NOT QUITE SUFFICIENT
More progress on my latest sampler. As you can see, “sufficiently” doesn’t fit on one row. No problem. the “ly” will begin the row of lettering below the grape pattern. I intend on marking word breaks with the little red oval anyway. I’ll probably go back and fill in the small slice of space after the final T on the first row with an all black bit of patterning after all of the words are done.
For those who are keeping track, the quotation is “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
I’m planning my next non-letter strips – a rather dark one immediately above the existing top line of lettering, and something rather more narrow but probably not as dark below the just-begun row of lettering. I’m looking at both line unit and solid unit patterns, plus voided work and other forms of counted thread stitching. The more complex, the better of course, just to underscore the irony of using “old tech” to depict this particular thought. Among the sources I’m using are my own book, plus notes for my theoretical next one, and some on-line photos of voided work on display at the Victoria & Albert Museum. (The cited photo set was provided by the unknown keeper of the Drakt.org website. Thank you, unknown keeper!)
PROGRESS!
As you can see, my voided grape strip is complete, and I’ve begun some of the lettering.
I’m using an embellished alphabet from Sajou #55, by way of Ramzi’s Patternmaker Charts website. Just to make life interesting, I’m working the tendrils that twine around the base letter forms in my crimson, and the letters themselves in black.
My plans are to march the letters across the piece, truncating words willy-nilly at the rightmost edge if they don’t fit, then continuing them on the next strip of lettering. For example, I will probably run out of room for the rest of “Sufficiently” before I get to my right hand margin, but I will finish out the word on the next line immediately below the grape panel. Words will be divided by little red ovals, as seen above between “Any” and the start of “Sufficiently.” I also intend to alternate patterned panels with letter bearing strips.
I like the way this is maturing. Now just to keep at it, both planning and execution, until all is done.
VINING ALONG
Yes, with all the cookie baking some embroidery did get done:
Here you see the first strip pattern, further along than the last stitching-related post. But not too far. Time is after all a finite commodity.
I’m a bit over half done with this particular strip. The grape unit to the right in this picture is the center one, and will be complete. There will be another partial unit of the same size as the truncated right hand unit on the left.
I’m thinking of working the words in black, perhaps using more than one of the various vintage alphabets from Ramzi’s Patternmakercharts website. I’m thinking about several presentations for them, including doing each word in a different face, so that the final presentation looks a bit like a ransom note; or working each initial letter in one of the more demonstrative faces, but the rest of the letters in another simpler or lower case face; or working each line in a single face, but no two lines the same. I’m not sure yet what I’ll be doing, but there’s lots more grape leaf panel to stitch as I contemplate the problem.
MORE GRAPES
“Go back to knitting!” Sorry. I’ve got the stitching bug now and I go where my fingers lead me.
Minor progress on the latest sampler – another panel from TNCM. This one I decided to do voided style (the original had no background). Instead of using cross stitch or long-armed cross stitch for the fill, I’ve opted to do a grid like mesh, worked in one strand of the same DMC floss that I’m using for the two-strand outlines. I’m not sure how I’ll handle the top and bottom. I’m thinking of being non-traditional, and instead of extending the fill a couple of units past the design’s base area, terminating it a unit or two inside the design, so that the grapes “overflow” their background.
The next decision is whether or not to continue this entirely across the cloth, or apportion my space differently. The piece of linen I’m using is rather large and long. I may decide to just go horizon to horizon, with no outer framing edging, and insert the lines of my quotation in between a series of strip patterns of various types. If so – do I use the same typeface for all of the words, or do I use different ones for each line. Decisions, decisions…
FULL THROATED PANIC
All the stitching on Don’t Panic is done! It now goes into the “finish me later” pile. This one will be framed, with a mitered fabric border all the way around. Not sure what color for the edging yet, but I’ll go for complementing rather than matching the deep green thread:
To answer a question, it’s about 8 inches across from border to border.
