A Bluestocking Knits

Thursday, Mostly Sunny

The downside -- one of the downsides, I guess -- to not blogging for a while is that you end up with a half-dozen or so posts coming down the pike, and you wonder, should I post them one-by-one or all at once?!  And of course you forget things, or end up with a photo that you can't remember why you took, &c. &c. &c.  All of the above.

Here is the "Pink Sparrow" sampler by Brenda Gervais of With Thy Needle & Thread.  Unlike "Philadelphia Vine," which sang to me joyfully at once, metaphorically speaking, the "Pink Sparrow" whispered softly, and I thought about it a number of times as I kept coming across it on various journeys around the interwebs, and eventually succumbed to its quiet charms.  Started, I admit, the same day that I finished "Philadelphia Vine" ...

This has been on my to-be-read list for quite some time -- since it was new, I guess.  I couldn't find the book I wanted to start, which was Stalky & Co., and so for a complete non sequitur -- no, not really, it was just nearby on the shelf where Stalky should have been -- I started this.  It's very dense, and I'm afraid that Greek names still puzzle me more than a little, so that it's hard to keep everything straight.  My only quibble with the book from an editorial perspective is the maps -- there are many, but they are pretty clearly cropped down from some antique map so that often there is a great deal of extraneous detail, when one is hoping to focus on the particular episode at hand -- the Peleponnesian War was ten years long, so a very great deal happened -- but worse, there is no highlighting of what we are supposed to be looking at.  If a map is called "The Corcyrean Revolution," say, and it has just a vaguely topographic map with Corcyrea in one corner, I still have no idea what is going on!  But Lendon writes wonderfully, and sometimes he slips into Homeric mode and we get sentences like this, on the very first page: "A few days later unfolded the thousands-strong procession from Athens to holy Eleusis, when the initiates carried branches of myrtle tied with wool and bellowed as they marched the sacred roar Iaccho! Iacche!"  That is certainly not a stuffy-academic sentence!  I can almost forgive him the grating ones that start with "For," when he gives me sentences like that. 

I came across Brendon Chase after reading about the "Swallows and Amazons" series -- I don't remember now quite why it piqued my interest, but I managed to get hold of a second-hand copy, and began reading it a week or so ago, as a bit of light relief from the Peleponnesian War.  I suppose I can see the connection to Ransome's books, in that it centers around children off on their own in the countryside for weeks on end, but certainly the Walkers are doing so with the full permission and approval (because the children are seasoned sailors and campers, mind you) of their parents, whereas the three brothers in Brendon Chase have run away from what is called somewhat sneeringly, about a third of the way along the story, "petticoat government."  Perhaps it is because I am now a parent, but it seems to me that the boys -- whose parents are in India, so they are staying with a spinster aunt, apparently somewhat elderly -- don't have a particularly onerous life with their aunt (certainly not an Oliver-Twist existence), but just have a thing for Thoreau and Tom Sawyer and Robin Hood, and I can't help feeling quite a lot of sympathy for Aunt Ellen, who naturally is worried about them and very cross indeed.

I must have been crazy to agree, as there are a ton of rehearsals and at a considerable distance, but my choir was asked for volunteers to join up with another for a grand-scale production of "Carmina Burana," and I was one of the dozen or so who said yes.  It's a weird piece, and challenging, and loud, but wow, is it ever fun to sing!  I spent a whole semester on it in college, and then have done it at least twice since then, so luckily for me I know it pretty well, and got to jump right in. I still have some post-pandemic creepies about singing and therefore wear a mask, which is a bit of a downer, but there it is (I am in the minority in the very large group) -- it's not so much about me as about the possibility of my passing something all unknowingly along to someone else. Well, on the lighter subject -- after years of venturing to suggest to my director that I be freed from the first-soprano section after a decade, back to my beloved first-alto, it was at last agreed that I may do so, and I am happily back where I feel most at home.  The soprano section is a nice place to visit, but, no, I don't want to live there!  And in the "Carmina" theme, here is a clip of one of my favorite bits -- I've chosen one of the more spirited versions on YouTube! --

"Philadelphia Vine, 1755"

The "Philadelphia Vine, 1755" sampler from The Scarlett House.  I fell head over heels for this the moment I saw it.  The colors! the silks with each other, and the silks on the grey-brown linen! the neatly-turned corners!  Oh my.  Being more than a little late to the reproduction-samplers party, I was surprised to see that this is a nearly-brand-new chart, since so many of the ones I've fancied have been long out-of-print and required combing through second-hand sales to find!

