A Bluestocking Knits

Sampler September, and a Free Cross-Stitch Sampler Chart

It is Sampler September 2023, which seems to be not a stitch-along or even anything really official, but just is, as a time to celebrate cross- and counted-stitch samplers. In honor of this, and in thanks to those before me who have posted free charts of samplers, here is one that I have charted from a book that I came across somewhat randomly, Samplers and Stitches by Grace Christie.  It is essentially an early stitch dictionary, with descriptions and instructions and diagrams, and includes as plates (mostly black-and-white, it was 1921 after all) a number of little samplers that Mrs. Christie worked to demonstrate the stitches, and a few larger pictorial pieces, including one called "A Persian Flower Garden," a riot of colorful, though now faded, flowers and birds and insects, many of which she adapted into this smaller piece, with a springtime quotation from "Love's Labour's Lost" --

Download Mrs. Christie's "When Daisies Pied"

The sampler was surprisingly challenging to chart in some places, as although the illustration looks pretty straightforward, the "columns" and "rows" don't always line up from one motif to another -- and of course I had to adapt the colors of a hundred-year-old embroidery which I've not seen in person into modern threads.  I tried to strike a pleasing balance between the lovely faded colors of the front of the "Persian Garden" and the brighter, more original ones on the back.  Choices were made, obviously, and another stitcher should feel free to change them as desired. 

I have not stitched this yet! though it is certainly on my list.  If anyone does, I would be delighted to see it worked!

That's Better!

Now the boulders look like "three-dimensional" boulders, after switching out the errant DMC flosses for ones that more resemble the picture on the cover of the chart.  I meant to take a photo of this at the time, but clearly I was enjoying stitching too much to think of it.  Curiously, the water didn't look like much of anything until the landscaping around it began to be filled in, and then suddenly it was obviously a waterfall!  I'm still not quite sure what that brown construction at the lower right is -- I thought it might be a mill wheel ... a bridge tunnel?  At the moment, I am leaning once again towards mill wheel ...

I bought these delicious-looking pastries for my 1:12 tea room some time ago.  Flush with the success, I decided to re-paint the outside of the third shop, which I had done in a rather vivid blue --

that turned out to be just too much.  I had been going for a lovely dark blue, but though the paint chip looked tempting enough to buy a sample pot, it just didn't work on the shop itself.  One night when it was far too late to run out and buy something else, I looked through my craft paints and pulled out a Martha Stewart one in "Magellan Blue" --

and I quite like it now!  I'm afraid that the white trim next to a dark blue does show up the crookedness of the factory assembly, but there it is, can't be helped.  I might try and touch up some of the wobbly paint work, though (!).

I bought this at the same time as the two chairs for the tea shop, a midcentury-modern room divider from Arjen Spinhoven.  It is a superb kit, cleverly reducing a real piece of 1950s furniture into 1:12 scale.  My finishing techniques don't live up to the beauty of this kit, I'm afraid, but luckily for me, it doesn't look too bad from a distance.

I worried a lot about the faux teak wood-grain that this piece absolutely required -- I could paint the chairs black, but not this! -- and I did a lot of research and testing on scraps before I did the real thing.  I'm mostly happy with my results -- could be better, but for a first attempt, not bad.

I'm embarrassed to admit that although I remembered and heeded the instructions to glue the two layers of a particular piece in a certain direction -- so that the notches on the underside of the upper cabinet are aligned with the holes on the top of the lower cabinet, to fit that central shelf support -- and that I laid them out carefully before applying the glue, I somehow managed to turn one half around as I was spreading the glue and forgot to turn it back.  This necessitated carving out some rather laughably clumsy notches on the piece that would become the underside of the upper cabinet -- in a piece that actually has some rather good faux wood grain on it, too! aaugh -- so builder beware, and learn from my mistake!

(What an eye for detail Spinhoven has! Look at the double-H piece -- the upper side of the cross-pieces, which will support the two small shelves, are cut with straight corners, but the undersides, which will be visible, have a slight curve in the corners.)

