UPDATE: THE UNICORN PATTERN BELOW IS NOW AVAILABLE AS AN EASY DOWNLOAD PDF AT THE EMBROIDERY PATTERNS LINK, ABOVE.
Holiday over, we slowly revert to standard routine here at String Central. However, that doesn’t mean we have nothing to show off.
First, Smaller Daughter – her class built models of castles, manor farms, and cathedrals as part of their Middle Ages history unit. You can’t see the details she lavished on hers – the working drawbridge, the flower garden, the well (with working bucket), the stables, or the forces manning the towers, but now you know they’re there:
Slytherin? Well, we are Salazars, after all… And there’s the inevitable Castle Uprising Aftermath:
Too bad the teachers don’t grade them on general post-project carnage.
Not less for being presented second, Elder Daughter has been taken with double sided double knitting. She has been adding double knit squares bearing mythical creatures to her Barbara Walker Learn to Knit sampler afghan. Here’s a graph for her next square, an original unicorn, based loosely on a Siebmacher yale (heraldic goat):
Apple. Tree. Lack of distance between the two is noted. With considerable pride, I might add.
And finally in spite of the welcome and happy chaos of a house crammed full of family, turkey, and way too many pies – I did manage to move a bit forward on the great blackwork sampler:
The dark band with the frilly edging will be in TNCM2. The one just below it was in my first 1974 booklet. I recently rediscovered that I had graphed it from my all time favorite source. It’s the pattern I used for my double sided double running stitch logic lesson back in August, 2010. You can find the lesson (and the pattern) here.
String-Or-Nothing 
Before you write to tell me that the Siebmacher link is broken, try this one:
http://dfg-viewer.de/show/?set%5Bmets%5D=http%3A%2F%2Fmdz10.bib-bvb.de%2F~db%2Fmets%2Fbsb00026001_mets.xml
The yale in question is on page 57. Which apparently does not allow direct linkage.
Nice work by younger daughter! I’d love to see the inside aspects as well, since I’ve always had a dream of building my own castle.
I had wondered what a yale was. A friend uses it for her heraldry (they live on Yale Ave), but her image had two odd looking horns, so I didn’t know it was a goat. I rather like the unicorn.
And as usual, love watching the progress on your lovely blackwork.
I absolutely loved that modelbook, I am already taking patterns and modifying them in my mind making them suitable to do double running stitch on….. Unfortunately I have to finish my napkins before I can do that. I am really starting to look forward to finishing them so I can start my next project.
It is quite amazing how well you got your patterns to mesh together with the available space to complete your sampler. I have enough issues trying to get borders to look right and that is just one line of patterns, lol.
PS If you don’t have all your Harry Potter films, you better get them by the end of the year, at that point they will stop producing the dvd’s and blue-rays. The only thing available at that point is the ones that had not previously sold. I saw an article on one of the main websites like MSN or Yahoo, but don’t remember which one.
I clicked on “my all time favorite source”, and, lo and behold, I was taken to that wonderful Italian sampler! Years ago someone did a very accurate chart of it in two large spiral bound books, but had to stop selling it because of copyright issues. They even figured out what patterns had been stitched where the thread had disappeared (I think this is the sampler). Absolutely love this sampler!
[…] Unicorn. Box unit (not linear) chart for a unicorn, courtesy of Elder Offspring. […]