TEN DAYS OF PROGRESS – KNIT METHOD COMPARISON
Coming to the end of our recuperative sojourn out in North Truro. I had hoped to post pix of the aurora from here, but sadly last night was heavily clouded, and windy. So I maintain my record of weather-related disappointment in relation to notable sky events.
But that doesn’t mean that nothing has been accomplished in the past week and a half. I’ve been knitting, stitching, and working on various book-related projects.
That’s four of the hat bodies for the frog hats done, with another about 40% done. That leaves only a couple more to go, then I will begin the army of eyeballs for them all.
One large skein of THE Herschnerr’s afghan yarn makes about four hats. I am not any more pleased with it for knitting than I was with it for crocheting (it’s leftover from the Eyeball Bolster). It squeaks and splits. And being mid-range acrylic, is not “heirloom quality.” But for a topical hat whose topicality won’t last long, and being on hand rather than a new purchase, it is good enough.
One thing I’ve done is to check my speed and uniformity across a range of knit-in-the-round methods. Counting from the upper right, Hat #1 was done using the Magic Loop method. That employs one overly long circular needle. The excess cable length is drawn out into a loop between two stitches roughly on the opposite side of the piece from the point where one is knitting. One works to that loop, then pulls the excess out to make a new loop 180-degrees from the loop that has just been encountered. For the record, I find it quite awkward, an annoying break in the rhythm of production, and prone to distending stitches.
Hat #2 was done using just one circular needle of as close a size to the circumference of the hat as I had in my collection. Round and round, yanking the stitches across the joins as I went. I didn’t enjoy this one either. I find that circs of that small size have needle parts that are not long enough for my overly large paws. My fingers might not be pianist long, but my hands are quite wide. I wear men’s size golf gloves because women’s gloves are too narrow. Hand size plus the way I hold my needles for Continental style work means that my ring and pinky fingers support the weight of the needles and the piece. Using a circular this short makes me grasp cable, not the sturdy needle parts. Harder to hold, harder to maintain unform stitches, and harder to form them at speed.
Hat #3 was worked entirely on DPNs. Now I’m more in my comfort zone. But being out here on the Cape I only brought my set of mismatched but brightly colored Boye aluminum DPNs. They are seven inches long (about 17.78cm). I much prefer my vintage European DPNs from Inox, which were 8 inches long (20cm). I should have grabbed them, but didn’t. The short Boyes worked well enough for the K2P2 ribbing, and I flew through that section, but when I changed to stockinette, the extra width of the knit fabric without the draw-in of the ribbing made keeping all the stitches on the needles a bit difficult. I had to stop to retrieve dropped stitches more often than I anticipated. That slowed me down and affected uniformity of stitches, even though I’m a proven DPN warrior.
Hat #4 was worked with two circulars. This is a hybrid method. Each circular holds half of the stitches. Using both ends of the first needle, you work the stitches across the front of the piece, then you switch to the other circular, and use both ends of it to work the stitches of the back. Unlike with DPNs where the needles travel around the work, with each DPN advancing to the next position as it is freed then employed for the next segment, the two circulars in this method NEVER change places. Yes, there is a bit of awkwardness as one fishes for the correct end to use and then moves stitches up into working position, but it is not as fiddly as Magic Loop. And unlike Magic Loop, there is no distortion between stitches because there is no spot where the cable loop has to be drawn out. I also found that the in between needle bits did not ladder, but that may be because as an experienced DPN jockey, I tensioned across the gap in the same way that I do where two DPNs meet. All in all this worked quite nicely, especially for the stockinette part.
Hat #5 (in process) will be the “best of both worlds” piece. I started it on DPNs for the ribbing – proven faster for me than the other methods, and moved to two circulars for the stockinette tube section – the best for maintaining sanity and uniformity given the needle assortment I have with me here on the road. I will probably continue on two circs for a while and then when it’s convenient, switch back to the DPNs for at least half of the crown. That will minimize the needle ends flailing around part when the decreases begin to make a major dent in total stitch count. In all probability I’ll keep working this mixed method way for the remaining few hats.