Surprisingly, I had no trouble getting the same fabric as recommended, though that was after I discovered that Weeks Dye Works' "Confederate Grey" is now called simply "Grey".  The harder part was getting the silks.  Since the colors were what caught me in the first place, I wanted to not substitute for any of them -- but fate was against me.  The three Dinky Dye silks were quite easy, but Gloriana "Summer Gold" was in short supply, and I could not find "Evergreen" for love or money, and I even came to the point of figuring out DMC substitutions, but then I decided that "Evergreen Dark" seems actually pretty close.  Gloriana's "Old Red Barn" was another problem, as it looked quite, well, barn-ish in the pictures I saw, and so when I found a shop in Michigan that had the "Evergreen Dark" and the two other Gloriana reds I figured were most beautiful, I nearly jumped with joy.  The colors above are Dinky Dye's "Cottesloe" (the creamy-white), "Saltbush" (light green), and "Seagrass" (dark green), and Gloriana's "Summer Gold," "Evergreen Dark" (dark blue-green), and the two deep reds, "Rosewood" and "Cranberry."

These last are very similar, and probably could easily be substituted for one another without much problem.  This skein of "Rosewood" seemed a little deeper to me, and didn't have quite as much variation as the "Cranberry," wh. I now have a full skein of for another project (!).

And after that, this was a pleasure to stitch.  I almost wish that I'd had longer to enjoy the process!

The chart is clear and easy-to-read, and aside from those little gold "plusses" in the lower floral border being red on the model and gold on the chart there were no inconsistencies.

The over-one section looks much more cramped on mine than on the model in Scarlett House's photo -- I remember seeing somewhere the recommended fabric being 30- or 35-count, not the 40 that is on the chart now, so perhaps the model was worked at a slightly larger scale? 

Curiously, considering the trouble that I had in getting hold of it, there was quite a lot of the silk floss left over -- maybe even enough to do the whole thing again.  (I did not, by the way, have any issue with the silk being wound on a paper bobbin this way -- no creases, dents, etc.  I suppose that the end closest to the center will have some creases on it when I get there, but I've never found that to be an issue with my cotton floss, as once it's worked on the fabric, it smooths itself out.  I do usually wet-block my pieces in cotton floss, though I suppose I won't risk it with the silk here.)

"Margaret Ann Klinedienst"

"Margaret Ann Klinedienst" sampler by Queenstown Designs.  This was certainly a challenging piece.  Some of the inconsistencies are mine, such as the slightly-yellowed flower in the top border, when I must have picked up the wrong bobbin and didn't notice until quite some time afterwards, but most of them are Margaret's -- the occasional pale leaf in the border, the wobbly corners, the not-quite-centered basket patterns.  The border motif looks like it repeats, but in fact many are just slightly different from the previous one, which I suspect means that Margaret was not working from a chart or sample, but by looking at what she'd done previously -- or not looking carefully (!).  And of course the delightfully wacky flowers hardly ever go where you'd expect them to.  These require constant reference to the chart, of course -- always time-consuming.  My re-color of the chart I've already talked about; the revised colors can be found in the Needlework album on the sidebar.  I did also find the chart difficult to read because it doesn't have an overlap -- and trimming and taping together the twelve pages as the designer suggested is an unappealingly cumbersome alternative.

But there it is.  What drew me to it in the first place -- the quirkiness, the extravagance, the pale-yellow sawtooth border around the inscription -- is all still there.

I did make a few changes from Margaret's original.  That chopped-off leaf in the border bothered me no end, so I added a row of five stitches near the outside point to make it a bit less so, and the bottom-left corner of the border was so awkward, once I came to it, that I ended up re-charting it, tweaking it just enough to retain the air of the original yet keep me from looking at it for the rest of my life and thinking, "uff, that bit bugs me!"

I can't deny that I got a bit tired of it now and then -- there is a lot of border, and I mentally kicked myself more than once for leaving most of it to the end!  But that is all behind me, and I am very pleased with the finished piece!

After the Fact (Christmas Ornament)

I had had this piece finished for some time, but waited to post it as it was a gift! then blog ennui happened and now it's March.  Heigh-ho.

Anyway, it's the "Christmas Angel 1997", a free chart by Marilyn Leavitt-Imblum of Lavender & Lace.  I'm very impressed with the shading details in this piece, which are quite lovely and effective.  My mother-in-law collects angels, so I thought this would make a good gift for her.

