PLAYING WITH TOYS
As I mentioned before, there’s no point in honoring a book called Forlorn Toys without showing some of the toys. So I drafted up a representative sample.
I’m still filling in the background stars, but that should not take long. Then another plain band of long armed cross stitch, and selecting the first of what will probably be the last two strips on this piece. The final touch will be to revisit the motto section, adding themed elements left and right of the lettering, and perhaps jazzing up JOY a bit so that it doesn’t look so pitiful against the darker typeface used for the rest of the lettering.
As to the remaining strips – I’m actually running out of material. I either have to spend more time drawing, or stitch slower. But in the interim I have decided that designs used on pieces I have given away, never to be seen again are now fair game for repetition. So if you see something that piques a sense of deja vu, you are exactly correct. Done before, but not precisely in this way. An old friend returning for a repeat visit.
After this one on to the next. No clue yet as to what that might be. I have a couple of outstanding promises in queue. Possibly one of those. And those teddy bears… I may doodle up a couple of strip variations featuring just them, for folk who want to do up birth commemoration samplers, or bibs and toddler clothing trims for particularly favored children. Provided there is interest, of course.
OFF AND RUNNING!
On the ground, it’s more like walking slowly getting used to the transition from walker to cane, but in stitching, we’re galloping. Here is progress since the last post.
Several strips so far, a combo of reach-backs to my older books, and to the more recent Ensamplario Atlantio Volume III. I am still drafting up the custom bands that are specific references to the content of Forlorn Toys, the book that The Resident Male is writing right now. When you see them you will realize what’s taking so long (other than limits on how long I can stand at the computer in a day).
I do have to report an oops. One that dates back to the publication of The New Carolingian Modelbook in 1995. I hadn’t stitched the current strip before, mostly for reasons of size. It’s quite tall. But this being a very long piece of cloth, I thought it would work well on this piece. Lo and behold. There is a small crossings error in the original. It’s small enough to be an easy fix, but I will put redoing that page in queue and eventually publish it in here, and on the errata section on the “My Books” tab elsewhere on this site.
In the mean time I’m at the point in this complex interlace that I can go off-book. I’m just copying what I’ve stitched to date now, flipping/mirroring/inverting the crosses as required. Yes, it’s an eye-bender, but each subsection is logical, and if I keep the precision up so that all of the subsections meet up nicely, no where near as difficult as it looks.
String-Or-Nothing 