While my current work languishes, here's a picture of another past sampler. This one I stitched in 1996. It hangs in my husband's office:

Again most of the patterns are from The New Carolingian Modelbook, and the piece is a mix of plain old cross stitch, long armed cross stitch, and double running stitch, worked in DMC embroidery floss on 36 threads per inch linen (18 stitches per inch). The center twist is the same one I used on the knitted Knot a Hat earwarmer band. (It's also pictured on Ravelry.) You can see the difference in proportion between square unit based long-armed cross stitch, and the not quite square knitting stitch units. More rows to the inch than stitches across to the inch gives the knit version the slightly squashed appearance.

The quotation on this sampler is "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for the are subtle and quick to anger." From JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, and totally appropriate for a software developer.

Technorati : blackwork, cross-stitch, embroidery, knitting, sampler

Work has a nasty way of eliminating any discretionary time whatsoever, but five minutes here and 20 minutes there, I have finally managed to finish the plume flower double running strip:

On to the next band of lettering, and on to thinking about what to do after that one is done. The current rate of production coupled with a workload that promises to double again in the coming month will give me ample time for that bit of consideration.

I hope to resume my explorations into charting software possibilities. I've got an itch to publish more patterns (including the just-completed strip), but without tools and time it's just not happening.

Technorati : blackwork, counted-thread, embroidery

Charlotte asks about the colors of the bands on the Clarke's Law sampler. She says that each successive band looks lighter than the one before. I answer:

So far I've used only two colors of embroidery floss - DMC Red #498 and DMC Black #310. The top band was done in long-armed cross stitch, using two strands of red. Long armed cross stitch produces a particularly dense and raised texture.

Outlines on the grapes band were worked in double running stitch using two strands of the red, but the background grid filling was done in one strand - also in double running.

The current plume flower band is worked in double running using just one strand.

Between the relative densities of the various source patterns and the density of the working methods I've ended up with the progressively lighter look for each band even though all are worked using the same thread.

My plan for the rest of the bands is to do more of the double running work, choosing bands of different visual densities and working some but not all of them voided (with a background fill, but not necessarily solid). The next one will probably be somewhat closer in look to the grapes panel, but in between that and the current band in darkness. I will alternate bands of various densities with the black lettering. I've used plain old cross stitch for both the letters and the red embellishing squiggles that loop around the letters. If you compare it to the long armed cross stitch snippet above you can see the difference in coverage between the two.

When all of the lettering is done I'll consider working more long armed cross stitch. Depending on how much room is left on the cloth, I might just go for broke with one massively large pattern, working it voided, so that the piece has a nice dense anchoring segment at the bottom. Or there might be a couple of bands of progressively darker stitching leading up to it. I haven't chosen the patterns yet and I'm not sure exactly how much room I've got, so you'll have to stay tuned to see how it all works out.

To answer Ellis - the reason you can't see any lines drawn on on the linen for stitching over is because there aren't any. This piece is done on the count. I'm using the weave of the linen as my guide, copying patterns drawn out on graph paper, with each grid of the graph paper corresponding to square of 2x2 threads.

To answer Marya - if my pattern contains a straight line that spans two or more graph units I do not make one big stitch over all of them. I make an individual stitch for each grid unit, even if they are all in one straight line. This keeps the work neater and more true to the graphed original. Long stitches are also more likely to catch on things.

To answer [anonymous] who noted that all of these patterns seem to rely on just 90 and 45 degree angles - yes, you're right. I can't rule out totally that diagonals over a 1x2 grid unit weren't used (30/60 degrees), but so far I haven't found a historical piece that used them in this type of pattern. It's possible that some in-filled blackwork diaper patterns (the dark outline, different geometric filling variant seen below) used stitches at those angles, but I haven't had the luxury of examining enough historical works close-up to make that determination. Lots of modern blackwork does use those angles. But for me, I'll stick to the orthodox and limit my design to 45s and 90s.

