And of course we are off and running on another small sampler honoring another of The Resident Male’s fiction books. The Fangirl Army of One is on a roll here. At this point I have only a few more to do before my production catches up to his.

This sampler celebrates Treyavir, a fantasy novel, relating the adventures of Reignal Maigntar, Falcon Knight. It’s a shorter read than most of his others, but no less engaging. There are mysteries, monsters, magic, epic truths and deceptions, love and loss, all presented in a tone echoic of Jack Vance’s Dying Earth fantasies, as a tribute to their blend of light banter, irony, and deeper issues. But on to the stitching…

First, the ground. I rarely work on grounds with counts below 36 threads per inch, but this well aged stash piece is roughly 26 or 27 threads per inch, and is a true evenweave, 100% linen. Penny method count, below – the penny obscures about 20 threads both north/south and east west (or close enough due to thick/thin threads not to matter). A US penny by definition is 3/4 of an inch in diameter. 20 x 1.33 = 26.6 threads per inch.

I think it may have come to me in a bag of remnants provided by Long Term Needlework Pal Kathryn Goodwyn, but I’m not sure. It’s evident that whomever had it before began a project using it, marking centers and edges in blue thread, but ended up cutting this narrow piece off from the larger whole after those bastings were complete. My remnant is about 10 x 20 inches (25.4 x 50.8 cm). It will be a long and skinny band sampler, and look all the more so due to the scale of the bands when stitched on this coarser weave.

I’ve started work on it but I am not entirely pleased with the linen thread I picked out and packed. It’s a long discontinued DMC product – one that was only briefly available in the US circa 2017, and is now gone. I bought a handful each of black and white from my local independent craft shop, pretty much all they had.

Here are the first couple of bands.

The thread has too much thick/thin texture and is too “hard” for optimal display in double running on this ground. One strand looks skimpy, and it doesn’t do corners well. I previously tried out two strands with the squirrel band, but found that since the thread ranges from slubby to skinny the appearance was very haphazard, with some bits being too dense to see the design, and others very thin by comparison. It was especially jarring in double running, where one pass might be a run of very thick stitches, but the second pass that completes the line might interpose skinny ones between them.

For the Destruction part – I am thinking about ripping back the 1.25 bands you see here and beginning the piece again from scratch. But I am away from stash and alternate thread options are severely limited. My immediate option is the black Sulky I used on Stone by Stone. That’s still in my traveling stitching box. Two strands of that would probably work better than two strands of this stuff. I am not near a retail source for old reliable DMC 310 cotton, and mail order doesn’t work well where I am right now.

Even if I rip back, I will redo the squirrels as is. They will be in Ensamplario Atlantio III. I’m not sure I particularly like the geometric band below it. It’s from The Second Carolingian Modelbook, but I think given chance of a total re-do I will work something else in its place, and save this one for another piece.

The linen DMC thread I will save for something else. Perhaps pattern darning, surface embroidery, or a delicate needle lace edging. I might use the white stuff for cutwork or pulled work, But neither will be deployed for double running again.

And of course just NOT having this project to work on until better options present is an unacceptable course of action. If you are like me you would understand. So instead of actually ripping back, I just whine about it here.

And more happily, I do have a finish. The holiday stocking I previewed in my last post is complete. A quick finish, too. Only four days from cast on to darning in the ends.

The stocking on the left in the photo is the new one. It’s a copy of one I’ve done twice before. The first one (photo, right) was a stocking kit purchased at now long gone yarn shop, Wild & Woolly, in Lexington, MA, circa 1996. In a minor miracle, I was able to find my copy.

The pattern was part of a kit was put out by SM Designs of York Maine. It contained worsted weight (5 stitches per inch) rustic Maine style spun wool in three colors. The kit came in several flavors, including one with Xmas trees. I bought the last one in stock. It had a simple graph of little paper dolls holding hands, in silhouette around the cuff. I did up the kit for the Alex stocking below, but being unable to do anything verbatim, I added in the panel at the top to duplicate stitch the name, subbed in my own holly berry leaf design for the paper dolls, did French knots in embroidery for the berries, and whipped the purl welt “folding line” row with leftover red and green yarn.

Eventually I knit up a second sock for sibling Morgan. I used the same pattern, but couldn’t find a true worsted weight rustic Maine style yarn for it. I adapted the design for a slightly heavier weight yarn of similar texture, but used the same holly leaf pattern, in with a different green and red. Also bearing a top strip for a name. To save packing space, I didn’t bring it with me, so it’s not in this shot.

Elder Spawn Alex and partner just moved out of state, and return to the home nest for the holidays is unlikely. So to make the first holiday off and away a bit more home-like, I volunteered to knit up a matching stocking for Spawn Partner. They requested a wolf instead of the holly leaves. I doodled one up in the same scale as the original graphed bit. He got a bit elongated in the knitting (knit stitches are not 1:1 height to width like cross stitches), but I think he’s vaguely recognizable as not being a horse or reindeer.

Comparing the three stockings, the types of rustic Maine style minimally processed 100% two-strand wool are harder to come by, and what is out there continues to get heavier and thicker. The best match I could achieve was even thicker than what I used for Stocking #2. If that one was worked from yarn knitting to 4.5 spi, this stocking was done from yarn with a native gauge of 4 spi. Since I wanted all three to be the same size, I had to play with the pattern a bit (again) and experiment with needle sizes until I achieved the original gauge. More or less. Side by side though I think I did well enough.

Now I bounce back from the world of knitting, and return to embroidery. I am off to contemplate my (stitching) life choices. At least I have my Silly Putty with me. This linen thread crocks and sheds fibers onto the ground, too. If only there was a retail source for DMC thread nearby… Sigh.