REVERSING ENTROPY
All in all a hectic week, even for one with a snow day smack in the middle. Work deadlines aside (constant drumbeat that they are), our domestic plant experienced a bit more chaos than usual, with major appliances deciding in concert to abandon their prime functions. But we’ve now beaten back the forces of entropy and now can wash clothes on the premises again.
That being said, work does progress on the book collection. I now have about 27 plates (roughly 60 individual patterns) substantially drafted or in progress, along with a good start on the documentation that accompanies them. Also a start on the bibliography. My notes are far from exhausted, and there are lots more pages to go.
I also continue to playtest some of them. Here’s one I couldn’t resist. It’s from Plate 25 of my blackwork fillings collection. Work continues on that final PDF, too.
Even though this design is original and not sourced to a specific historical artifact, I think it would make a smashing all-over design for a coif or sweet bag. Especially if the little diamonds that surround the quatrefoil pomegranates were replaced by spangles. You can see the full effect in this larger rendition. The pattern collection’s thumbnail made it hard to see the whole design’s geometry.
Finally, in a new development, I’ve decided to give the blackwork fillings collection a name. I named my first book after the SCA group here in Boston, a group especially blessed with artists, artisans, researchers and folk who just plain enjoy hands-on exploration of the arts and sciences. The Barony of Carolingia is and ever will be my SCA “home.” But I did spend some time down in the Washington D.C. region, and promised my House Oldcastle friends down there that someday I’d write “Ensamplio Atlantaea” – a pattern collection named after Atlantia. the kingdom that includes the D.C. area. So the blackwork filling collection will come out under that name (provided it passes muster with my language maven pals).
And in the interests of continuity, the new book will be entitled “A Second Carolingian Modelbook.” That should make it easier to find for folk who found the first one to be useful.
PLEASE, MAKE IT STOP.
I think we’ve had about enough snow this winter…
BLACK AND WHITE
Another band on my new blackwork sampler. This one is graphed from an artifact.
This one is graphed from an artifact. I’m using the same background fill and edging as the original, and I haven’t corrected the proportions. If I were to do so, the branch’s straight run at the top of the flower would have been worked one unit shorter, reducing the leggy leap from flower to descending sprout like thing. This one is in the new collection, with full source annotation.
To answer Anna from the Netherlands – I can’t say exactly when the book will be out. I will be self-publishing it through one of the various print-on-demand services. I wish I could work on it full time, but little things like earning a living have gotten in the way. I have about an hour each evening to research, graph, transcribe, write, and do lay-out. So I suspect that a final product won’t be ready before a year is out. Sorry to disappoint. You will however get to see a few of the patterns in it as I play test them on this sampler and post my progress. I won’t be able to do them all (there are lots) but you’ll see a few of my faves.
In terms of change in the pix and presentation here – I’ve upgraded blogging software and the camera. The new one is much higher resolution than the old, and I’m still figuring out how to work with it efficiently, and how to keep that odd moire like effect from obfuscating the weave of my ground cloth.
Finally, just for fun, here’s another snow shot from this week’s storm:
This isn’t the plow berm at the end of the driveway. It’s what happens when (at least) 22 inches of snow drifts. Smaller Daughter (about 5’4″ – 1.6m) shows off just one end of our excavation project. However Massachusetts doesn’t reel long from these things. School is back in session and everything’s narrower, but back to normal.
OUR NEW HOBBY!
Excavation!
Greetings from snowy Massachusetts.
GUEST OF HONOR
We’re slowly getting back to normal here at String Central, but I am still woefully behind on posts. The holidays were a bit squished due to work pressures, but fun none the less. Apologizing for tardiness, I present some highlights.
Here you can see the resident staff getting ready to welcome the guest of honor. This includes basic decorating:
Deploying the M&M army, provided over the years by Good Friend Jean:
And finally welcoming Gaston, who came to dine with us:
Or rather, whom we came to dine upon. Here’s another glamor shot:
Gaston was slow-roasted very simply, with sage, onion and apple inside for flavor. I can say he was simply delicious, served with creamed onions and celery, plus red rice with wild mushrooms. We picked him up, dressed from Savenor’s in Cambridge on Thursday, then brined him in cider for a day before he went into the oven for dinner on Christmas Eve. Over the course of the week we consumed him entirely, saving hocks, extra skin, and bones for bean pots to come, and making a terrific terrine out of the liver. We will miss Gaston, but we’re very happy that our paths crossed.