Technorati : blackwork, cross stitch, embroidery

Apologies to the person out there anxiously awaiting the rest of my charting review series. I've had a serious attack of work obligations that has eaten into all time not spent sleeping. Even family maintenance has been scaled back. Blogging and research for blogging is right out. But for all of that, I do reserve to myself a half hour in the evenings for de-stressing. So I do have some progress to show on my Clarke's Law sampler:

When this band of plume flowers and branches is done I do the next line of text. At the current rate of life-obfuscation, I won't have to worry about picking the next band pattern for weeks yet to come.

Sigh.

Technorati : blackwork, counted-thread, embroidery

I'm still working on my round-up of charting software reviews. I've got three or so more dedicated programs to try, and then I'll attempt to bend standard graphics programs to my use. In the mean time, work eats at my life. I did get a little bit of time to stitch while we were watching the Olympics yesterday. Here's the result of that hour plus the prior week's worth of dinking around on my Clarke's Law sampler:

Complex, but in a blocky, heavy-torso, post Renaissance way, kind of delicate. It makes the grape border above the line of text seem meaty by comparison. This strip is mostly reversible. Some small bits like the diamond in the center of the plume/flower's base and the bark texture lines are discontinuous, and I didn't bother to either start or finish off my threads invisibly. But with a bit of tinkering to norm the non-attached bits of detail, there's no reason why this pattern couldn't be worked totally two-sided.

For those of you who are thumbing through TNCM looking for this one, it's not in there. It's part of the set I'm grooming for the next book. If the investigations into a feasible charting method ever pay off...

Technorati : Embroidery, blackwork, counted-thread

Continuing my exploration of dedicated and general purpose software for use with my two great needlework passions - charted patterns suitable for counted thread embroidery (in specific - double running stitch) and knitting. Again I'm not testing one main feature of these programs - the ability to turn images including photos into needle-painted ready-to-stitch images. I don't care about that feature, although it's clearly the hook on which most of these programs hang their hat.

PC Stitch Pro v 9.01 by M&R Technologies

PROS: Standard features that one would expect - cross stitch, floss palette tied to major manufacturers offerings (in this case, in a companion program that allows color editing, but does not appear to allow one to mix across makers lines without direct finagling, or to blend colors - two features that Pattern Maker had). Includes back stitch, but not a separate straight stitch). Includes standard flipping/rotating/mirroring manipulations. Allows back stitch to be displayed in color. Allows printing pages with a selectable number of overlap columns so that navigation among multiple pages is easer. Allows auto-outlining of blocks of contiguous cross stitch with back stitch.

CONS: Selection is limited to rectangular areas (no free-form lasso), oddly called "select all" on the edit menu. The selection area can be resized as needed, and does select back stitches along with block units. Back stitch cannot be displayed with voids between individual stitches or by symbols that otherwise indicate beginning and ending of individual units. Back stitches can't be right-click erased like cross stitches or erased using the eraser tool, they need to be individually clicked on and removed using a pop-up window.

KNITTING AND CROCHET SPECIFIC USE: Can be used for standard colorwork mappings, and true type fonts (including the same knitting font mentioned yesterday) can be substituted for the symbol set. Symbols can be displayed on a color background and more than one symbol can be assigned to the same color. You can also override the program to assign more than one color to the same symbol. Like all graphing solutions not specific to knitting, there is no artificial intelligenge programmed in that would prevent building impossible to knit stitch configurations (this is rare even in the knitting world). Could handle block unit diagrams for linear filet or multi-color tapestry crochet, but even if one had a pre-made font for crochet symbols, this isn't well suited for stitch graphing.

VERDICT: Handy for cross stitch but unremarkable for my intended uses. I don't like the interface with the separate floss management program, or the way selection is handled.

Previous posts in this series are here, here and here.

Technorati : counted-thread, crochet, cross-stitch, embroidery, knitting

In the middle of this charting program exploration I have had time to do a bit on my Clarke's Law sampler. But first to answer a question. Aileen read my last couple of posts and wondered what I would consider a complex double running stitch pattern. I answer with pix of my current piece, plus a snippet of this pattern done up using Pattern Maker Pro, from yesterday's review.

