A couple of things to report this week. First a quickie start and finish. This piece was bespoken by Younger Offspring, who has taken up bookbinding. The finished volumes largely feed personal journaling, but are also given as gifts; and some are done on commission. This bookbinding plus other artistic ventures all are done under Younger Offspring’s Rat House Studio banner, So when I saw the rats in the same work as the drawing that inspired the cats and yarn repeat, having the perfect target audience, I had to draft them up. Additional foreboding iconography was added to emphasize the “eyes only” and personalized aspect of journaling in particular.
This piece was worked on DMC/Charles Craft Monaco, a cotton 28 count evenweave in a light tan, using two strands of DMC cotton embroidery floss, #814 – a browner red than I usually use. I haven’t cut the stitching from the greater piece of cloth, and I’ve left the easily withdrawn basting thread in place to aid in centering the piece on the eventual book cover. And since the stitching is in just one quadrant of the cloth, I will be sending it uncut, with the leftover thread in case Younger Offspring wants to do something original on the back, or on the other half of the ground, following the household precept that it’s always fun to encourage and abet creative expression
In truth after using the Monaco, I am not a fan of this ground, and I can see why so many people who have only used this type of fabric are disenchanted with evenweave in general. First, it’s not really even. Look at the rats. They are NOT size symmetrical as they go around the corner. The weave is a tiny bit compressed north/south when compared with east/west. Rats at top and bottom are shorter nose to tail, and heftier vertically than are the ones on the left and right – those are more elongated, and not quite a chinchilla-chubby. I get comparable results from non-purpose-woven mass market faux linens. Why should I pay a premium for off-proportion custom purpose ground? In addition, the cloth is extremely thick especially compared to the high-count linens and blends I am used to. Wrestling it into my round frame (and this is my 8.5 incher – my largest hoop) was a challenge. It was extremely difficult to tension properly and evenly. Maybe it would have fared better hemmed out and laced into a slate frame, or mounted on a scroller, but it was a beast in the hoop.
In any case, I would not recommend Monaco, especially as a first-ground for people transitioning from Aida to evenweave, with one exception. The heaviness and stiffness that I found so annoying would be a boon to those who hold the cloth in hand, and stitch without a frame or hoop.
But I do admit that the thing was an extremely quick piece to stitch. The ground cloth was delivered on Tuesday. I finished this yesterday shortly after dinner, after a final consult with the recipient. I estimate no more than about seven hours of work, parsed out to accompany evening TV viewing over several days (plus subtitled TV does slow me down a bit.)
Here is the original inspiration, and the chart for the Ring of Rats. Yes, I omitted the interlaced tails at the center. While that was striking, it occured to me that the image would be more useful as a frame. Four corners are presented. The individual rats can be repeated to make a wider or taller frame, either as a series of mirrored pairs (head-head or tail-tail) or marching in the same direction until the center of the side, and mirroring only at that point. Plus, I think that with their little curled tails, mine are irresistibly cute (the original being rather threatening.)
Once again, credit where credit is due – the original plate was from Ernest Allen Batchelder’s Design in Theory and Practice, New York: Macmillan, 1910, which appears to be a seminal work on graphic design during the period of transition from earlier styles including Art Nouveau and Mission/Arts & Crafts to what would become Art Deco.
Oh, and what am I up to now that my quick fling with Rats is done? Back to Long Green. Obviously another design from my Ever Forthcoming Second Carolingian Modelbook, this one is done entirely in long-armed cross stitch (LACS), but without any accompanying outlines.
It’s challenging to stay on target, while preserving the plaited texture of the row-on-row courses of LACS. To get that texture, lines have to alternate directions, like an old raster printer. But it does move along more quickly that the meshy ground. This design will be the last on this sampler – a nice strong and dark strip to anchor the work’s bottom edge.
And what to do after this? Ask me again in a month or two when this strip is complete. By then some things will have changed here at String Central, and I should have both time, and plenty of ideas of how to occupy it.
String-Or-Nothing 
I understand from a friend -who loves Monaco- that production stopped some time ago (I believe the company changed hands) and has only recently resumed. There may well be a difference in quality between the older runs of the fabric and the current ones.
I have stitched on monaco in the past and not noticed the symmetry problem.
It worked up nicely for a Hardanger project.
I am very willing to believe that Monaco has changed. The piece I bought was via Amazon, a recent product, with a TM on “Monaco”. It may well have been different than what was previously offered under that name. But I won’t be buying any more of it.
The rats are so cute! Very Deco. I was a little surprised that you hadn’t used the tails to make your knotwork inner frame but the frame works perfectly as the separate element. (And I’ve also been frustrated by ’32’-count linen that was more like 32/33.5 – grump.)
I thought about using the tails, but I wanted more versatility, and to make the design easy to adapt. As is, the rat-units can be multiplied to make frames of varying dimensions. It would have been harder to separate them had I intertwined the tails, especially for folks who want to play with them but aren’t comfortable with tinkering. I can always mod the design later and add really complex tail patterning if I use it again.