Speaking of happy, the usual holiday triumphs also occurred:
Every girl should have a gift pile that includes jewelry, fun clothes, books, games, and own physics discovery set. The kids are now thoroughly spoiled by family, friends, and their parents alike.
All in all a good holiday!
GRAPHING CHALLENGE
I’m still trying to work up my favorite mode of double running graphing. I’ve pretty much dismissed all of the dedicated charting programs. They don’t allow the dot/stitch metaphor that I find far easier to stitch from than heavy lines superimposed on a background lighter grid.
Again, here’s that jester snippet from TNCM. I find this clear enough to stitch direct from the thumbnail, even at its tiny size/poor resolution.
It’s small, but it’s clear. The lines are stitches, the dots represent the “holes” in the cloth being stitched. In something like Aida, Hardanger or Fiddlers Cloth, each dot is an actual hole in the weave. If one is using plain weave linen, each dot corresponds to the interstices between each two (or three, or more) threads over which the stitches are taken.
Here’s the same pattern, graphed out in one of the stitching programs (click on this, to see it better than it is shown in the thumbnail):
Yes, there are some aids built into the stitching program, like decimal bars on the graphs (every 10th bar indicated), and stitch counts along the margins, but those can be added to my style of illustration.
My main beef with ALL of the stitch graphing programs is that they treat back stitch, double running or other straight stitches as an afterthought. Sometimes the back/double running notation can’t be easily mirrored or manipulated (as in KG-Chart LE, which I used for the bit above). In others it always appears as an undifferentiated or symbol-represented line, with no indication of individual stitches. And in all of these programs, scale is limited. They’ve been invented for folk who stitch at larger gauges than I favor. My 18 stitches per inch (36 count linen) is a bit smaller than the 7, 10 or 12 stitches per inch many modern stitchers favor. Patterns plot out waaay too large for easy display or reproduction on book size pages. So far I’ve taken the demos of quite a few of the dedicated stitching programs for a test drive. To date I’ve tried and discarded PCStitch 9; WinStitch, SitchR-XP, DigiStitch, KG-Chart, Easy Cross, Easy Grapher Pro, STOIK Stitch Creator, and Cross Stitch Professional. I will say though that most of them do a fine job at turning photos or drawings into cross stitch. (I am a bit frustrated with programs that allow very limited trial periods. I work. Lots. My hobby investigations take place over months, not days. I would have liked to have gone back and re-tried some of the earlier programs I encountered later on, but was unable to do so because my 3-day trial had expired. Their loss, not mine).
Now I’ve turned to general purpose graphics programs. I need one that lets the user manipulate grid density and representation, that allows mirroring and rotation, and grid-constrained line drawing. Ideally I want one that allows either patterned lines, or that allows some sort of logic-based display controls (black pixel overlaid with white pixel = white pixel as displayed; black pixel overlaid with black pixel = black pixel as displayed; white pixel overlaid with black pixel = black pixel – you get the idea).
I’m not quite at the optimal yet. But I’m getting close. I did the bit below using GIMP – a general purpose open source graphics manipulation tool. Elder daughter (the one jumping up and down, waving madly over there in her dorm room) gave some vital assistance with layer manipulation and masking. Here’s the result (click on this one too):
I’m not quite happy with the dots/voids. I find my original method from TNCM much easier to parse out visually than I do the new version, with dots in the center of each void. But that may be just me.
I’m going to soldier on, looking for something – anything – that can get close to my original. For the record, that was done on my long gone Mac IIcx using Aldus Superpaint. A program that has no direct cognate today.
All advice/leads on possibles are gratefully accepted. In fact, if someone manages to put me onto an effective solution to produce the look in the first snippet above using Windows software, and I end up using their method for my next book, I will reward them with a highly suitable stitching related gift.