For the record, the eyeballs will all be done on DPNs in a smaller size than the hat bodies. I want them to be nice, tight spheres, suitable for stuffing. So instead of these 3.5mm needles I’ll be moving down to 2mms, or possibly even smaller. Much experimentation is anticipated.
Also in the photo is the latest progress on my Italian multicolor stitched piece. I’m well into the third corner, having done the math correctly (thank goodness). No need to improvise a new corner. I know the museum original had four different corners, but in this case I’m glad to have to do only one.
The long stretch across is next. I have confidence that I am not off in count, so everything should align when I get to corner #4 and the the shorter march to rejoin my point of origin, but in case it doesn’t that last corner is where any fudging will occur. In the mean time I will work with my usual mix of confidence and suspenseful apprehension, plotting out just-in-case strategies so I have them if needed.
And they say that needlework as a hobby has no drama… If only folk knew.
CHARGING AHEAD ON MULTIPLE FRONTS
We are making headway here!
First, as I announced on FaceBook, I have completed radiation therapy. Minimal side effects to report even at conclusion of the course. We are now taking a bit of ease to recuperate both from the therapy itself, and having to drive out in the pre-dawn hours for 6:45 am appointments. 40 days of that doesn’t sound too bad when compared to the decades over which we left early as commuters, but once you are no longer used to being part of the Dawn Patrol, it becomes a lot harder.
Special thanks to the radiation crew Mass General Hospital, who greeted me every morning with good humor, efficiency, and a steady tolerance for my unorthodox music requests. I suspect that at least one of them has signed on to read here at String because of a mutual interest in knitting. If so, please pass the word back to the whole gang.
Second, my Italian multicolor piece is zipping along. I’m almost at the halfway point for the outer rim.
I’m 99% sure I will meet my horizontal centerline spot on in terms of thread count. I adjusted the total width to ensure that my corners are identical. There is one tiny mistake I need to go back and fix, but it is not something that has an effect on band width or repeat cycle. I could leave it, but I won’t.
And as you can see I am also making rapid progress on the frog hats – my third front of advance. Frog Hat #1 is now well underway. I admit that aside from the initial cast-on number I have not paid much attention to the general pattern I am using as my source. I’ve used a different cast-on, swapped in K2P2 ribbing for the original K1P1, and arranged the thing so that when the brim is folded, the more attractive side of my cast-on is on the outside of the hat. And yes, I’m working in the round on two circular needles.
Next comes hat depth and the decreases. I want the hat to fit rather sleekly rather than being full and floppy, so I will probably go short on the total depth compared to the written instructions. We’ll see if I follow the pattern’s decrease or if I end up opting for something more rounded.
My goal is to work the boring hat portion of at least four of the batch of hats I intend to make. Once those are complete I will make the eyeballs and eyelids, then finish off by sewing the eye units onto the hat bodies. Given quick progress on first hat (and that done while I still carved out time to embroider), I do hope to complete the minimum of the hard-promised four by the new year. The others are optional and will depend on available yarn, time, and my own rather spotty attention span.
I leave you with a repeat of the somewhat disheveled, early morning bell-ringing photo I posted on FB to celebrate my liberation from therapy. And yes – my last day’s music request was the 1812 Overture. You can’t celebrate an Independence Day in Boston without it. Especially because the MGH hospital complex is close by the river, and on upper floors commands a lovely view of the Esplanade where the annual 4 July celebration takes place.
HOPPING OFF ON A DETOUR!
Yes, I’m still working on the Italian multicolor strapwork cloth. But the holidays approach, and a topical whimsey presents itself. I am going to take a quick detour to kludge together a hat, then knit several for my various Offspring and Honorary Offspring.
In specific, I’m going to knit topical event relevant frog hats, in egregious green. Complete with bulging Muppet like ping-pong ball size eyeballs. Here’s my concept drawing:
I’m using leftovers from the bolster cover I did two years ago. The shocking green, the oatmeal white, and black, to be specific. It’s acrylic, and sport weight (24 stitches = 4 inches or 10 cm in stockinette) from Herschnerr’s. As you can see, I’ve got plenty.