The nickel shows scale (click for better size shots of each). This strip is stitched using one strand of DMC floss, color #498 on 32 count linen (16 spi). Not particularly fine, but fine enough to show the patterns. The entire stitched area is about 15.75 inches across. From the top of the dark red twining strip to the bottom of the the D of ADVANCED is about 8.6 inches.

The top strip and the cross stitch words were all done using two floss strands. The outlining of the motif in the wide grape strip was done using two strands, and the squared background was done using one. (I've since found historical precedent for the squared background treatment).

All of the strips between the words will be relatively light in value, done in some combo of plain or voided double running stitch, but they won't be as wide as the grapes (well, maybe the last one will be just to balance). I won't do another dark band in long armed cross stitch (either foreground or voided) until after the entire quotation is done. I think it will take another three bands of text before the whole quotation is complete. Then I'll fill out the cloth with a mix of styles, perhaps doing some in two-tone. It's all fly by night here. I'll also figure out something to eke out the line ends where the lettering comes up short. I think that NOT centering each line of text works better for my purposes, especially because I'm breaking text between lines in an unorthodox manner.

Now back to writing up the results of my stitch charting program explorations. Which for my knitting and crocheting readers, will have value. Either of the programs I described yesterday can be used to graph out colorwork repeats, or linear crochet (filet and tapestry styles). Pattern Maker Professional also allows you to assign a True Type knitting font (like the one from Aire River) to the symbol palette, and then using the program in symbols-on-graph mode, to compose knitting charts. Here's a sample from PM showing a simple double 1x1 twist cable:

Where this falls apart though for knitting is if you try to display both colors and textures at the same time. The purl symbol will always be associated with one chosen color, the knit symbol with another. Although you can override the program and display more than one symbol per color, this program links symbol and color in a way that you can't have multiple colors per symbol. Numbering rows is also problematic.

As I write up the rest of the sampled programs I'll include their potential for use by knitters.

Technorati : counted-thread, crochet, embroidery, knitting

O.k. Let's start looking at the various available charting packages, two at a time. Again, I'm not doing a full-on evaluation and comparison of every available capability. In particular I'm ignoring the import/translate capability that people use to turn standard graphics and photos into cross stitch designs. I'm looking at just one aspect of these tools - charting complex double running stitch patterns.

KG Chart LE for Cross Stitch by iktsoft v 1.09.06

PROS: First off, you can't beat the price for this one. It's freeware, no registration required. It presents output in both graphed and stitch simulated formats, and includes a DMC-based thread palette. The program is optimized for cross stitch, but it does contain a back stitch option that allows drawing straight stitches. Standard ouput in in-program composition mode appears to max out at 73x73 per printed page but mesh size can be manipulated to present more units per page (reducing down as far as legibility will permit and then some. Prints to paper (and PDF if a PDF writer is installed) and exports to JPG, PNG, TIFF, TGA, PCX, JPG-2000 and as pixel only to make icons.

CONS: Backstitch doesn't present on screen in either mode as a series of countable, identifiable units. Yes, you can count the boxes over which the stitches travel, but that can be difficult, especially in low light or in dense patterns. While back stitch clusters can be selected and moved, inverting or mirroring them introduces errors - the replicated units don't look like the original (plus transformation). Multiple page works are presented without repeats/overlaps for cross page orientation. Zoom is constrained to 8 set levels.

VERDICT: An excellent value for the casual cross-stitch user who wants to create multicolor block unit patterns and who may want to use the occasional outline or straight stitch unit. Not very useful to anyone composing entirely in double running.

