A Bluestocking Knits

New Year News

A New Year mish-mash today, some of the little things I've been working on.  Above, my progress on the 1:12 carpet for my third shop.  The "light topaz" pops more in the photo than it does in real life.

During our New Year's Eve stroll downtown, Julia and I happened into a new used-clothing boutique and scored these woolly beauties --

Shetland wools!

Last month, I read two D.E. Stevenson novels, one to my astonishment and great anticipation that I had never read, and one a favorite.  For some unknown reason, I had never even seen a copy of The Tall Stranger, so was delighted to find it under the Christmas tree with my name on it.  Needless to say, I started reading it that very morning, and enjoyed it very much.  It is assumed by everyone that Barbie France will marry the cousin with whom she has grown up, including Edward himself, but when the time comes, Barbie finds herself unsettled by the idea, and must discover the truth about Edward's behavior.  This novel was published in 1957, and Barbie is, rather unusually for Stevenson, a career woman who realizes that she does not want to give up her job after she marries.  This tidy Sirdar twinset looks quite appropriate for both town wear in general, and for making a smart impression on her interior-design clients --

(I'm greatly impressed that there are four sizes for this pattern!  Like Barbie herself, very modern for the late 1950s!)

The other title was Green Money, wh. I had read only once before but was already a favorite.  (Like The Tall Stranger, this has been recently re-issued by Dean Street Press.)  George Ferrier, who even himself admits that he is not very bright but is nevertheless an honest and decent young man, finds himself one of the trustees for the naïve and sheltered daughter of a wealthy businessman.  Being George, he is a bit floored by the suddenness of it all, but takes this responsibility seriously.  Elma, however, finds her inexperience something to be discarded as quickly and smoothly as possible.  "Chaos obviously ensues," as Bertie Wooster would say, and this story is actually quite Wodehouseian both in tone and screwball-comedy plot, yet with Stevenson's own touches, of course, and I enjoyed it immensely.  When Green Money was published in 1939, men were still wearing lots of Fair Isle jumpers, thanks to the former Prince of Wales (by then the former Edward VIII, as it happens), and so it seems quite appropriate for George to have a pullover something like this one --

(I don't think these are even close to traditional Fair Isle patterns, and even without seeing the directions I rather suspect that this is knitted flat, awkward as that might seem to us now!)

Next in my mish-mash, a selection of fabrics for patchwork stars, on sale from Reproduction Fabrics --

It's a coincidence that they are all pink! but a happy one.

And yesterday afternoon I glued up another pair of those delightful mid-century chairs from Arjen Spinhoven for my 1:12 tea rooms --

Not Singly But in Battalions

Projects, I mean, not sorrows, though there are a great many of those in the world these days.  And it is not impossible that this jitteriness is my way of trying to cope with that.

At the top is the Fereghan carpet designed by the amazing Frances Peterson, on 48-count silk gauze wh. I told myself after working a 1:12 cushion at that scale I would never do again and here is a carpet, for heaven's sake.  But it will look exceptionally beautiful in my third shop --

which is still not glued together.

(Am having some issues with TypePad, by the way, not displaying images correctly, but I've already held this post up for over a week.  If something looks strangely truncated on the right margin, it probably is.  Click to view the whole image. [EDITED: I think I've fixed that ...])

Two more sets of stars in English patchwork for that quilt-to-be.  It now takes me about 30-35 minutes to sew the six diamonds together, assuming that all goes well (...).  I take great pleasure in finding ways to incorporate French General's selvage border into my projects!  The brown striped one is a bit rough-hewn compared to the others, but maybe it will work, we'll see.

Finished the "Quaker Samplings III"!  Very pleased with this!

The thread color doesn't quite ring true in this photo -- it's Gentle Arts' "Blueberry," which isn't the steely-blue that it looks here, but mostly blue with some purply tinges here and there, like blueberries.

And I had a fancy to knit a little cardigan thing to go over my old choir dress, now that we are wearing "whatever we want as long as it's black, floor-length, and has at least three-quarter sleeves".  This would solve that last issue.  I'm not even close to the lacy part yet, but I thought I might try a slip-stitch edge on the increase section of the points to go with the bind-off on the decrease part, and so I knitted up a swatch -- this works in theory, but I'm not sure if the second two points, which are knitted with my tweaks, aren't a little too vague-looking compared to the first two.

"One of These Things is Not Like the Other Ones ..."