I confess that I started this quite a number of years ago, and got lost on the wings, certain that I'd made a mistake somewhere but unable to tell among all of the shades of white and off-white where I'd gone wrong.  After re-starting (and finishing!) the decades-delayed "English Cottage," I felt a bit guilty that I'd left this so long -- it's a much smaller project, after all! -- so I just picked it up and finished it, not worrying overmuch about flecks of white in semi-random places! and the main stitching was done in one long evening.

I didn't want to buy the braids and filaments -- four things! of which I'd need only a small amount -- and so I sort of "unvented" a bit of sparkle by blending a strand of floss plus a strand of the metallic gold thread I already had bought for the hem of the gown.  Here I used DMC 304 floss plus metallic 5282 for the red braid, and 3347 floss plus the same gold metallic for the chartreuse braid.  I did "splurge" on the Mill Hill beads, partly because I'm also hoping to do the companion angel some other time!

I mounted this more-or-less the same way as in this video, attaching the fabric to pieces of mat board by way of gathering stitches, and whip-stitching the front and back together.  My whip-stitching was a bit, um, erratic, and so I went over it again with some floss in long-armed cross stitch (in lieu of ribbon).  The hanger is a piece of heavy-ish beading wire that I had on hand, twisted into a clothes-hanger shape with a loop instead of a hook, I mean with "shoulders" inside to help distribute the weight of the ornament.

All in all, quite successful!  It's still hanging up at my in-laws' house, months after Christmas, so I'm happy that she likes it.  With luck, the 2005 angel won't take me as long ...

The State of Things

I am still knitting, though there is little sign of it here, as there isn't much progress visible, I'm afraid -- the "Camptown Races" cowl is still making a grandmother's-footsteps advance towards the finish line, five rows forward, one back, seven forward, two back -- the ski balaclava for David was far too big, ripped back to the beginning, slightly too big, ripped back to the neck, and is heading upwards yet again -- the "Rae" slipover for Julia got abandoned in summer heat and my utter dread of purling with two colors, but I have now decided to throw my period-knitting technique (partial technique, to be honest, as said dread already made me work the bottom half in the round ...), and after double-checking by blocking it still on the needles and making sure that it fits, I've decided to steek the armholes and neck opening.

And I have a post nearly ready to put up about my second 1:12 shop but am puzzled and confused by the sudden enormity of the images in my last post -- TypePad or me, I don't know.  Certainly I am still struggling with the new-to-me photo-editing program -- but I thought I had made them all the same size as previously.

(I did, by the way, realize that I mis-read the "Margaret Ann Klinedienst" chart, and I was supposed to interlace the satin stitches on the large diamonds along the basket, not butt them up against each other down the middle of each diamond as I'd tried to do earlier.  They are all actually the same thread, but those two that look dark are worked horizontally, while the others are vertical, and the light catches them very differently here!)

But, yes, I am still deep into my fascination with historical samplers and reproductions thereof, and I admit freely that they are absorbing much of my time, though I am also making an effort to read more, and am about halfway through my third re-read this year of the "Swallows and Amazons" series -- just closed the cover at the end of Coot Club this morning, with a great deal of satisfaction at how everything turns out!  (How did I never know of these?!)

More anon --

Re-coloring the "Floral"

I was dismayed for more than one reason recently to find that my local needlework shop -- who had a wonderful assortment of threads -- closed its doors with a thwack of finality and no notice whatsoever.  I had been hoping to go and compare in person the threads I'd bought for the "Floral Sampler" with some alternatives -- but, obviously, no joy.  I extended my sphere by quite a few miles, but nobody seems to carry Gentle Arts or Weeks Dye Works, and so I ended up choosing a selection from online photos in order to have them in my hands.  Since choosing colors online can be something of a gamble, and because I really appreciate those Etsy sellers who photograph not just a specific color but a selection of shades together, so that we can at least tell, for example, which red is darker or lighter than another, I decided to photograph everything I have and post it here in case it's helpful to others trying to make a similar decision.  Some of these are the original ones for the "Floral" (so are partially used skeins!), some are the selection I bought as potential replacements, and some are from my stash that are similar shades, though not actually in contention for this particular piece.

With any of these threads, of course -- Gentle Arts, Weeks Dye Works, Crescent Colors, and Classic Colorworks -- any given color may vary considerably from dye lot to dye lot.  And they can all look noticeably different when stitched than they do in the skein.

In the photo at the top is Gentle Art's "Victorian Pink" (the original for the "Floral"), Weeks Dye Works' "Charlotte's Pink", and Gentle Art's Simply Shaker "Tea Rose."  The "Victorian" is by far the most vivid and clear of the three.