CLARKE’S LAW SAMPLER – FINAL SOURCES ROUND-UP (LONG)
UPDATE ON 24 APRIL 2022 – For some unknown reason, the majority of this page disappeared. I’ve gone back to find and restore the missing info. Apologies if the links are still broken. This is a work in progress.
———–ORIGINAL POST – RESTORED MATERIAL FIRST PUBLISHED ON 24 OCTOBER 2010 ———–
I seem to have picked up some new readers here this week. I answer questions and comments from Kabira, Annanna, H. from Japan, and others. Recognizing that upon completion this heads to my pile of “finish me for display”, is unlikely to emerge before the holidays are over (and may not be seen again before spring) I post my wrap-up now on the almost-completed piece. Apologies for the length of this post.
First, thanks for your kind words. I’ve had a lot of fun stitching this piece. My sampler is more of an exercise in perseverance than anything else. The wide pattern strips, though complex, are not appreciably more difficult to stitch than are the narrow ones. All follow the same basic logic, and once a stitcher is used to following that logic the only thing that can go wrong is miscounting threads. (Bright, indirect light helps with that).
My sampler is worked on 36 count even weave linen, using one or two strands of standard DMC embroidery floss, colors #310 (black) and #498 (deep crimson). Worked over 2×2 threads, it’s done at 18 stitches per inch (about 7 per cm). The entire embroidered area measures out to roughly 16 x 32 inches (40.6 x 81.3 cm). I did not work it double sided, but the double sided logic does prevail.
The Clarke’s Law sampler, like all embroideries on this site, is an original composition. However the individual strips are adapted from or inspired by historical sources. I comb period modelbooks (mostly pattern books printed before 1650) and photos of museum artifacts, looking for goodies. Then I graph them out and stitch them up. I’ve been playing with patterns this way since the early 1970s, and over the years I’ve amassed a collection of designs. I put out a couple of leaflets within the Society for Creative Anachronism, the first one being issued in 1977/1978, and reprinted a couple of times thereafter. I released a second, better documented leaflet in 1983.
Then in in the ’90s some friends convinced me that others would find my notebooks useful (the leaflets containing only a small bit of what I’d been collecting) and introduced me to a publisher. The result was The New Carolingian Modelbook: Counted Embroidery Patterns from Before 1600 (TNCM). Sadly, the publisher turned out to be either exploitative or incompetent, or both, and to this day I’ve seen almost no return for the effort. But the book is out there, and continues to sell on the used book market for absurd prices. New copies continue to trickle in via eBay and a used book seller in New Mexico, so somewhere out there beyond my reach, there is still a source.
Be that as it may, I continue to collect and “play test” patterns on samplers like this one. Here’s an index to the sources for the 22 patterns used on the Clarke’s Law sampler:
1. TNCM Plate 32:1 “Twined Blossom and Interlace Meandering Repeat”. Known affectionately as “The Brooklyn Pattern.” Ultimate source – Domenico daSera. Opera Noua composta per Domenico da Sera detto il Francoisino. Venice, 1546 – one of my all time favorite modelbooks.
2. The alphabet for the main quote is from Sajou #55, posted by pattern archivist Ramzi at his Free Easy Cross, Pattern Maker, PC Stitch Charts and Free Historic Old Pattern Books blog site. Thanks, Ramzi! I played with it a bit, working the curlicues in red and weaving them over/under the letter forms.
3. TNCM Plate 69:1 “Grape Motif or Border Repeat”. I graphed it up originally from a photo in Drysdale’s Art of Blackwork Embroidery that showed the Victoria & Albert Museum’s artifact T.14-1931. The picture available on line is MUCH better than Drysdale’s black and white photo. Many of the other patterns on this piece come from this same source. Drysdale cites it as being Spanish, from the late 16th/early 17th Century. The V&A’s attribution is Italian, 16th Century. I’d go with the museum’s judgment on this one, and if given the chance to republish, would amend TNCM’s listing accordingly.
4. Plume Flowers. Victoria & Albert Museum’s artifact T.14-1931. I’ve charted this out on paper but other than stitching it here, I haven’t published it yet.
5. Hops. Victoria & Albert Museum’s artifact T.14-1931. I’ve charted this out on paper but other than stitching it here, I haven’t published it yet.