But I’m still not stitched out. The next one is the Clarke’s Third Law sampler. This one will be a large filled cloth, covered with various patterns in my usual haphazard style, probably a bit less symmetrical than the Do Right piece. I’m thinking that the saying will meander among the patterns rather than being rigidly confined to horizontal rows. It’s on a finer count linen than Panic, stitched with two strands of standard DMC floss. I present the very larval beginning:
It’s yet another strip pattern from TNCM, this one of grapes (Hi, Katheryn!). No, beyond folding the cloth in half to determine a rough center, I have not established a size, alignment lines, border areas, or done any other planning whatsoever. (Purists who baste in their center grids and edges are shuddering in horror right now.) I haven’t even decided whether the final piece will be displayed in portrait or landscape orientation. It will be an adventure.
In other news, in spite of another spate of horror deadlines looming from now to mid January, splatting directly on what was to have been a week off from work, I have started holiday cookie prep. Long time readers here know I aim for 10 types each December, to satisfy the family’s desire for lots of variety and to have plenty to give to family, friends, and co-workers.
This year’s line-up includes the traditional faves, plus a couple of new items. The standards making their annual appearance are chocolate chips, pecan sandies, peanut butter, Buffalo rum balls (so called because my ancient recipe copy is noted as being from the Buffalo Evening News, sometime in the 1960s), earthquakes (very similar to these chocolate crinkles), sugar cookie cut-outs (standard Joy of Cooking recipe, this year with new snowflake cutters), and oysters. Linzer cookies are making an encore appearance, too. The new ones are rolled gingersnaps (using an odd European cookie roller) and date nut rolls (from Tatte Bakery in Brookline, as published in the Boston Globe). Also back by popular demand is the panforte I’ve made before. Oh. And fudge to use up leftover chocolate and nuts. I can hear Elder Daughter hyperventilating over this, all the way from her dorm…
This weekend we baked the two items that improve with age – the rum balls that need to cure to lose that raw rum edge, and the panforte because we’re soaking it in Calvados this year. The others will follow, with the longer keepers like peanut butter being done first, and the tender ones that go stale quickly last (Linzers and the date nut roll). I try to have all baked by the weekend before the holiday. Deadlines willing.
And not to forget this week’s holiday:
Happy Latkes to everyone!
STILL NOT IN A PANIC
How did that challenge at the center of the horizontal bead strip play out? The little red arrow shows:
I ended up two units off repeat, which allowed me only enough room to make a narrow vertical bar. Had the area been wider, I might have done something else. But it worked out just fine as it is. The pattern for the bead border is here in yesterday’s post.
I’ll be done with this one before the weekend is over, provided no crises intrude. Then it’s on to the Clarke’s Third Law sampler. Even with request and gift knitting piling up, I still don’t have stitching out of my system.
PANIC BUTTONS
UPDATE: THE BORDER DESIGN BELOW HAS BEEN ADDED TO THE PDF COLLECTION AT THE EMBROIDERY PATTERNS LINK, ABOVE.
Well, I’ve decided to do a border around Don’t Panic. Again it’s one from TNCM, or rather, two that are presented together in the book. The first one is a very narrow geometric strip, the second is a bead (I think it looks like a march of panic buttons). The pattern is one of my originals, heavily inspired by historical sources, but not a literal transcription of any one design. The book doesn’t present a corner, but in this pattern one is very easy to improvise.
As an early holiday present, I share it and the corner elaboration here:
The astute will note that the repeats of the strip edging and the bead unit are different, and that a span of this pattern will not necessarily work out even, with all four corners identical. Because the step strip edging is so narrow this isn’t a problem. It looks fine ending it at the squared off corner with either the little L unit shown above, or truncating it one step earlier so that there is a little square next to the larger corner block (shown on the photo above, in the upper left corner). The key is to make both ends that terminate at the corner block the same so that each corner displays logical consistency. The four actual corners of the work are so far apart that any minor difference in the strip among them won’t be noticed.
It is however important to keep the bead units as near complete as possible. My north-south border strip works out to be an exact multiple of my repeat. You can see the happy march of whole bead units on the right. But what about the longer east-west panels?