GA Simply Shaker's "Ruby Slipper," Gentle Art's  "Red Grape," Simply Shaker's "Briar Rose," "Claret" (the original), and below, Weeks Dye Works' "Lancaster Red" and "Williamsburg Red."  "Williamsburg" has more purple in it than "Lancaster".  "Claret" seems more of a blood-red than "Ruby Slipper".

Gentle Art's "Midnight" (the original dark blue for the "Floral") and "Blueberry," Simply Shaker's "Brethren Blue," Weeks Dye Works' "Williamsburg Blue," Gentle Art's "Blue Jay" (the original medium-blue), Classic Colorworks' "Milady's Teal," Weeks Dye Works' "Blue Jeans" and "Shepard's Blue," and Crescent Colors' "Deep Blue Sea."   "Shepard's Blue" is quite on the grey side of blue; "Milady's Teal" has very little green in it to be called teal.  "Blueberry," perhaps unsurprisingly, has a touch of purple in it.  "Midnight" is not a blackish-blue, but a very deep but clear blue.

Gentle Art's "Gold Leaf" (the original darker golden-brown), Weeks Dye Works' "Schneckley," Gentle Art's "Brandy" (the original lighter gold/golden-brown), and GA Simply Shaker's "Wheat Fields."  I wondered to myself as I made out my list if I might use "Gold Leaf" for "Brandy," and use a darker gold for "Gold Leaf" ....

Gentle Art's "Dried Thyme" (the original medium-green), Weeks Dye Works' "Collards," GA Simply Shaker's "Chives", Classic Colorworks' "Jolly Holly," and Gentle Art's "Evergreen" (the original light green).  "Collards" is pretty much exactly the color of boiled spinach, but don't let that put you off as it is a gorgeous dark green with just a touch of black.

Classic Colorworks' "Used Brick" and Gentle Art's "Old Brick."  "Old Brick" seems to me more of a salmon color than a brick one.

Above, these are O'Steen's original colors for the sampler, all from The Gentle Art: "Brandy," "Midnight," "Blue Jay," " Dried Thyme," "Victorian Pink," "Sable," "Gold Leaf," "Claret," "Old Brick," and "Evergreen."  And below is my tentative selection, in the same order: "Schneckley," "Williamsburg Blue," either "Blue Jeans" or "Shepard's Blue," "Collards," "Charlotte's Pink," "Mocha," "Wheat Fields," "Ruby Slipper" or "Briar Rose," "Used Brick," and "Dried Thyme".

Margaret 2.0

I'm happy with my revision of the colors for "Margaret", wh. are a bit darker but look much more like the photo than what I had in my hands before.  Now I'm a bit bemused by the satin-stitch blocks on the basket, as the line across the middle of the first diamond, where the two areas of satin stitch meet, looks rather peculiarly like teeth!  I'm not sure if that's my technique -- though I'm usually (surprisingly) not a tight stitcher -- or just the nature of the beast, as it were.  I might re-work one doing an "encroaching" satin, and see if that is an improvement.  The photo of the finished sampler is too blurry to get much of an idea of how it's supposed to look, unfortunately -- but, again, I'm liking the colors better now!

(I picked out almost everything I'd done, yes, except for the dark-green diagonals on the base of the basket, which color is the same as in the original conversion.  Needs must.  After that, it seemed safer, orientation-wise, to start there and work upwards, rather than in the actual center!  There is a beading needle near the crease in the fabric, marking where page 5 stops and the adjacent page 8 begins -- I like the beading needle over a basting thread as I can shift up as I go, and don't have to worry about contrasting fibers from the basting thread sticking around.)

Oh, Margaret, Margaret!

This is the start of "Margaret Ann Klinedienst" by Queenstown Sampler Designs, which I was charmed by I think almost immediately.  The naïve flowers, the more-than-slightly wonky basket (she was nine, Margaret Ann, when she stitched this!), the softly-faded colors -- oh yes!  I've had the chart sitting on my shelf for a while, but of course had resolved to finish the "English Cottage" first -- indeed, had to, since I have only two frames for large pieces, and they were both occupied.  But not long after the "Cottage" was done and out of the frame, this went in.

But as I stitched, I had a strange feeling of history repeating itself, after my "Floral" escapade -- the colors were not what I had in my mind from the photo I'd seen.  Now, of course it may be that the original 1830 sampler is darker than the photo, or that the conversion from NPI Silk threads to DMC lost something in the translation -- or both, to be sure -- but either way, the lovely soft faded colors were a large part of the original appeal for me, and that soi-disant mahogany is in fact glaringly orange.