I will be adapting a very basic free hat pattern I found on Ravelry, the Drover and Classer Plain Beanie. It’s plain stockinette with a turned back, ribbed brim, and a simple seven-spoke set of decreases at top. For the eyeballs I plan to play with the knit sphere design from Lisa Benden. Her free Knit Hacky Sack is written for a larger yarn than mine, but I don’t need a ball as big as hers, and I’m pretty sure I could fiddle with stitch count until I get the proportions I want. Plus, if I do one end in black, I won’t need to embroider the pupils onto the finished ball.
The only part of this that I will have to create from scratch are the green eye sockets into which the bulging eyes are affixed. For those I’m planning on doing a wrapped short row heel, but very small, with a rolled stockinette edge. The plan is to stitch each eye into its socket, then stitch those assemblies onto each hat. We’ll see how this sock heel-turned eye socket plan turns out.
These shouldn’t take too long. I’ll be working up the plain hats first. Worse comes to worse, even if the eyes don’t exactly to to plan, I will at least have screaming green beanies for my intended recipients.
Oh, and progress on the Italian cloth? Rounded the corner and headed for the center of the short side.
NEARING SECOND!
Sorry for not posting many interim images this week past. The repeat has been established. Memorized, even. So progress is pretty much more-of-the-same. Not particularly visually interesting, just being repeat after repeat. But I’m now on the run up to the second corner.
That diagonal just beginning to appear in the right side of the hoop will be the one that spans the corner, just like the one in the first corner.
Because I was very conservative in picking my starting point on the left hand edge, centering my beginning to the center line of the narrow end, but not having a drafted corner, just winging it – my right hand edge will be a bit further from the fabric edge than that on the left. No worries. I’ll end up trimming off about an extra inch of fabric when I do the final hemming. That’s not enough to be worth improvising a new, partial corner. I prefer to replicate the one I’ve already done, since that one worked out so well. Here’s a closer photo of the bit currently in the hoop.
You can see the bottom of the stitching is so close to bottom of the fabric that getting a nice, firm hold and an efficient span is difficult. I still may mount this on a scroller once I get up to working the spans across the middle, but for now, since I’m sticking with the small hoop for portability and the ability to get as close to the hemmed edges as possible.
In terms of thread consumption, even though (in theory) the stitching on this is based on two-sided principles, the work itself is quite economical. I am using DMC standard floss, single stranded, and I’m still on the first skein of all three colors. I figure that to do the whole rim around I am looking at two skeins of each. Since I’m not quite sure how densely I’ll be working the center I might be looking at as many as four more of each, but probably closer to another two. And I have them all in stash. No worries.
I do admit that going on and on in the same repeat is a bit of a challenge in perseverance and diligence. One reason I do so many narrow band samplers is that I get to go on to the next Interesting Thing before I run out of patience with the current strip. Still, this is a good study in applied discipline over time. A skill I have always had in short supply. It’s training. Yup. Training. 🙂
As far as my other exercises in discipline, I have been Very Good about my physical therapy homework, walking, and other activities to increase strength and endurance. It’s slow going (not unlike the current stitching), but I am seeing results week on week. Horseback riding and quick step galliards may be in my past, but there are lots of other things I hope to resume over time if I keep at it.
QUARTER FOR YOUR THOUGHTS
No, not inflation – at least not overtly. I’m just about 25% done with the frame around the outer edge of my Italian multicolor piece. Closeup posts of the bit currently under the needle are going to be repetitive from here on in, so I present the full canvas of this “painting.”