This double-H was the most worrisome piece, as it is frighteningly thin and bendy, and you can see that I did not get it to stand as straight as it is meant to.  Even though there was a spare included with the kit (thoughtfully!), I had already cracked said spare earlier while dry-fitting my re-cut holes, and so I didn't dare to take this one out and re-set it.

This is my favorite part of the piece, the bow-like cross-pieces on the legs! --

And yes, those "glass" doors do slide open and closed!

Jilted, and Thwarted

Not that I haven't been enjoying and appreciating the "Wisdom Sampler," but I got this far and found myself unable to stop wishing that I'd started "Laurence Briquet" instead.  I've set things temporarily aside before -- I mean, started another project simultaneously in another frame or hoop (or set of needles ...) -- but I don't think I've ever actually taken one off the frame for another, partly because it's just a bother with having to baste a piece of linen to the stretcher bars.  But there it is -- I took "Wisdom" off and put in "Laurence" instead.

And things were going pretty well, even though I realized that the threads for the water were considerably lighter than in the image, and though I usually like that faded look, I decided to pick it out and switch the three for three of my favorite Antique Blues.  I was far enough along with the water that I moved over to one of the "boulders," but after a bit of stitching thought, "wait a minute -- this second brown is supposed to be shading ...." and it is indeed lighter than the main brown, instead of darker.  After rather laboriously checking the Soie d'Alger colors with the DMC (by way of various online needlework shops and color charts), I suspect now that nobody at Reflets de Soie actually stitched this in the DMC conversion that is supplied with the chart, but only did the Soie d'Alger original version, as a number of other colors are noticeably different.  (As much as I would enjoy, I'm sure, stitching this in luxurious silks instead of everyday cotton floss, there are thirty-nine colors in this chart!  Thirty-nine!  That's a lot of silk.)  So it looks like I'll be paying for my fickleness by having to figure out which DMC thread will best match the image on the chart.  Sigh.

Page One

Just two pages left!

A Mini BBBB

Messing around with some 1:12 knitting.  This pattern may be obvious to folks who were knitting a few years back -- it's a miniature version of Lisa Shobhana Mason's "Big Bad Baby Blanket" from the first Stitch 'n Bitch book (2004).  It's in Caron's Impressions wool/silk thread, in the "Abalone" color, wh. is very pretty.  My border probably could have been a stitch smaller all around to better match the original, but it didn't come out too badly for a first attempt, and the thread blocks very well, so I'm happy.  This was worked on 3/0 needles (1.5mm), I think -- the only needle gauge I have that is small enough is from Hong Kong, so it says 17, which I am assuming is correct!

In other news, I found a frame shop on Etsy that had something quite perfect for my "Zoé Elie" -- this framer makes new frames out of old-stock molding, and so they have that antique look while being a custom size should one need it.

"This Needlework of Mine"

Progress as of today.  The colors seem very vivid to me, after a string of "faded" samplers!  The little blue splodge behind Young Mr. Wisdom's head is the beginnings of a bird, but I think I might change the colors to browns, as with the two blue birds right there at the sides that is a lot of blue birds in a row, it seems to me.

Just finished re-reading Coot Club,

the fifth book in the "Swallows and Amazons" series.  Wonderful comfort reading!  The picture is I guess a publicity photo from the 1984 film, which actually isn't bad -- that sounds a bit snarky, but one never knows with films of favorite books.  The children aren't quite what I'd pictured in my mind, especially Dorothea and Tom, and I don't think that either of the films I've seen (this and the 2016 "Swallows and Amazons") really capture the intelligence and sensibility of the children*, but I'm impressed that they found actual twins for Port and Starboard!  And at least this one didn't feel the need to invent silly subplots involving Russian spies (for heaven's sake).

*Poor Susan!  I can never think without shuddering of how the 2016 version of "Swallows and Amazons" both let Susan get whacked on the head by the boom when John takes "Swallow" about and turned her into a squealing sissy when faced with the prospect of gutting a fish. 

I've just started reading C.K. Chau's modern re-telling of Pride and Prejudice,

now titled Good Fortune and set in New York's Chinatown.  There was a very good review of it in the Los Angeles Times not long ago, and then only a week or so later there was an article by Chau on LitHub about setting and society in Austen's novel.  It was heartening to read Chau's thoughts, which make it obvious that she thoroughly respects the original novel, so that I felt it much more likely that she wouldn't change characters' motivations or personalities so much that they conflict with Austen's plot (cough -- 2022 "Persuasion"! -- cough).

