It’s been half a month since the last post, and all sorts of things have happened.
First, I’ve finished the wildly intricate interlace panel on my current sampler.
Second, as I was doing so I found an error in my chart for it as it appeared in the original edition of The New Carolingian Modelbook. The error was a minor one, a copyists/flip and mirror problem with two side by side crossings. It’s my guess that no one has attempted this particular design before, otherwise they would have either contacted me about it, or trumpeted my incompetence on social media. So of course I had to correct the problem. For a legible copy of the correction, including the original TNCM source attribution, and two chart versions – one for the border as shown, and one for a wider border or all-over design, please click here download a PDF file.
I have also been able to draft out a couple of tribute specific bands for this sampler, referencing the in-process novel Forlorn Toys in specific. They will be coming up after I finish the latest leafy strip. So stay tuned!
In other news, at long last, the Victoria and Albert Museum has updated all of the pages for the individual contributors under the Unstitched Coif Project. Again thanks to Fearless Leader Toni Buckby! My page can be found here, and has both the essay I did to accompany my work, plus ultra high resolution ZOOMABLE photographs of the back and front of the piece. For some reason the museum chose to lead with the photo of the backs of all of the pieces.
And for those of you who have asked about my personal health odyssey – I am improving. I’m in the middle of graduating from walker to cane. I can get around well with the cane, but I am still shaky with it over uneven terrain, so I mostly stick to it indoors, and continue to rack up practice distance. I have also been able to sit longer, as my stitching and blogging progress demonstrate.
There are still some hurdles to go, including a stint of proactive/preventive radiation to minimize any chance of chordoma recurrence, but I will take that in stride like all the rest. In the mean time, I’m feeling further along to being my old self than I have in months. No doubt due to the incessant care, coaching, and excellent cooking of my Resident Male.
String-Or-Nothing 
So good to hear from you. And please tell your Resident Male I said thank you.
—Alison Hyde
>
So happy to hear of your continued improvement and the excellent ministrations of your Resident Male. The interlace panel is stunning.
I’m so happy to hear of your continued steady improvement, and so glad of the Resident Male’s loving care.
Thanks for showing your coif. I noticed several are unfinished. You must be very proud. Glad to hear you are on the mend. Holly
Good to know you are well looked after and continuing to improve.
[…] My Unstitched Coif Project contribution, now available in high definition photography of both the fr… It was collected by the Victoria & Albert Museum, and they have updated the piece’s permanent on-line accession page with those images. […]
So glad to hear things are continuing to improve!
Glad to hear of progress towards both mobility and normality! I saw a link to this recently and thought of you (maybe you already know about it):
https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/mediterraneanembroideries/1
Thanks! I had seen some of these Fitzwilliam Museum holdings, but not all of them. While for the most part they post-date my period of main interest they are notable because of how much of the earlier patterning they retain. Some cultures can be surprisingly conservative, maintaining design vocabularies for hundreds of years, others morph and mutate far more rapidly. While you couldn’t do these designs verbatim with the assurance that they were worked the same way in the 1500s, you can see threads of tradition and “ancestral bones” in them. And that’s always a delight.