If it looks to you like I’ve sped up production – I have. I had wanted to mount this piece on my big Millennium frame, but I had no extra wide twill tape on hand. In person shopping being a bit unwieldy right now and not wanting to rely on goods sight-unseen I’ve stuck with the hand hoop, the sit-upon hoop being an inch wider across and even less suited to close-edge work than this smaller one. But I decided to stick the little hoop into my Lowery floor stand. That lets me work two-handed, one above and one below. And working that way for me is about half again as speedy as holding the hoop in one hand and stitching with the other. So one “up” repeat including initial outlines, meshy fills, and Montenegrin lines took about an evening and a half to stitch using the floor stand, but took three+ evenings with the hoop in hand.
The sharp-eyed will note that the center of the repeat currently in the frame does NOT align with my basted line that marks the center of the cloth as a whole, while the center of the repeat along the short edge, where I began does line up with the horizontal center line.
This was on purpose.
I took pains to do the math for the short edge, hoping to get close enough to the final diagonal needed to make a graceful improvisation for the corner. At that time I hadn’t realized that the original stitcher fudged the corner that most resembles what I wanted to do. I made it without that fudging, but at the expense of stitching further towards the serged edge of the cloth than I would otherwise prefer. You can see how low in my hoop my stitching is – a very inefficient and precarious placement that barely grasps the lower end of the fabric as I try to achieve and maintain optimal tension.
Since I hadn’t graphed out the corner and had only a rough estimate of depth, and knowing that my plans for a neat turn might not fit, instead of beginning the piece along my original posited outer edge (the basted line at left), I skimped on the edge area there, too. Not quite as much as along the second edge, but enough to make a difference. My logic was that when I continue around, if I need extra width or some odd bit of kludging to get to a neat corner on the second turn, I’d have more options. And if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be inconvenienced by the extra unworked cloth, and could cut it off in my finish.
Having narrow margins around the stitching (however inconvenient) and removing any excess play into my plans. My intention to finish this piece is to imitate the original, with “poetic interpretation” of what little remains of that treatment – a narrow turned hem, with neatly spaced blanket or buttonhole stitch and corner tassels. The hem-covering stitch of the original is probably plain old blanket stitch due to the way it has deteriorated. I would think that the edge reinforcement of tightly twisted knot like bits along the free edge in buttonhole stitch would have been preserved better, resisting large runs if snagged. But little remains. It’s very hard to see in the photos I took and the museum’s own shots, but there might even be a very narrow, barely there strip of needle lace along the edges – not wild stuff with dags and picots – just a simple solid band. I’ll be squinting at the photos to see if I can learn more. I’ve done that type of edging before, on The Resident Male’s SCA fighting shirt, in black, long ages ago, so it would not be a stretch to do it again. In any case, plain stitched hem or fancified hem, there will be little reveal of plain cloth between it and the established stitching. There will be plenty of linen left for the hem, regardless of how wide or narrow the stitched part ends up being.
Now where the true vertical center point of the piece as a whole is will matter when I get to the wide bar I am planning to add. That will span the middle, across the short dimension. It may be aligned with the center of the pattern iteration I’m currently stitching. That’s about an inch left of the basted line. BUT if I get near the other end of this side and I decide to devise ANOTHER corner treatment, and that treatment needs additional width, it might move either closer to the cloth’s original centerline, or to another point in that general direction. No clue right now what I will be doing, so stay tuned!
….Isn’t the suspense of Bungee Jump Stitching furiously exciting?
CORNER AND TASTY MILESTONE
My improvised corner on the current piece appears to be working out. And it looks like the original stitcher(s) hit upon the same notion, and did something very similar. Here’s what I have:
Note the extension of the zig-zag frame to a full iteration of the pattern, but one headed off on a right angle to the initial bit. And the beginnings of another red flower section in the triangle made by the border. Looking back at the original, although all four of its corners are treated differently (and a couple of them quite awkwardly), one does appear to take a similar approach:
We will see if this gets me into any unforseen trouble, because looking at the original, I do see some kludges that address the variance in placement between that truncated corner flower and the framing zig-zag. Fingers crossed. Still it’s fun to see that I seem to be sharing the thought process of someone else, from way back then in time.
As to Meshy in cotton – I’m getting better at it as I learn more about the thread’s breaking point, and how much the ground cloth weave can be compacted by tight stitching.