Yes, I am re-reading the canon -- as the Gunroom calls it, doubtless enjoying the man-of-war pun all the while.  I think this is my third or fourth run-through, but I still marvel at O'Brian's writing, now spare, now elegantly discursive -- this is from The Mauritius Command, listening to the speeches celebrating a naval triumph of the previous day --

Something, reflected Jack, something came over officers who reached flag-rank or the equivalent, something that made them love to get up on their hind legs and produce long measured periods with even longer pauses between them. Several gentlemen had already risen to utter slow compliments to themselves, their fellows, and their nation, and now General Abercrombie was struggling to his feet, with a sheaf of notes in his hand. 'Your Excellency, my lords, Admiral Bertie, and gentlemen. We are met here together,' two bars of silence, 'on this happy, eh, occasion,' two more bars, 'to celebrate what I may perhaps be permitted to call, an unparalleled feat, of combined operations, of combination, valour, organization, and I may say, of indomitable will.' Pause. 'I take no credit to myself.' Cries of No, no; and cheers. 'No. It is all due,' pause, 'to a young lady in Madras.'

'Sir, sir,' hissed his aide-de-camp, 'you have turned over two pages. You have come to the joke.'

And the D.E. Stevenson list is reading Miss Buncle's Book, which I have begun, but already I am woefully behind on the discussions, though to be sure the book is as charming as ever!

Sewing Stars

For a long time, I've had a hankering for a quilt like the one called "Kate's Stars" in Diana Boston's book about Lucy Boston's quilts -- she of the "Green Knowe" series of children's novels set in and around a house much like her own ancient one at Hemingford Grey. All of Mrs. Boston's quilts -- and she was famous for them, not only their number and her skill in designing and stitching them, but in her frequent use of them not only on beds but as sofa covers and curtains in her exceedingly drafty house with its origins in the 12th century -- were stitched in the English patchwork manner, basting fabric around paper shapes, then stitching those basted shapes together along the edges by hand. 

Source: Wikimedia Commons

(This photo is the "newer" side of the house -- for more photos of the house and of Mrs. Boston's patchworks, see the Green Knowe website here. Tales of Cloth has a post about Mrs. Boston's quilts and their inspiration for other quilters.)

I know I need another project like I need a hole in the head, as they say, but there it is -- I've had the quilt papers for some years now, and piles of fabric scraps even longer.  I had some semi-inactivity last week, staying with my mother-in-law after her hip surgery, so it felt like the time was right!  I got most of these stars basted and sewn then -- the method has long struck me as rather tedious and inefficient, having to baste the paper shapes to the fabric then go over the whole thing again to sew it together, and this is certainly true -- but if you consider the exceptional tidiness of the finished block, especially in places where numerous points come together, and the fact that you almost never need to re-sew a block that got off-kilter (ahem ...), the "tedium" of the prep loses much of its sting.

After making up a few more stars, I will decide on a solid color -- some shade of off-white, I suspect -- for the diamonds that will go between the arms of the stars to connect them to each other.

This and That

Here are some of the things I've been doing lately --

Crocheted dishcloths for Julia, off to university at last and living with three roommates in an apartment on the edge of campus, cooking and cleaning for themselves.  Above are the Berry Stitch cloth (without its edging), the Waffle Stitch cloth (potentially useful as a trivet, I suspect, it's so thick!), and a returning favorite, the Spiral Double Crochet cloth.

I'm quite pleased with these, actually -- a pair of potholders (also for Julia) to the 1960s "Pinwheel Potholder" pattern from Free Vintage Crochet.  Because I thought it would be fun, one side is solid and the other variegated.  I had to add another round to get the recommended dimension on the variegated side, as apparently the two Sugar 'n Cream colorways are not quite the same weight (!) -- and then fudge the edging that stitches them together -- but this was not difficult.  I'm highly amused at the plainness of the solid pink with the surprise of the variegated colors when you turn them over -- simple pleasures!

And a set of table napkins in a fabric selected by herself from the deep-sale bin at Hancock's of Paducah --

This one is to replace a decrepit one at home -- it is actually a face scrubbie pattern, but eh, I'm using it as a dish cloth!  I like ones with a good amount of texture to them, which the front-post DCs certainly give.  (My phone camera, by the way, seems entirely content with the color balance and saturation of fabrics, but gets a bit manic when confronted with kitchen cotton.  None of these is particularly accurate -- though the blue-and-white one is probably the closest.)

And the current state of my "Quaker Sampling III" -- nearly there!

Two Finishes

I have finished the little embroidery kit from Hoffelt & Hooper -- it's called "Charlotte" in light gray on their website, but is unnamed in their Etsy shop -- the frame is from Universal Happy Gift (!) both on Etsy.  My photo does not do justice to either its color or its prettiness, but it is just too hot to mess around with the now-manual-focus-only camera any more, I'm afraid -- at least I did pretty well in keeping most of the reflections off of the Plexiglas.  On the bright side, I'm delighted with the frame and the finished piece, which brings the score into the positive!

Yeah, it's just really hot, and it has been for over a week.  Our old house looks wonderful with its new coat of paint, but it still doesn't have air conditioning, and a week-and-counting of well over 100°F temps (40°C!!) leaves us just lying over flat surfaces like Dali clocks.