6. Column and Wreathe Repeat. Victoria & Albert Museum’s artifact T.14-1931. I’ve charted this out on paper but other than stitching it here, I haven’t published it yet.
7. TNCM 68:2 “Seam Decoration or Border Repeat”. Graphed from photo in Pascoe’s Blackwork Embroidery: Design and Technique. Pascoe cites this as being from 1545. The original was worked along the shoulder seam join line of a butted sleeve man’s shirt, stitched in all black.
8. Another alphabet from Ramzi’s Sajou collection. This one is from #172. It’s interesting to note that several of the late 1800s/early 1900s booklets he’s got quote some early modelbook patterns closely enough to recognize the direct line of heritage.
9. Meander Repeat. Victoria & Albert Museum’s artifact T.14-1931, BUT this one appears on at least one other source, also on display at the V&A. The keeper of the www.drakt.org website shows a display case with what’s clearly a close kin to the T.14-1931 pattern, but worked voided style. [2022 Edit note – I have since tracked down the particular strip that was included in the massed display artifact shown on the defunct drakt.org website – it’s Victoria & Albert Museum’s Border, dated 1600s, accession 503-1877. The massed display in which it is mounted is also pictured on the V&A’s page.]
10. Yet Another Meander Repeat (I’m running out of descriptive names). This one is also from Victoria & Albert Museum’s artifact T.14-1931. I’ve charted this out on paper but other than stitching it here, I haven’t published it yet. I worked it voided, although the original is in double running only.
11 a-d (top to bottom)
a. TNCM 55:1. “Snail Border Repeat”. My original, inspired by period designs.
b. TNCM 51:1 “Brier Rose Twining Border Repeat” My original, inspired by period sources. Also in my second booklet, Counted Thread Patterns from Before 1600, published informally in the SCA circa 1983.
c. My first booket, Blackwork published in 1978. Pattern #j, which I cited as being Italian counted thread work from the 1500s. No citation though, which is why it didn’t make the cut for later booklets.
d. TNCM 52:2. “Flower and Bud Meandering Border Repeat”. My original, inspired by period designs.
12 a-d (top to bottom)
a. My first booket, Blackwork published in 1978. Pattern #gg, which I cited as being English, very early 1500s. No exact source though, and I didn’t include it in TNCM for that reason.
b. TNCM 54:3 “Pomegranate Meandering Repeat” and #53 Counted Thread Patterns from Before 1600. Another one of my own, inspired by period sources.
c. TNCM 49:2 “Acorn Meandering Border Repeat” One of the early set I graphed from the photo in Drysdale’s Art of Blackwork Embroidery that showed the Victoria & Albert Museum’s artifact T.14-1931.
d. TNCM 44:2 “Acanthus Meandering Border Repeat” also #55 from Counted Thread Patterns from Before 1600. Yet another from the Drysdale photo of Victoria & Albert Museum’s artifact T.14-1931. (I do adore that source!)
13. Wreath and Columns Repeat. Victoria & Albert Museum’s artifact T.14-1931. I’ve charted this out by hand but other than stitching it here, I haven’t published it yet.
14. Columbines(?) and Twists Voided Repeat. This one also appears on the same Drakt website photo taken at the V&A as one of the sources for #9, above. I can’t make out the artifact’s accession number though. And yes – I graphed it direct from the on line photo, as seen on the screen.
15. TNCM 58:1 “Strawberries and Violets Meandering Border Repeat.” Also #61 in Counted Thread Patterns from Before 1600. This is the pattern adapted from the very famous Jane Bostocke sampler, also resident in the V&A. But my source materials were photos in Gostelow’s International Book of Embroidery and King and Levy’s The Victoria and Albert Museum’s Textile Collection: Embroidery in Britain from 1200 to 1750. If you’re familiar with those sources you’ll understand why my squinting at them came up with the odd raspberries in between the flowers, instead of what can now be plainly seen as simple twists on the V&A’s own photo page. I’d amend the description to “After Bostocke..” were I to republish TNCM now.
16. Black strip pattern. From page 57 of Louisa Pesel’s Historical Designs for Embroidery, but I worked it outlined and voided instead of foreground stitched.