The openwork texture doesn’t show well in such narrow spaces. It’s also hard to see in person without backlighting and practically putting one’s nose against the work, but the open mesh effect is there. I’m increasingly pleased with this, but I still don’t know to what purpose I will put the finished cloth.
Milestones
It’s no secret that since The Great Excavation and subsequent rehab/recovery, I’ve been living entirely on the labors of my Resident Male. While he has always handled the bulk of the cooking, I did contribute every now and again, with daily cleanup, baking special treats (especially during the holidays), and doing the occasional leftover reheat/repurposing, mid-week. But I have been a true freeloader since mid-March, and have only recently resumed unloading the dishwasher and doing other minor household tasks.
But yesterday and today I baked!
We are having some friends over tonight for dinner. I decided it was time to step up, and volunteered to make small ramekin chocolate cheesecakes
I made six of these little guys. They have three layers, and are a mash-up of several recipes. I used keto ingredients so they are low-carb, low-sugar, but not low-fat. And yes, I will clean up the edges a bit for presentation.
The bottom layer is a cocoa shortbread, made from King Arthur Keto wheat flour (no exotic nut flours, our guests are allergic), butter, cocoa, and faux sugar (Swerve brand, confectioners style). Next is the cheesecake part – standard full fat cream cheese (the bagel’s best friend), no-sugar dark chocolate baking chips (Choc Zero brand), heavy cream, eggs, vanilla, and a touch of salt. On top is a standard proportion ganache made from the same baking chips and heavy cream.
I did them in three stages with a small rest between the base and shortbread, then finished them with the ganache this morning. I was mildly tired after being on my feet so long yesterday, but not truly fatigued. While the shortbread and ganache I winged on my own, the cheesecake part is a combo of several keto cheesecake/chocolate cheesecake recipes.
I’m pretty confident that these will be acceptably tasty, with a dense but not rock solid texture. If not, I’ll report back, tweak my notes and in the future try again. Still, I’m proud of my dessert and happy to have cleared another recovery hurdle.
TRUE CONFESSIONS
I am very glad that I didn’t focus on making this piece two-sided.
At the outset, I thought about it. Hiding the ends on both Montenegrin Stitch and Meshy (Two-Sided Italian Cross Stitch, pulled tightly) are easy. Lots of real estate overstitched in which both beginnings and endings can be camouflaged. Double running is a bit more difficult, especially when one strand is used. Yes, I know various termination methods to do so – one-strand loop start and waste knots to begin; back-trace stitching, and threading through the existing line to end – but they are annoying to do, especially on a large piece. I made a half-hearted stab at it, but abandoned double sided double running early on, But I never thought it would be the two solid techniques that would be giving me trouble.
Here’s the front:
Here’s the back:
Montenegrin is working well. There are just a couple of bald spots where I lost track, mostly in angle changes. I blame resuming the habit of watching TV while I’m stitching. Occasionally I get caught up in the action, and miss a turn. Then don’t realize it until I am long past. Had I still been reverse-side-display focused, I would have done more diligent checking, and would have ripped back and redone the less than perfect bits.
Meshy on the other hand… Ouch.
The two-sided Italian cross stitch works best over large areas, like backgrounds in voided style pieces. It isn’t as cooperative when its playgrounds are small, as they are in these flower parts. It’s like working nothing but the bits where voided stitching bumps up against a foreground line, with no respite. Working these small parts I never quite get the rhythm – it’s all compensation stitches, with very little chance to display the openwork texture. That also means that coverage on the back gets slighted as working direction changes to adapt to the shape of the field being filled. Add to that the tension limitations of the cotton floss (more fragile than silk, believe it or not), and in spite of cotton’s fluffier nature, we have lots of bald spots on the back. Far from optimal for double sided display.