Knitting!!

Yes, it deserves two exclamation marks.  It's been a while!

These are the 1909 Ladies' Mitts I spoke of a few weeks ago, in the same yarn as the model -- Cascade Heritage Silk -- but in a different color, this one being 5730 Heather Rose.  I started the mitts once before, but even with the same yarn as the model, they were far too big, so I've frogged and started again with two less repeats.  We'll see how it goes now that I've got to the hand -- but I should look sharp, before it gets too hot ...

(Rather unbelievably, I took this photo with my camera using the manual focus.  I can rarely trust my very-poor eyesight well enough to tell if a subject is in focus, but I don't have my contacts in this morning, so was double-checking the display with it about an inch away from my eyes, and didn't do too badly!  The photo below is one of the few I managed to rescue from my phone, and the close-ups further down are from the camera.  But, yes, the auto-focus is shot.)

I finished the "Zoé Elie" -- the free chart from Reflets de Soie -- and had a go at aging it, to look more like the original d'un certain âge.  This is with coffee, Folger's Singles to be exact, which come in bags, and I used both the strongly-brewed coffee and the bags, the latter plopped down at the edge to get a liquid-stain look.  It didn't come out quite the way I was hoping, but it was all a bit of an experiment anyway, and I do like the way it looks -- plus it's a charming little piece in itself.

Sampler Short List

Since my camera is still hors de combat, I will instead share my short list of charts-awaiting-stitching.  This is not, mind you, all of the charts I have, as I've managed to collect any number of free charts in the three-ish years that I've been interested in samplers -- and certainly more than a few of them I still hope/intend to work! -- but I can definitely see that my tastes have changed a bit with my increasing experience.  It is also, I now know not only from seeing other people's photos of boxes upon boxes of charts that they would need multiple lifetimes to work, but also from my own stash, how very difficult it can be sometimes to resist temptation!  I actually try purposely to be circumspect now in my purchases. And so, until I can get my own photos, here is my list.  The first two are the ones, along with the "Quaker Virtues", that are actually in progress; the rest are in no particular order.

Above, "The Wisdom Sampler" by Donna Vermillion Giampa of Vermillion Stitchery.  This was on someone's "100 Best Samplers" Pinterest page, and I was quite intrigued by it.  It was long out-of-print at the time, after Donna Giampa's death in 2015, but recently her sister began selling the chart again.  It is in style sort of halfway between "reproduction" and "new", definitely with an antique flavor, as it were, but a sort of modernity that I can't quite pinpoint.  Charming, though, clearly!  I have just started it, at the area around the picket fence.

"Zoé Elie," a free chart from Isabelle Mazabraud-Kerlan of Reflets de Soie.  So very pretty!  I started this as a small project to take on our vacation, when we went to Tahoe for a week, and am perhaps not quite halfway along. 

"Quaker Friendship Sampler" by Becky Dorrie.  I keep passing this over for more difficult things, it seems, but that does it a disservice, for it is a classic new old-style Quaker sampler, and that really speaks to me.

"Virtue Outshines the Stars" by Darlene O'Steen.  The last of my "O'Steen Big 3", the three charts of hers that I felt I utterly must do.  Not that I would mind doing others of hers, of course -- and there are no less than three band-sampler charts in the revised edition of The Proper Stitch -- but the "Pomegranate," the "Floral," and this one just really speak to me.  I admit that I'm actually putting off doing this "last" one, so that I can continue to anticipate it!

"Laurence Briquet" by Reflets de Soie.  Oh, it is so difficult to choose between Mazabraud-Kerlan's beautiful reproduction samplers!  I think the little waterfall on this one won me over.  I still have "Marthe Sallé" on my wish list as well, but have restrained myself so far, though with great difficulty.  I actually have both fabric and threads for this, so it may be next in the frame.

"Ragamuffin #2" by Shakespeare's Peddler, my most-recent purchase.  I fell rather hard for this one, I admit, the moment I saw it. The muted greys and greens, the flowers, the unique border -- oh my!