I suppose I could be **perfect** and count them out, or plot the whole thing on graph paper first. But I’m a leap-off-the-pier problem solver. My solution is to work an even number of beads on each side, starting at the east and west corners. When the two sets met in the center if the count is off, I’ll either work a centered elongated bead, or I’ll figure out some other bit of complimenting ornament to fill the center space. I might for example choose the centers to sign and date the work.
The narrow strip then presents its own problems. I’ve established the repeat sequence on the right hand side. If I were to start it again from the left, I might run into a similar conundrum in its center. Instead, once I handle the bead problem I’ll continue working the narrow step strip from left to right, letting it end wherever it chooses to at my upper right hand corner. I might have to pick out the little bit of vertical strip already worked at the inner left so I can make it match the horizontal where both strips abut the box corner, but that’s life.
DO RIGHT AND FEAR NO MAN – SAMPLER COMPLETE
Finished!
Very simple completion here: a simple full back with a deep rod pocket at the top, and a hanging stick made from a dowel and two wooden beads. And as hinted at before – the wide green band at the top (the same heavy twill weave cotton that makes up the backing) balances out the wider strip of green embroidery at the bottom. It works. Or so I think. Oh. The sage green fabric? It’s a remnant. Long time readers here have seen it before. The color in the earlier pix is truer to the real thing. There’s no such thing as extra fabric or yarn, it’s all just fodder for future projects.
Elder Daughter takes Do Right back to the dorm in the morning.
DO RIGHT STITCHING DONE
The stitching on my Do-Right sampler is finished!
Now it’s just a matter of finishing the thing out for display. Probably by backing it with fabric, and inserting a rod and hanging string at the top. For the record, the stitched area is approximately 14.5 x 18 inches, worked at the relatively large and quick to stitch gauge of 15 stitches per inch on 30 count linen. Back when my eyes worked better, I preferred stitching at 25 spi, but so it goes… With luck and deadlines willing, the whole thing should be totally complete and wall-ready in time for Elder Daughter to bring it back to school with her after Thanksgiving break, where it will adorn her wall, admonish her to greater excellence, and annoy the heck out of her roommate, all at the same time.
Knitting visitors here will be disappointed to hear that the itch to stitch has not yet left me, and I’ll be working more of it before heading back to knitting or crochet. I am contemplating another accreted sampler of this type, this one for me.
I’m not sure what to say on the new project yet, although I’m leaning heavily towards Clarke’s third law or Elbert (Roycroft) Hubbard’s “An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy to be called an idea at all,” but I will entertain suggestions of other similarly incongruous yet pithy non-sectarian sentiments. Feel free to post them as comments here. To head off one potential suggestion, I’ve already done one for The Resident Male that features “Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.” Eventually I’ll get around to sharing pix of that one here. It’s a long band sampler, done in deep red on cream linen. I doubt that 10% of the people visiting his office have read the saying.
And I’m not sure what the next one will look like. Lots depends on the length of the statement. I’m leaning towards monochrome again, possibly plain black, possibly a single color – deep green or navy blue on off-white linen, but no decisions have been made. I’m also thinking of playing with some of the antique graphed alphabets from Sajou and other European vintage stitching magazines, many of which are available here.
ABOUT 35 MOTIFS AND COUNTING…
Not much progress for all the days since my last post. I blame work, which has a way of expanding to fill all available free time. Still, I have made progress on the Buttery pattern strip, and so far have managed to either find in my notes or invent enough new fillings so that each diamond motif is unique – even the halfies on the pattern strip’s edges.
Here’s a slightly less blurry shot of the whole piece, so you can see how this panel balances the two-tone panel on the right hand side:
You can see that I’m about two courses of motifs away from finishing this strip. Then it’s on to choose something narrow and lacy for the top edge. After that it’s gentle hand wash to remove working grime, and finish or frame.
And in other news (and for as long as this link lasts), other house projects are in the news!
String-Or-Nothing 