Also finished, well in time for Julia's departure for her university dorm room, is this Prism quilt à la "kelp forest".  I'm still a bit regretful that I couldn't manage something more like a proper kelp forest, but there it is.  I might never have finished! -- I've enjoyed in the past figuring out how to sew curves on clothing bodices, but so very many curves, in different fabrics, for a bed-sized quilt ... well, Julia liked this pattern and the batiks with the sand-colored Kona Cotton, and I think it came out all right (!).

I "arranged" the blocks so that there are more of the darker colors towards the bottom and lighter ones towards the top -- underwater and all -- though I'm not sure now if that really reads as such.  I do get a kick out of the little fishies print here and there, though!

"Virtue Outshines the Stars"

The "Virtue Outshines the Stars" sampler by Darlene O'Steen, one of my must-do pieces -- about six months of fairly steady stitching.  I confess that I was getting a bit weary of it towards the end, but I'm very happy with the result!  I used the original DMC colors -- on 32-count linen from xJudesign in "Milk Chocolate" -- but made a few tweaks here and there, re-spacing the alphabets slightly, centering the elements that were (curiously) not so, and as I mentioned previously, changing out the uppermost flower in the vases in the bottom band -- though on the whole, obviously, a superb design, I think one of O'Steen's best.

Lots of queen stitch! -- here in the flowers in the border and horizontally as a small dividing band, an unusual use for it but effective.

The new-to-this-piece larger flower is from O'Steen's "Tudor Rose Sampler" in her The Proper Stitch book, here with the arrowhead stitch center in 3045, the outline in 356, the double-backstitch "tips" in 356 + 358, and the satin stitch in 758.  I'm not entirely pleased with my choices, but I do like the proportions much better now --

One of my favorite details is the birds in the upper corners! --

Revisions, Decisions

Nearly there!

I have made a few revisions to my "Virtue" as I went along, perhaps the most obvious being the top flower in the vases at the right and left sides near the bottom, which the more I looked at, the more I thought seemed a bit stingy, almost cowering, even.  O'Steen's original is made of queen stitches, and attempts at simply enlarging it with additional queen stitches around the edges proved pretty much impossible, and so I searched around and found a different flower of the size I wanted, in the "Tudor Rose" sampler in her The Proper Stitch book -- it seemed only fair to use one of "her" flowers, of course!  I'm not entirely delighted with it in this sampler, though, and so now I'm pondering my options.

The new flower on the left, the first one I did, is too vivid, as it were, too eye-catching.  Even though the red in the outline is the same red used in the large flower band above it, it stands out too much in contrast with the medium and light pinks ("light" and "lighter," technically!), and as much as I love satin stitch, it seems just a bit too shiny here.  This is 355+356 Terra Cotta Dark and Terra Cotta Medium blended for the outline, 754+758 Peach Light and Terra Cotta Very Light for the double-backstitch, and 758 for the satin stitch --

I toned down the red outline a bit for the second one, on the right, which I think is better, with 356 alone for the outline, and 758 for the two fills.  I suspected that the different reflective properties of the double-backstitch and the satin stitch would make the color look just different enough, as it were, but now I think it does need just a little bit more contrast.

I guess that because the original flower "fades" as it goes outwards from the center, I had pictured the revision that way in my mind, but now I wonder if a slightly darker color for the double-backstitch at the tips of the petals might work ....

Yowza!

The top border is done!  I'm pretty sure there's some more queen stitch left at the bottom -- which is still rolled up on the frame -- but this feels like a milestone!

Progress: Friday

I have finally joined the second corner of the Eternal Queen-Stitch Flowers border on the "Virtue" sampler -- oh, it's tedious sometimes, but I'm happy with the results!  Strangely, I don't think that, area-wise, queen stitch takes much more time than cross stitch, but it sure feels like it.  On the bright side, the colors of the DMC threads -- I'm using the same list as in the original -- are richer than they are in the photo on the cover of the chart, which is pleasing.

By the way, here are some more mini-quilts-turned-placemats that I just found languishing in my drafts folder (!) --

Above is a riff on the "Snowball" block, but done in English patch-work because a) I wanted to try that, and b) I didn't want seams across the white squares.  I had some trouble with the fit of the white squares and had to quietly (guiltily) trim off a bit here and there, I guess because I didn't get the pieces aligned as well as I should have, but I'm really happy with the result, and this is already one of my favorites in the set.

And below is a "Windowpane" from the instructions in Kathleen Tracy's Small and Scrappy, enlarged by one column to make a rectangle instead of a square.

But despite the call of samplers, I am for the most part focusing on Julia's soi-disant kelp forest quilt, as she has been accepted at her first choice of university, and is off to live on campus in early September! 

This was sewing the blocks into strips --

and the strips into a quilt top --

and now I can be found most evenings with a quilting hoop in my lap, a thimble on my finger, and the ceiling fan on full-blast because it is hotter than July!