The patterns I tested on this piece will probably make their way into a sequel to TNCM – once I find a graphing program capable of handling double running stitch with ease, and that can chart out giant repeats at a small, but useful gauge. I want to be able to present largest of these patterns on a single page, and to do it using a background dots and voided line style of presentation which I came up with for use in TNCM, and which I find much easier to follow than regular dark line on background graph paper charts:
(Snippet of Jesters pattern, TNCM 69:2)
What’s next? I’m not sure. I’m certainly not stitched out. I’d like to do another big sampler to try out more patterns, but I haven’t decided on its size or form yet. There’s also the possibility of a set of matched but not matched napkins – six all using the same colors, but all different. There’s also a pile of holiday knitting to achieve between now and the end of the year. Rest assured – I won’t be idle.
FERNANDO STEW
O.K. Having lost most of the readers here because I strayed away from knitting into embroidery, I now digress even further for a day.
It’s no secret that The Resident Male and I met in the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), lo these many aeons ago. We were pretty active during our college and post college years, until other priorities, careers, homes, and eventually offspring crowded in on our lives. We still maintain a peripheral presence in the Barony of Carolingia (the Boston area group) because many of our oldest and dearest friends remain active.
This weekend past we received this artifact of the elder days as a gift:
The few folk here who are SCA veterans and who went to Pennsic Wars past may recognize it. Our good friend Marian of Edwinstowe (now of blessed memory) had it hanging on the dayboard in her Sated Tyger Inn, and later in her Battlefield Bakery. Both were well-loved Pennsic-based food selling establishments she ran with friends and family for many years. We had largely disappeared from Pennsic by the time the Tyger had made the move from private subscription/cooperative cooking group to open-to-all eatery.
But now comes the story. What’s with the carrots?
Upon returning from oblivion about 10 years ago, and showing up to an event with a feast, we ran into comments like “You’re THAT Fernando,” and “Too many carrots for you?” The “THAT Fernando” comment we sort of understood. Duke Vissevald is a close family friend, and we were sure that his collection of stories included ones of Fernando, featuring a greater or lesser balance between entertainment value and veracity. But the carrot thing was a total mystery.
Eventually we found out about the continuing popularity of “Fernando Stew.” He had in fact served it at a feast we had run. It’s a simple beef in beer, Flemish style stew, and we’ve made it ourselves many times over the years since. But we always include lots of carrots in ours. Also sometimes parsnips…
More memory wracking was in order. Here’s what we’ve figured out must have happened.
On the day of the feast that included the stew, I was running the front of the house, and Fernando was commanding the kitchen. Several people were helping, among them Embla Willsdottir, a good friend, who had mutual/reciprocal lampooning rights with Fernando, dating back to the dawn of time. I’m sure he commanded her to cut up the carrots for the stew, and in all probability gave annoyingly exact specifications for the task. She did it and set them aside, but when the stew came together the carrots were forgotten by all.
At serving time, Embla probably chided Fernando about forgetting the carrots. I can envision her there, behind an apron, hand on one hip, waggling a forlorn carrot in his face. And I can predict his larger-than-life response. It probably ran something like “Carrots??? I need to nose up no miserable roots. I disdain them, and will not permit them to sully this stew. Take your tuber, cease this carroty caterwauling, and be off with you!” All accompanied by a well brandished spoon, and in a voice that would carry from kitchen to hall (and all in good fun).
So the stew went out with no carrots; an easy to make and satisfying group dish gained a following; and an anti-vegetable reputation was born. Now people all over the Known World know that Fernando hates carrots. Or so they think.
In any case, Marian’s Fernando Stew sign has made its way to us. We have hung it in our kitchen with pride and fond remembrance.
TARTS AND BERRY BIMBOS
Another descent into deadline hell for me so posts here have been/will be sparse again.
I did manage to squeeze in a strawberry tart. Made entirely from our own home-grown strawberries.
Three years ago I got one plant from a neighbor, and put it along with some lirope in the sunny side garden near our giant grass. I know that strawberries spread by runners, and between the two low, green, spreading plants, I hoping for a nice ground cover in between the roses, heather and blueberry bushes, sort of a green mulch.