Finally then there’s my own general laziness. I’ve made a couple of mistakes that I’ve had to pick out. But instead of picking out large areas, I’ve mostly opted to pick out just the “broken” bits, tying off loose ends, or fastening them with overstitching on the back. Most of the fat or knotty looking spots above are from fixing mistakes. Sometimes the errors encroached on Meshy sections, and those are notoriously difficult to frog. Sometimes I ripped out small segments and replaced them because I didn’t feel like re-creating the large, accurate sections they were in, just to get at a couple of errant stitches.
So my back is a relative shambles. I will of course continue on, focusing on the front. But especially for those of you who tell me that my pieces are inhumanly perfect, please know that you usually only see the after photo, and lots of corrections and creative editing went into making the project look like that.
My Italian Fall
No international or domestic tumbles involved. Only, just like that, my fall project begins.
Yes, I am sticking with a project inspired by the big Italian towel/cover in my last post. I’m working it on a much smaller piece – a quotation rather than a full reproduction. I’m using the 19 x 27 inch (48.26 x 68.58 cm) piece of 40-count linen I mentioned earlier. That’s obviously less than the 381.89 x 582.68 inches (970 x 1480 cm) of the original. It’s very hard to make out the stitch or thread count of the original, but it does look like (most of the time) stitches happen over 4 threads. I couldn’t get close enough to get a dimensioned or scale-related photo of a strip, but I can say that I am working over 2×2 threads, and my individual motifs are smaller than on the original.
Although the size makes it a hint at the original, the design snippet I use will be a “larger” representation of the whole than it would have been if I had hit the stitch size of the original. More stitches per inch may make my pattern rendition smaller north/south and east/west, and will allow me to fit more repeats on my smaller cloth. Still nowhere near the repeat scale of the museum piece, though.
Now on to the stitches. I am using Montenegrin for the solid lines of green, red, and yellow. The Amy Mitten booklet Autopsy of the Montenegrin Stitch, Exhumed is invaluable for guidance on the various directional angles and corners needed. I used it before while stitching my long green sampler. It was what got me through the maze of this design:
I chose the squared back version of Montenegrin for the band above, but Mitten presents two versions, and I am using the other with a solid strip back for this one. Mostly for variety, and to see how the two compare.
Another stitch I used on Long Green is also present on this one. I call it “Meshy” but it’s official name is two-sided Italian cross stitch. I am using it for the solid infilling on the flower-like parts. Although it’s not called out in the MFA description, the closeup photos I took clearly show the mesh structure of the stitch, when it is pulled extremely tightly. Because of silk’s tensile strength, it works especially well for this stitch. You can see that mesh at large scale, with all ground threads bundled (none cut), completely covered by the silk in the Meshy part of my long, green sampler:
However, for this piece I’ve chosen DMC cotton floss – one strand. I wanted to work from stash, and to guarantee washability. In retrospect silk might have been a much better choice, allowing greater delicacy over all and a better defined mesh; but it’s pricey, and would be a new purchase. I’m putting off buying imports until a sane US international trade policy manifests.
Cotton doesn’t have the oomph of silk. Yanking on it to maximize the mesh effect can lead to breakage, and its bulk makes the filling more bead-like than lacy, especially in the narrow spaces of this design. Still, it’s not that far from the original, and if I’m careful I can teeter on the edge of destruction without actually shredding the thread. And working the narrow petal shapes in this stitch is proving out to be its own challenge. It shows and works much better in larger, open spaces.
I had toyed with making this truly two-sided. Meshy is two-sided, and the Montinegrin variant I picked has a not-exactly-the-same but close-enough reverse. And double running can be two sided. But I’ve already made enough mistakes and corrected them without pulling everything out (very hard to do with Meshy) that the back is compromised. I will settle for MOSTLY double-sided on this one.
Obviously there’s a ton more to do on this cloth.
I may move it to my largest Millennium scrolling frame. It’s just a hair too wide in its short side dimension (bottom in the photo) to fit on my next-to-largest one. But to do that since I have measured and placed my beginning to maximize the stitched field, I will need to add waste cloth or wide twill tape around the top and bottom. I need to add “real estate” for the scrolling rods to bite. And depending on how much tension I can achieve in the east west direction using my shortest set of extenders, I may want to add some twill to the long edges to accommodate lacing, too. But for now I’ll continue with the hoop. Working with it is much slower, but it is more portable, and I wander around the house quite a bit now as I stitch, to take advantage of changes in sitting venue.
