me.

But for now, I'm going back to do more on my Wessex Hussif.

Stars, Diamonds, Long-tail Chain Stitches and Fly Stitches.

I have been beavering away on the Wessex Hussif. I ordered another two spools of the white Sulky 'cause I'm not sure one would be enough. I'm picking them up from Kim's tomorrow.

Yesterday I completed the Stars and Diamonds with white. It's pretty dense. Next I'll add blue cross stitches in the centres of the stars.

Today I started the next white section with long-tail chain stitches. Then come the fly stitches between the crosses.

Then superimposed on the long-tail chain crosses will be long-tail chain 'x's in either blue or yellow.

I fudged the pattern by one thread so my long-tail chain stitches would start and end beside the bottom left of a vertical thread (i.e. A)

It is so much easier counting that way. I'm not even going to reveal where I did the fudging as it isn't perceptible at all - it's my little secret.

Monogamous Stitching

I have been stitching exclusively on the Wessex Hussif. I have somewhat of a holistic approach and jump around to different areas as the mood strikes.

This is where I am so far. That space at the top may get filled in as the original saying wasn't showing up properly with the indicated backstitches. I think a cross-stitched sentiment would look better. I may just put my initials and the date instead.

I have finished all the blue and yellow woven long-tailed chain motifs and only have 2 white ones to go. I do need to fix a couple of the diagonal running stitches as well.

Those woven long-tailed chain things initially took me between 15 and 20 minutes each to execute. By the time I had done 20 or so (of the 38 total) I had it down to about 6.5 minutes.

There are are several steps. For A, enter at the dot of 1 then go back down in the same spot, leaving a loop. come up two threads down at the dot, go through the loop and pull snugly. Go down 10 threads and up at the dot at 3, two threads lower. Then wrap the needle around the tail and back down into the hole at 3. Do this 4 times, two threads apart for 4 vertical long-tailed chains.

Now comes the woven part. Do the same procedure for B but this time, weave the horizontal tail over and under the vertical tails, then down up and around as you did in A. Do this 4 times, alternating the weaving.

Now to pull it all into the centre, come up in the centre and go under the woven threads to the top , left corner (blue figure C). Weave over and under the threads above the fabric surface all the way around the outside and pull firmly. This will scrunch all the weaving into the centre. 

Then, back at the top left, go back down into the centre. Then do this 37 more times. 

All told, even at 6.5 minutes each, I will have spent more than 247 minutes or over 4 hours on this stitch alone.

Then there were the white fly stitches in a diamond/star formation, followed by a short running stitch in yellow.

In the middle of all this I jumped down to the bottom and did the zig zag stitches over 2 threads, just for some variety.

So after all that, I have completed most of the first 6 inches of the 20" Wessex Hussif.

I was very grateful to have a very long audiobook to listen to through most of this.

To give my eyes a rest and while watching TV in the evenings, I have been knitting another pair of socks. This time they're women's socks but the yarn is very drab, can I say 'ugly'? However they will be very cozy. 

 

They're the same generic pattern as the ones I finished last week but only 68sts were cast on and, of course, they're shorter for a woman's foot. 

Never one to have 'second sock syndrome' I immediately cast on the second sock and have already knit a couple of inches on the leg.

It's tax time and we dropped our stuff off at our preparer, Joyce, last week.  I got a call from Joyce today confirming a couple of things and informing me that we can claim a couple of other things. Things such as any modifications to our home for accessibility and a percentage of a digital subscription to our newspaper. We can also claim the mileage for all the trips we took into The Big City for Skip's medical appointments and treatment last year.

I had to spend some time looking for the email with the big box store receipt for the raised toilet seats I installed last year and when trying to get a receipt for my digital newspaper subscription, I ended up having to call the paper and asking for a receipt to be emailed to me.

I also had to look back for several emails I sent friends to confirm the number of times we drove into The Big City last year and when we went in by GO train. We can claim mileage for any medical appointments beyond 40km from home. Skip's appointments were 52.6km away and we went 9 times by car and twice by GO - although I only had 1 GO receipt and one parking receipt. I was able to get all that information confirmed and off to Joyce. I'm still waiting on the digital newspaper receipt. 

Joyce reminded me of the 2022 Ontario Staycation Tax Credit and I told her I was already saving receipts.  I'm glad I got that done.

Now back to stitching.

Sketchy Instructions

I'm muddling along on the Wessex Hussif. The instructions are very sketchy. The stitch diagrams don't refer to where they actually are on the chart. I don't really knot if I"m doing thigs correctly. 

I tried to start to stitch the saying that goes along the top and the Sulky thread just seems too big, I will have to re-design the saying using cross stitches instead of just back stitches.