The first year the strawberry plant established itself. The second year it conducted a savage land war with the lirope, which is now pushed to the edges of the area. There were a couple of berries, but the squirrels got them long before we did.
This year there are strawberries everywhere. My ground cover hopes have come true. The plants are thick enough to suppress all but the most insistent weeds. In addition we’ve got berries! LOTS of berries! So far we’ve picked about four pints. Not much by commercial standards, but enough for a nice fat tart and several breakfasts. And they’re GOOD. My girl-next-door berries are a far cry from the centerfold-bimbo ones trucked into the local market. True, mine are no where near as huge nor as pretty, but they’re intense and firm with a flavor the watery supermarket berries can’t match.
Slow going too on the Clarke’s Law sampler. I’m still working on the current voided strip. Again, filling in the background with long armed cross stitch takes longer than just working double running outlines. That and time compression are slowing me down:
And for Karen in California, who wanted to see the whole thing so far:
This is roughly 7 months of stitching, for between 30 and 90 minutes per day (my first post in this series was back on 7 December of last year).
Next will be a very wide strip, probably worked two tone using both the red and the black together. Slightly less dark than the narrow strip I’m working now, but denser than the motto bearing areas above it, to help anchor the bottom. I’ve got a couple of candidates but haven’t decided exactly which one to do. After that it’s probably between one and three strips to finish out the cloth, depending on width of the patterns chosen, filling in the area east of “Magic” with an author attribution in a smaller font (probably balanced with a narrow strip to take up any remaining space); and doing some end of line doodles to square out the ragged right in the other text strips. Then finishing and framing. Taa daah!
PS: Thanks to adnohr. Both the Ursa and XStitch Studio programs are on my list to review, once I return from the shadow of deadline doom.
PUBLISHING AGAIN?
The latest strip:
I’ve been alternating red patterned panels and lines of black lettering. I’ve run out of lettering, but I’m keeping the red-black-red alternation. This one is also from the V&A 14.931 sampler. I’m working the foreground double running stitch using a single thread of DMC 310 black, and the background in long armed cross stitch using two strands.
I’m having way too much fun with these patterns to stop. I’ve been talking about a sequel to TNCM for years, but now I’m engaged in doing it. I’ll be resuming my search for a decent charting program (or general purpose graphics program) specific to the needs of legible presentation for double running stitch. And given my horrible experience with the publisher of The New Carolingian Modelbook, I’m looking into other options, in specific – the feasibility of self-publishing, but I know very little about the various web-based micropublishing alternatives, but I’m open to all concepts. I do know that for this type of book paper copies are still valued by most. I don’t believe that there’s a critical mass of stitchers out there yet who would make use of an ebook stitch reference when hard copy sits so quietly in one’s workbasket without consuming batteries.
I’m also considering different formats. The last book was a 200+ page compendium of patterns, with lots of appendices of various sorts. I don’t think that’s necessary this time out. Other options exist. Shorter booklets or broadside sheets for example lend themselves more easily to web-based publishing both for the issuer and the downloader. Pricing is also problematic. The income stream this would represent is quite small, and the burden of record keeping as a small business for taxes is immense by comparison to any possible profit (discounting entirely the major effort involved in creating the work itself).
So I put these question to the few folk who visit this place and who I presume might be interested in such a thing:
1. Would you be interested in a sequel to TNCM?
2. Would you find ebook format (meaning to be read on a book reader or iPad) useful?
3. Would you be open to receiving a print-your-own PDF rather than bound paper?
4. What length book would you consider worthwhile – a leaflet of 20 pages or fewer? A booklet of 21-50 pages? A small book of 50-100 pages? 100+? (Bearing in mind that content for a 100+ page book would take a while to compile).
5. Any suggestions for publishing options aside from self-created PDF download via wiseNeedle, or commercial services like Lulu, iUniverse, or Etsy? Any cautions on the commercial service route?
6. Would you object to a higher proportion of original and adapted patterns mixed in with exact stitch recreations, so long as all patterns were documented as to origin and modifications (if any)?
7. Anything else you want to see in a book of patterns of this type?
String-Or-Nothing 
