UPDATE:  FLEUR DE LYS DESIGN BELOW HAS BEEN ADDED TO THE PDF COLLECTION UNDER THE EMBROIDERY PATTERNS LINK, ABOVE.

Well, I did make some progress on Rogue over the past several days. I’ve finally gotten past the grief of the pocket (my fault); finished the equivalent depth of the body behind the pocket, and fused the two together.

Here you see the area adjacent to the nifty pretzel-terminated side panel, showing off the contrast between that knotwork design and the Little Dragon Skin patterning.

The pocket fusing step went off without a hitch. I remembered to bind off four stitches of the body at either side of the pocket fusing row, again to leave a notch inside which the zipper will be installed. Here’s a process shot, with the pocket stitches held on the pink needle, and the body on the silver circ. Because my right-side rows have so much shaping, I made sure to do the fusing on a wrong-side row – all purls in the patterned part.

Progress however has been somewhat less than it might have been because I’ve gotten two new needlework assignments since Thursday.

First, my mother has asked me to design a needlepoint pillow top for her that incorporates multiple Fleur de Lys motifs in wine, an off white background, and some sort of framing mechanism. She’s looking to make a piece on 16-count canvas. This is pretty much a “bring me a rock” assignment (one of those in which your efforts are greeted by the response “Wrong rock. Try again.”) Here’s my first attempt at just a single motif:

The second was a last-minute request from Wild & Woolly in Lexington, MA to cover a class in sock making. They has a workshop scheduled for March 20th that covers cuff-down socks on two circs and one oversized circ (aka “Magic Loop”), and the original instructor has had a last-minute conflict. I’m the designated hitter for this one. Which means that because my own favored method for socks is toe-up on DPNs, I have to do a bit of brushing up before I can demo and explain those methods to others. If you’ve signed up for this class, please don’t worry. I guarantee that in two weeks I’ll be fully confident in the material to be covered.