Finally.
I hadn’t been doing as much stitching, as it was making my eyes hurt. But now I have new lenses in my glasses, and the mad rush of many houseguests has calmed a bit. That means over the last couple of days I have had time to work on my needlecase! yay!
I realized in the reading of my chart last evening that I need to backstitch around the flowers in the center motif with gold metallic. I’d thought I was done with that one (except for beads & crystals, which I’m going to …read more

During the last few days that I’ve been working on Lorri’s Needlecase, I stitched my first ever Hardanger spiderwebs. They were a lot of fun, even though I seem to still have to learn the trick of getting them centered in the squares. Speaking of tricks, I’ve tried being extra slow and careful when snipping out the threads, and still I have little nubbins of thread poking out around the edges. I’m not sure what to do differently so that I have beautiful smooth kloster block edges. I am a bit paranoid of snipping the silk …read more

Last evening as I stitched, I actually remembered to take some pictures as I went along. First, I stitched the kloster blocks around the perimeter:

Next it was time to set scissor to cloth. This is as traumatizing to do as it is to see.

Pulling threads is the Moment of Truth- here are two shots, one where I’ve pulled only a couple threads, and one after I pulled them all.

It is at this point that one stitches the various webs and ladders and woven bars and things. This last image is after I stitched the first of four …read more

I only did a bit of needlework this weekend, but what I did was a nice challenge. I stitched my first hardanger block Ever. It looks a bit mangled, what I would call “Charlie Brown”. I’m going to leave it as-is, so that some day when I can stitch beautiful hardanger in my sleep, I can look back at this and feel proud of how far I’ve come.

I meant to take a picture after I’d stitched the kloster blocks, and snipped the threads, but not pulled them out, and forgot. Gah! Evening stitching …read more

Yesterday was my Lorri’s Needlecase Day, and I had a lot of fun working on the project.
I did something I have not done in a very long time, and I started in both the center of the fabric and the center of the chart. Per the directions. I didn’t want to run out of room to complete the stitching, so I figured eh, why not. Besides, there is all that Scary Hardanger to consider, and perhaps if I did things my usual way, disaster would strike.

The white floss is silk, and a complete dream to …read more

Yesterday I did not accomplish much on my rose pillowcases. Perhaps in part because I knew this packet of delight was waiting for me:

Doesn’t that silk floss just look delicious? I am excited to try stitching with it. I’ve stitched with silk single-ply thread, but never silk floss. And underneath the flosses and beads? .oOLinenOo. I’m so excited I can hardly stand it! My only real fear (besides messing up kloster blocks and ruining the whole thing) is that I will love linen more than evenweave, and my needlework will become suddenly more …read more

When I first started reading in the online needlework communities, I didn’t really have a good grasp of what a needlework rotation was, or why people would do them. I figured it was probably mostly a way to justify having a big Stash (enlarging one’s Stash is always fun!).

I am finding in my own stitching, however, that the big projects can start being less fun to stitch. No fun with stitching = less time spent stitching. What to do? Work on a different project for a while. Right now I’m setting aside Frederick …read more