Working on the egg

The egg is taking shape. Here you see the goose egg with lines from Revelations 5:12-13 in Latin, English, Greek and German wallpapered onto it. The wax lamb has also been painted, and will fit nicely, I think.

Now for the bunch of grapes and sheaf of wheat that I want to work into the decorations. And perhaps I'll crochet some gold lace.

WIPs

So what am I working on now?

I started making cafe curtains for the kitchen. These are crocheted in 12 weight cotton, and have an undersea theme. The first one is done, and I haven't started the second one yet, but should start that again soon.

The stairwell needs a nice curtain to keep the hot air downstairs. At present there is just a provisional curtain there. UGLY! but it's material I had on hand. My plan is to use 45cm diamonds in a lattice. So far I have two done. One is the practice piece from a hand quilting class. The other is crazy quilting with a vegetable theme. One thing about moving - I found a LOT more stash than I knew I had. I figure that these diamonds give me a chance to use up a lot of it, and get it down to a level that the new workroom can hold. (Yeah, right! We all know that one. But hope springs eternal.) Some of the diamonds will be single pieces of work. Others will be crazy, built around odd bits of stitching that I found.

The current block I'm working on has a Fall theme, built around a lovely hedgehog. Problem. The material the hedgehog was stitched on is very loose, and it sags. I have padded out the hedgehog - goldwork techniques, but using batting instead of felt. And now I am invisibly quilting the background to the base material. Boring, but it does work. Except that I ran into some lovely small motifs and decided that I needed the hedgehog and the acorns for this square, so I interrupted that to make those.

The other thing I'm working on right now is sewing backing onto the bath mats. The rubber had all come off, and they were not very safe. One is done, and works very well, so no excuses on getting the other one done, too. I also need to replace the belt on Steven's black shorts. PE class is hard on clothing. We were in Salzkammergut in November, and I bought some lovely material for a blouse. But not enough, so I need to get something else for the sleeves, and sew that.

Yesterday I took Christmas down. The wall where the Advent calendar was looks really empty, so I ought to finish the sunflower sampler I started for the same problem in the old apartment. BTW, I knew that I hadn't known what I was doing when I made that calendar. It was the piece that got me started on needlework again. I had done a fair amount of cross stitch in India, but hadn't done any since until I saw this project in a shop window when the boys were tiny. Apparently I also didn't wash the material before starting. It's dark green. It was so dirty when I took it down that I didn't want to store it without cleaning it. It ran and ran and ran and ran. But I remembered not to panic, but to keep rinsing, and finally the water got down to just a touch of green, and I finished (with distilled water). Now it's laid out on a towel in Steven's room.

I guess I'd better get either hard at work finishing the hedgehog diamond or else come up with a quick project that counts, or I'll be behind before the year has even gotten going.

Of course, if the snow gets away from the roses (which it should do today or tomorrow) I also need to get the pruning started...

Week 5 Project 4 Cuffed shawl

When I finished the scarf I found myself with part of a ball of dark yarn, and part of a ball plus an untouched ball of the red yarn. I decided to try out using a larger hook on the yarn. First I worked a row of double crochet (in red), then for the next row I crocheted * 1 dc in each of next 3 dc. 1 Ch, skip 1 dc Repeat from * across ending with 3dc. I continued in a sort of chessboard filet pattern - the 3 dc at the end of each row, and then replacing the center dc of a 3 dc with a ch and doing a dc in the ch1 space. I love the airy, but warm (fluffy, with 18% mohair) fabric that resulted, and knew that it would make a great cuffed shawl. Of course now I was going to need another ball of the red...

The idea of a cuffed shawl is that you make a long rectangle - long enough to reach from one wrist to the other across your shoulders. Then you join the corners of each short end, making a cuff. When you put your hands through these cuffs, the shawl sits nicely across your shoulders. I love them. This one has the big red rectangle with sc in black along each of the long sides, and the cuffs also in black sc.

When Jerry left this evening to get Steven from scouts I was still crocheting. While he was gone I finished the crocheting, sewed in the ends with my new bone needle from Skinner Sisters . When he got home I was sitting here wearing my new shawl. He was surpirsed, and I am very pleased with myself.

One of the good sides of having to go to the US is that Linn Skinner could finally send me the books I wanted from her, along with a few other goodies. Linn is a good friend and a great teacher; one of my favorite thread people. International shipping just keeps getting more and more troublesome, so I try hard not to do it. This box might have been worth it, though. The bone needle made me feel like Ayla in Jean Auel's books, but besides that, it proved much easier to thread than I expected, and went through the threads like a dream. I love it!

Most of the books somehow fit into a suitcase, but two ended up in my carry on and got read on the plane. If you are interested in historical needlework, her new reprints are just super. I'm trying to figure out how to use the designs in the two I've read in ways that qualify for my challenge. The first design I want to use is credited to a Holbein portrait of Jane Seymour. NOT the Vienna one, but a very similar one, now attributed to his workshop, in The Hague.. Both seem to be based on the same sketch (also survived). The sketch doesn't show needlework around the cuffs. The two paintings do. The Vienna portrait shows a wide blackwork border, the Hague one a much narrower border that is mostly cross stitch. It's this cross stitch border I want to play with.

Week2 Project 1 Crocheted scarf

I'm in Vermont right now helping my parents. Mom decided to try crocheting again after many years, so we both bought wool and hooks. What we bought is mostly acrylic, but has 18% mohair, so it actually feels nice, and is very fluffy. I liked some of the ideas in the books Mom bought - especially having slits all down the center of a scarf to pull an end through. But I don't like long chains, so how could I work from a short end and still have the slits? Another scarf in the book was split vertically into two colour areas, in spite of being worked from the short end.

Aha! If I worked that way, changing colours half way across each row, I could then decide to just go back and forth one side of a slit, pick up the other side and work up to the same height and go on as before.
Picking up turned out to be very easy - just do a slip stitch to pick up a loop before continuing in pattern. At the rejoin I work the dc to where two loops are on the hook. then I drop the working yarn, pick up the loop from the other side, yarn over with the new colour and through all three loops on hook. The only slightly tricky bit is being sure I start the next stitch in the right place. I want to try this with a less fluffy yarn when I get home. This fluffy stuff really covers any irregularities, and the scarf looks great. I also made one end pointed, so I have a choice between showing a square end or a pointy end.

I'll get a picture up when I get home. I've having a few difficulties with Mom's computer. Glad to be able to do this much here.

Shalom Flashcard Case

Just an example of what sort of things I might do:

I needed a case to hold my Hebrew flashcards. The letters are from the Shalom Alphabet book by avodat yad. I stitched them in my own selection of colours onto Aida band. Then I stitched down the hem and crocheted around the sides and top hem. (12 weight machine embroidery thread is great for fine crochet work, and comes in so many colours.)