Pattern Maker for Cross Stitch (Professional) by HobbyWare, Version 4

PROS: Back stitch and straight stitch have symbol sets that can be manipulated to display individual stitches (see settings in screen shot below). Units can be selected as part of a rectangular block or "lassoed" as a non-standard shape (Pro version only) and the selected or pasted bit can be mirrored/flipped/rotated with no loss of relationship among constituent units. Stitches can be represented on screen in floss-strand equivalent thickness units, and different stitches can use different thicknesses of thread. The thickness backstitch and straight stitch symbol representations can exist independent of floss thickness Output can be printed to hard copy, and mesh size can be manipulated to present as many per page as are legible. A dizzying array of available colors from most major floss and thread makers is included.

CONS: To show stitches as individual units, back and straight stitches need to be drawn one at a time. You can't paint a line of them across multiple chart blocks and have each one neatly display as a separate unit. I can't figure out how to display both cross stitch and line stitch symbols on the same view (I'd like to be able to show the line stitch units from the left hand picture and the color x units from the center pix on the same final image. Freehand "lasso" selection and export to JPG, TFF and other standard graphics formats are only available on the Pro version (JPG export shown in right image). The Pro version costs $120. US. The four day trial is a pain (those of us with careers may not have four linear days in which to make an adequate assessment of both versions).

VERDICT: A possibility, but pricey. Need to test it on a really complex bit of charting.

I'd appreciate hearing from others who are using any of these (or other) dedicated charting programs or who may be bending general purpose graphics programs to this need. Love a program? Have problems with one? Have hints/clues/insight into features/limitations? I'm sure that others would love to know, too.

Technorati : counted-thread, embroidery

I've got enough patterns now on tap that I should start thinking of how the follow on to The New Carolingian Modelbook should be composed. It's been notional for a long time, with the tentative name of Ensamplio Atlantaea in honor of the other SCA region that took me in during my self-imposed absence from Carolingia.

Aside from having no publisher for this one, the biggest impediment is that I haven't figured out how best to graph the patterns for publication. At this moment, I'm still bound to paper and pencil. The graphs in TNCM were made using my late, lamented Macintosh computers (a II and a IIcx); and Aldus Superpaint drawing/drafting software. We shifted over to the PC world long ago in response to the strain of keeping two parallel suites of hardware and software functional, and in response to the PC-centric nature of employment in this house.

To date, I've not found Windows based general graphics software that does as good a job for charting as the vintage-1990 stuff I used for my first book.

I'm still looking. I have an interim solution using MS Visio. It's cumbersome, and time-consuming compared to my Superpaint method. In Superpaint I was able to establish a bitmap based graph as a separate field, then paint on lines set up with voids to correspond (in negative) with the dots of my background. So instead of painstakingly noting each individual stitch, I could run a length of stitches in one stroke and have those stitches neatly separated by voids to mark the length of each. For example, instead of a solid line four units long, I was able to paint a line that looked like it was broken up into four exact stitch length units, and do it on vertical, horizontal and diagonal planes. But in Visio I can't do that. The best I can do is create several blocks, each with a line segment corresponding to a stitch (one side, two parallel side, two sides meeting at one corner, one diagonal, two diagonals, one diagonal and one side, etc.); then stack and rotate my blocks into my finished pattern. Although this method works well enough for block unit patterns it is excruciatingly slow for line unit designs, and compared to my old method is too tedious to use for a whole book.

So it's back to exploring the world of commercially available charting software. There are several programs created expressly for needleworkers. However they're not aimed at my needs, they're all targeted at multicolor tapestry style cross stitchers, who are interested in styles that look more like needlepainting (creating multi-color pictures with stitch units corresponding roughly to the pixels in a raster display image) than in the linear and mostly monochrome styles I prefer.

To date I've looked at several programs including:

• Cross Stitch Professional, DPSoftware
• PC Stitch 9, M&R Technologies
• PatternMaker for Cross Stitch, HobbyWare
• Easy Cross, Fulford Software Solutions
• KG Chart LE for Cross Stitch, iktsoft

Mind you - remember I'm not looking at the features that most of the world wants in these cross stitch packages, notably the ability to turn JPGs or photos into cross stitch graphs, fidelity to a dizzying array of potential thread/color choices, or final output targeted at publishing complete patterns (with thread consumption and stitch symbol charts). I want something that will graph out double running stitch in a manner that enables stitchers to clearly discern the number of units in a long run, that allows easy selection/inversion/mirroring of pattern subunits or areas, and that otherwise eases production and use of of high complexity charts for double running or other similar linear stitching styles.