And "Quaker Samplings III" and "II" by Ellen Chester of With My Needle.  The last two of my quintet of "Samplings" -- I have already worked I, IV, and V.  I'm leaving the dated one for last (!).  I know that Chester has released at least two more in her series since I discovered these, and it is not without difficulty that I restrain myself, but it seems to me that they should go together on a wall, and five is rather a lot, after all ...

Technical Issues, and The Lady Floral Brittany Sampler

So this has been finished for a while -- erm, quite a while -- but my camera has been having some problems, slowly worsening, and so the other day, well into another two sampler projects, I thought, "ack, I'll just take photos with my phone!"  So I dug out my light box and took some photos, not completely satisfyingly, as the sampler is just a little too large to reach into the light box comfortably -- but I was getting fed up with the problems -- and then when I sat down at the computer, I remembered why I keep getting messages that my storage is full, that I can't download the photos on my phone because no matter how long my IT guy (David) spends on it, he can't get my iPhone to play nicely with my PC.  Apparently the problem is that my phone takes photos in one format, and even though he got it to convert them into ordinary JPGs the last time, it refuses to do more than about a half-dozen now (and those it just throws any-old-where onto my computer -- directories, schmerectories).  My IT's assistant (Laura, no mean whiz with an iPhone herself) spent an hour or so on it the other day, and gave up in frustration.  She had to air-drop these from my phone to hers, then e-mail them to me.  And I'm not even that happy with them!  Gaahhh!

Sigh.

Anyway, I was much happier with my new colors for what I will now call the Lady Floral Brittany sampler, as it's very nearly a mash-up of the two, as far as I can tell -- having the chart for the Floral but only a picture of the Lady Brittany.  I modified the Floral (the one on the left in the image below) quite a lot, starting with switching out the long signature for a motto and a short signature,

and the alphabet, though I think that was mostly because I disliked the Victorian Pink so much in the numbers line, and the amount of contrast between the Midnight and Brandy in the alphabet.  After deciding to revise that, things kind of snowballed.  I had to revise the date line, as "2023" literally wouldn't fit (!), so I thought I might as well add in another pair of those Algerian-eye flowers.  And I liked the Tudoresque flowers of Lady Brittany (on the right) so much that ... might as well!

Yes, picking out so very much of it was a pain, but it was a pleasure working the new colors, so I came out ahead.  The photos aren't quite true-to-life, unfortunately ... but, well, it isn't that I don't want to do them over, but I just can't face it right now (see Issues, above).  The Gold Leaf, especially, looks more reserved and stately in real life.

I think I got a bit tired of referring to both the stitch instructions and the chart, and forgot to look at the former for the roses band, as there is supposed to be some rice stitch in there somewhere -- I think in the little green leaves -- but I just blithely did crosses, and there are some other wobbles that I'm just going to gloss over now (innocent smile).  That Weeks Dye Works "Collards" has rapidly become my favorite green, possibly one of my favorites of any floss color, and so I'm just going to admire it happily.  I do like the way the satin-stitch petals came out! --

(Not sure why there is so much difference in the color of the linen between the photo above and the one below -- same phone camera, same lighting, seconds apart!  Go figure!  It is a bit in between the two, not a bright white, but not quite "yellow" either.)

But -- this has been one of my sine qua non samplers for some time now, so I'm very happy to have worked it, and really did enjoy the process more than enough to win out over the annoyances!

JS Her Blunder

I had a sinking feeling as I began to work this over with the new colors, that I'd miscounted the first time.  Of course when I picked it up again the other day, I started with the next dividing band under the little filip on the end of the ribbonwork, and carried on blithely (wanting to start with positive new colors instead of negative picking-out).  I kept trying to tell myself that it was okay, it just looked a bit longer than it should because there was nothing beside it for scale (!), but no -- I had counted not just slightly wrong, but very wrong, when I started the ribbonwork of the floral band last summer.  Not just "threads" wrong, but "inches"! so that new signature line will have to come out.

Well -- (sigh) -- I am certainly enjoying the new colors, that's something!  And I must say, I do like a nice bit of satin stitch ...