So I began to research, and the first thing I found was a conversion chart from NPI to DMC that is considerably different from Queenstown's version (perhaps due to new colors coming out in the dozen years since the chart was first released?).  And I dug through my stash of DMC threads, and bought a few more, and sat down in the living-room yesterday in the afternoon sunlight and compared the different colorways.

The one in the photo at the top is Queenstown's conversion from the NPI used (on the model in the photograph, presumably).  The 3776 Light Mahogany really jumps out -- and though I know very well that sometimes a color in the skein looks very different when stitched, often because of the colors surrounding it, well, there is quite a lot of it even in the small bit I've done so far.  It's orange, I think there's no getting around that!

This selection is beginning to lighten all of the colors by at least one step, two in some cases, putting some alternatives in pairs to see which I like better.

This is a few more tweaks.  Better!   And below is the selection I've made -- I'm much happier with the 758 ("Terra Cotta Very Light") instead of the 3776, and the whole thing just has more of that air of the softness of age that so called to me.

Page 4

Page four of the "Quaker Virtues" sampler.  There are nine pages in the chart, and with this I've done six of them.  The middle runs through the lower part of the R in INTEGRITY, so I'm actually well over halfway through -- that seems hard to believe, although I must add that it is still a delight to me!

"English Cottage Sampler"

I'm still trying to figure out my new-to-me photo-editing program, which is very different from my previous one, a demo version that was no longer available by the time I got my new laptop in January -- gee, yes, it's September already, and I'm still trying to figure things out.  But maybe because I've been stitching instead of trying to figure out my computer -- I will admit that for various reasons, not all of them to my credit, I've spent many hours a week working on this!

It is of course the "English Cottage Sampler" designed by Teresa Wentzler. As I said earlier, in April I proposed to my friend J that, since we both had an unfinished Wentzler in our respective cupboards, we have a finish-along, so we've been sharing photos and encouraging texts all summer.  I had much the easier project, since J's has not only a peacock with that complex tail but also a lot of foliage -- even Wentzler herself says that the "Cottage" is one of her easier designs! --

It's pretty apparent upon inspection that the floral vine border is mirrored on the two sides -- this made what seemed to me a rather awkward transition in the middle in some places.  I disguised these joins -- in the pink alternating border at the bottom and top, in the pink vertical "trellis" at the bottom of the oval surrounding the cottage, and in the trellis-work at the top -- in a few different ways.  For the trellis in the floral border, I simply eliminated much of it, where it came together in a sort of W manner, and to be honest, that empty space doesn't really read as "something is missing" to me, but just restfully empty where the two vines are coming together.  For the pink alternating border at the bottom, I expanded the two stitches to fill the space -- there were 8 threads that needed to be covered, and so I worked a "lower" stitch over 3 threads across instead of 2, then a regular cross as the "upper" one, and another expanded one.  Unless you're looking for it, it's quite hard to spot!  The pink "trellis" was trickier, as it's more exposed -- there instead of wider stitches, I left wider spaces. shifting the two pink lines in the middle just one thread to accommodate the necessary space -- but it's still a little more pleasing to my eye than the four-space gap in the original.

I have a tendency to pay more attention to Js and Ss than other letters in a cross-stitch alphabet, I suppose for obvious reasons, and so it seemed to me that the original S looked more upside-down than right-side-up.  I flipped the capital S when I worked the large alphabet in 1991, but had completely forgotten about it when I started it back up again this past April, and since the majority of the piece was rolled up on my frame when I did the small alphabet -- because I started at the bottom -- it didn't occur to me to flip the S in the small alphabet as well.  So there it stays.  It doesn't leap out at me as much as the capital one did, there is that.

But, other than shortening the last lazy-daisy stitch at the top and bottom of the two vertical swan-box borders (instead of doing a half-pair of "leaves", as it were), those were the only changes I made on purpose -- yes, I know there were numerous mistakes, but even Wentzler says, "Don't sweat the small ones!"  The cottage roof I think was the trickiest, and is in fact the first time I've found it necessary to actually cross off stitches as I worked them -- the swans were a bit crazy-making, but the roof was by far even more so!

J and I had a discussion one evening about long floats on the back -- I was pretty lucky with this one, as the backstitching covered up those long floats between leaves quite nicely, thank you!  (I did usually secure the floats where possible, but it wasn't always, especially between the pink flowers, and I did not want to keep tying off and reattaching threads.)

I was quite unsure about the beads from the very beginning, not being a particularly sparkly person myself, and was half-tempted to do French knots instead, but in the end I did the beads, and for beads they're actually quite subtle on this piece! so I'm glad I did.

And so, all things considered, I'm very happy to have worked this, and even more happy to have finished it!