Stay tuned, there will be LOTS more progress reports on this one. I hope they won’t be too boring. The pattern will remain mostly the same throughout the piece, but I do have several challenges coming up. For example, how to handle corners, and how to divide the framed plain linen center using double or single widths of the design. And if I do so, graphing out the supplemental edging sprigs, and how to place and space them.
On the health front, all continues well. Preventive radiation continues. No side effects ill or beneficial so far, although the superpower of magnified vision would come in handy. Mobility, sitting stamina, and general energy levels are increasing. I can make it around the house without a cane now, and only use it for going outside, or up and down the stairs. I’m a lot slower than I used to be, but even slowly, I can now get there. All is good.
AHA!
I’ve finally figured out what to stitch!
Two years ago Friend Merlyn and I went to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and saw an exhibit that featured (among other things) this Italian masterwork.
It’s described as a towel done in Punto Scritto and Punto a Spina Pesce MFA Accession 83.242, Italian, 16th century, silks on linen. In terms of size, this piece is big enough to be a table spread to seat eight, much bigger than anything I’d think of as a bath towel.
These stitch terms are used in MFA descriptions, but not many other places, and probably haven’t been updated since the initial acquisition and accession in 1883. Punto Scritto is clearly double running stitch. Punto a Spina Pesce (as far as I can figure) appears to be what we would call a form of long armed cross stitch (LACS) because the stitches that form each adjacent unit employ the same insertion/emergence spots, although modern stitches using that Italian name appear to spread the entry/exit points out, like herringbone stitch. I also note that the directionality of the individual stitch units as it rounds corners makes me think that execution was most like the Montenegrin stitch variant of LACS (more on this below).
I shared several photos of this at the time of our visit. And I put it on my list for redaction. Well, now is that time. I’m going to chart this one up, and then use the designs on a MUCH smaller cloth of my own. And as I look closer at this one, I think I will try to use a similar range of colors (but in cotton for washability), and the stitches I think look the closest to those of the original. At least on the front. I don’t see any photos of the back on the museum page in order to make totally accurate identifications, and am not impelled to write to request any. One thing I did note is that for the solid filled areas, the tightly pulled two-sided cross stitch variant I call Meshy was used. That isn’t credited on the museum page.
Another thing my close-ups show is that the piece was stitched over squares of four by four threads. There appear to be quite a few mis-hits and subsequent corrections where four by three or three by three threads were covered. This seems to pop up mostly in the curly bits that spring off the lily like flowers. I don’t know the actual count of the ground, and obviously couldn’t get up close enough to take a dimensioned photo, but I think that 2×2 on my 40 count linen will look close to the scale of the original.
Given that the Meshy and double running stitch bits can be done truly double sided, I have to think further on the use of something in the LACS family that is presentable on both sides. I’ll probably settle on Montenegrin. Both front and back of that are presentable, although the front does feature an additional vertical bar. It’s hard to make out on the photos, but some of the solid lines, especially the dark green ones that run the length and width of the piece do seem to sport a bar in places. But the deep yellow bits that run inside the motifs, don’t. Maybe the stitcher, noting the difference between the appearance of the two sides of the stitch chose to use the more open “reverse” on the front for the yellow bits, and what we consider the front of the stitch’s more solid effect for the framing lines. Fortunately, I have both practice with the stitch plus Amy Mitten’s excellent flip book on executing Montenegrin, covering all possible directional angles, so the transitions in this design will be easy, even upside down.
Now off to chart, and once the main motifs are captured, figure out how to compose them into a viable “small snapshot” piece on my 19 x 27 inch (48.26 x 68.58 cm) cut of linen.
PROGRESS CONQUERED!
Finished. All that remains is to add my initials and date in the lower corner(s), frame it, and mail it to the recipients at Vanderbilt Rehab. I will be framing it myself.