I finished all the white 'stars' and stitched the blue crosses in between them. I could have just run long blue lines and couched them with the cross stitches but instead, I stitched every arm of the cross into the centre then did the cross stitches. I have no idea if that is what was supposed to have been done.

I have started the yellow crosses on top of the white fly stitches. Instead of going down into the centre, I'm doing a diagonal, long-tail fly stitch on one arm of the yellow, going down into the fabric then wrapping the thread around the tail then back down to make it look like the other end of the 'arm'. 

I got tired of doing that stitch so will go back and tackle more of the multiple long-tailed, woven, daisy stitches. They're kinda fun in small doses.

But for now, I will take a break and plan my next stitching start because I always have to have something new to look forward to.

I went to the local big box store this morning to have a look at a couple of watercolour instruction books I'd been searching out online. The online inventory said they had two of them but when I got to the store, neither was in stock at that store. I did buy one that looks like fun. 

Some of the projects looked like ones I'd enjoy doing and the amount of time required for painting (15 minutes) is about right for my attention span. 

I also popped into Curry's to see if they had any transfer paper (for tracing onto watercolour paper) but they were out of stock. I'm not good at drawing (I've never really tried to do it well) so transferring outlines would be perfect for me. I'll have to see if I can source it elsewhere.

This is Going to Take a Long Time

I did some more work on the Wessex hussif.

These are fly stitches arranged in a circle. I have 3+ rows of these to finish. Then there's another colour laid on top.

I did the blue 'x's. An alternative method is to go down into the centre hole with each arm of the 'x'. I chose to do the long arms, then the crosses are added over top.

This stitch involves long-tailed daisy stitches, anchored with long vertical stitches. Then the horizontal bars are woven through the vertical ones. Then the thread is woven all around the woven part and pulled to bunch up the centres. There will also be yellow ones which will remind me of sunflowers.

The piece is big and there are a lot of repetitions of each element. I should be pretty good at each one by the time I get finished - which won't be any time soon.

Lettering goes in the blank space at the top. Given the colours I picked they should be yellow but the blue will show up better so that is what I'll do.

I also finished the rest of the diagonal running stitches on the right side.

I like the precision of this kind of counted work. It is time-consuming, though. 

I want to start the triangular scissor case I designed based on the Giulia Manfredini biscornu.

Stay tuned.

Stealth Project Revealed, Starting A Big Wessex Project, and Finding the The Right Fabric

I can finally reveal the project I've stealthily been working on. It's a scissor pillow for my friend, Marilyn's birthday.

I was inspired by one that Jeanette made from one of The Cross Stitch Guild's patterns. Basically it's a long piece of stitching, folded to make the pocket. A coordinating fabric is used for the backing and it's stuffed like a little pillow.

By some miracle, I had the PERFECT coordinating fabric in my stash! Squeeee!

Marilyn likes early 20th century style so I found the art nouveau iris pattern, assigned colours, and stitched it. Then I agonized over what font I would use for her initials.

Then came the search for coordinating scissors with a guard. I found them on Amazon.  The whole thing came together so nicely. I could hardly wait to give it to her.

Last night I started the Wessex Hussif project. I ordered the pattern directly from JC Embroidery in New Zealand. The shipping was more than the pattern but Wessex patterns are so rare, I just had to treat myself.

I'm using a pearl grey 28ct linen and Sulky Petites thread in white, yellow and blue. The pattern is very 'squinchy' - small scale and little. I did start it last night and got a bunch of the first section done.

There's a LOT of counting. White is the main colour. Those blue dots are actually crosses over two threads one way then two threads the other.

This morning I did much of the blue and white part, then this afternoon I started the diagonal running stitches.

My eyes are tired but it's going well. 

By definition an embroidered hussif is "an alternative form of 'housewife' which originally meant a sewing-case. Traditional hussifs were a long strip of fabric 6 to 8 inches wide, with pockets stitch across the width of the fabric to hold sewing tools". ~ from Pintangle.com.

So the inside will be a series of pockets to hold my embroidery needles, scissors, needle minders, and possibly a pair of magnifying glasses. The stitched part of mine is 7 5/8" wide and will be about 20" long. Each section is a new stitch but once I figure out how to do it, a rhythm is developed and it moves right along. 

After having food truck lunch for Marilyn's birthday today, I stopped into the Ultimate Sewing Centre in Oshawa to see if I could find a fabric that would work with my Drawn Thread Simply summer piece - a fabric that would be good for a project bag. I think I lucked out.

This batik had the blue and beige colours from the pattern and fabric.

The zipper is a good match to the hand-dyed threads and batik fabric but I might pick a red or gold one just to give it a bit of contrast. I think it's going to look really cute.

Wouldn't the house, tree, and bee skep make a cute needlebook?