I’ll figure out a stock size, get an acid free backing board, maybe a piece of black fabric to put behind the linen to camouflage any stray threads on the back, some short pins, possibly some carpet thread to keep the back neatly laced and tidy, and a simple metal frame. No glass, no mat. But this of course requires a trip to a crafts store like Michaels’, or ordering sight-unseen online. I prefer to select these materials in person. I haven’t tried driving yet, but I can now sit and my right foot is as spry as it ever was. This may be the impetus for the Next Great Step of Independence. Or the Resident Male may deign to give me a lift. We will see…
Lessons learned from this piece (so far) have largely been in silk fiber management. I’ve written before about stretching the vintage Pearsall’s silk by splitting its six from-the-maker plies in half. It worked, although handling the stuff was a challenge.
I had not finger-spun flying filaments before. When the two strands that made up the commercial ply were separated and gently stroked to release the commercial spin, so that they unkinked and straightened out, they were certainly long staple, with the silk fibers running the entire length of the strand and without short fiber fuzz, but they were disassociated into a slightly shredded longitudinal mass. I rotated the new, narrowed strand between thumb and forefinger gently, while holding the other end, to impart new twist. Not enough to make the thing kink up again and knot, but just enough to get it to resemble a single thread. Then I waxed lightly, very lightly, to help set the spin. I didn’t want to compromise the silk’s sheen, and it was too easy to shred the new thread if I held it tightly against the wax with my thumb as I drew it across.
In the photo below the red thread at the bottom is a single “native” ply of my Pearsall’s six ply embroidery floss. Note that it’s structure is two-fold. This one strand is made of two plies of silk spun independently and twisted together. The green thread in the middle is what happened when I “unspun” those two plies. You can see the long staple filament fuzz that resulted. And the blue thread on top is what happens after I finger spun and lightly waxed the fluff. It’s a bit loftier than the original thread, but clearly half as bulky.
The re-spun thread was cohesive, and it handled well enough. It still needed attention and an additional spin or two as I stitched, to keep it as uniform as possible as I worked. Still, you can see spots, especially in the deep indigo that frames the outer border, where I was not entirely successful in maintaining thread spin/loft, and lines look a bit dashed, as thicker journeys completed previous lines laid down with a thinner, more tightly spun thread. But historical samplers have this look, too. Those stitchers, vastly younger than me, were learning to prepare their threads from reeled silk fibers and uniformity was a new skill to learn, and something that was a challenge even for them.
Picking out when I made the inevitable mistake was also a problem. It was too easy to latch onto only part of a strand, and shred the thread when a stitch needed to be removed. So I tried VERY hard not to make any mistakes. I was not always successful, and some waste did occur.
I still have the remainder of these colors, and more. I am not sure when I will get to use the rest of my vintage silk, but it will probably be on smaller, less densely stitched items; and again stretched to make use of every priceless inch.
Now. What’s up next?
I’m not sure. I will investigate my stash tomorrow. I just splurged on a pre-tariff large hank of antique red Au Ver a Soie silk. I want to do something with it. Possibly on leftover fabric from the coif, possibly on something less visually challenging. Maybe inhabited blackwork. Maybe strapwork. But no motto this time. Just a riot of pattern, with no lettering to center.
Or maybe I’ll finally do a faux Mexican style blouse in cottons. I have some well aged four inch wide finished edge cotton evenweave, sort of like the stuff sold for bookmarks but on steroids. It was last sold in the mid-1970s, and I got it in a stash trade a few years back. It would make a nifty base for a heavily stitched square shaped yoke, with a lighter cotton (perhaps muslin) full gathered blouse body below, and small cap sleeves. I might even have enough of the wide evenweave ribbon to edge the body hem, or to do a second blouse if the first one works out well. But instead of using traditional patterns, I might do something unexpected. Possibly one of my dinosaur strips, or the Pegasus strip – maybe even voided. Or something as-yet unseen. Suggestions welcome.
So many possibilities…
String-Or-Nothing 