In mainstream graphics programs, I've been playing with Visio (described here) and Open Office Draw. I'm thinking of exploring the world of contemporary raster based Windows graphics programs next, but there has to be a better solution.

I'll post detailed observations of these programs this week. Stay tuned. And if you have any suggestions for other Windows-based software that might suit my purpose, please let me know.

Technorati : charting, embroidery

Wandering around looking for designs to add to my growing Clarke's Law sampler I stumbled across the needlework photo collection oft the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.

They have all sorts of fabulous things there including several items that may provide fodder for more bands on my current work.

But as I leafed through the collection one item in particular struck me. It's no secret that I've had a long association with the Society for Creative Anachronism. Among my long time and dear friends I count many members of Clan Oldcastle. Their device (shamelessly borrowed from their website) is:

I was amazed to find a historical embroidery oh-so similar to that device. The original is a fragment of a larger piece, done in drawn thread embroidery. The museum's accession info dates it to the late 16th/early 17th century, and gives it an Italian provenance. There's a companion piece, too, with a boat, some rather blocky lions.

But it was the castle that excited me. Here's a graph adapted from the museum artifact. Click on the thumbnail below to print a useful size.

I've made some minor changes but kept most of the imperfections of the original. My count is the same. The original looks a bit taller because its constituent units are not square. I've kept the not-quite symmetrical center tower, with the ornaments below the tower's embattled top offered up skew to the rest of the count. I've substituted stars for the crosses on the original flags, and added two more of them for good measure. (Estoiles being of special heraldic importance in conjunction with the Oldcastle edifice). I've left the one at the top of the left hand tower closer to the original in shape for those who prefer them accurate, but added a bit of twinkle to the others. I also took the liberty of mentally fixing a bit of wear on the original on the open portcullis. But the rest is spot on.

I'd love to see anything made up from this pattern. It would be especially nifty in any of a dozen styles of counted thread embroidery, in Lacis, Burrato, or Filet Crochet; or in knit or tapestry crochet. Other non-textile applications include mosaic work and marquetry. And if you do use this pattern, please consider visiting the Clan Oldcastle link above, and using the address there to make a donation to the American Diabetes Association.

This one is going into Ensamplio Atlantaea (my growing sequel to The New Carolingian Modelbook) for sure, but I share it here first.

Technorati : crochet, embroidery, knitting

More babbling on here today.

Faithful Reader TexAnne noted my mention yesterday of the "print to transparency" cheat for flipping charted patterns and added another that I had forgotten. Some printer drivers and photocopiers allow you to mirror-image their output. This option is most accessible in the Mac world. I remember my late, lamented Macs having a prominent command in the print dialog that allowed mirror-image printing, something that came in handy for printing out driving directions. I'd print them out in a large font in mirror image and lay them on the dashboard of my car. They were just visible as a right-side reflection on the windshield in front of me, and acted as a "heads-up" display.

Since TexAnne's note I've tinkered with the print dialogs of several PC world printers from HP and others, plus some large office photocopiers, and in most of them I've found a buried "Print Mirror Image" command. It's usually on an "Advanced Commands" tab that summarizes the state of all available printer options, but it's not often displayed as an easy to get to setting. But it's usually there somewhere. Scan to print or printing mirror image is a matter of finding and setting this hidden command. It's another useful way to use technology do do a mirror image chart flip.

Long Time Needlework Pal Kathryn reminded me of a story connected with the pattern I'm stitching now.

Back when I was working it voided on the Think sampler (lower band, shown flipped to the same orientation as the current work for comparison) I did lots of stitching (and knitting) in public. I worked in the Washington, D.C. area, and would take my projects outside at lunch and do them on park benches. I wrote to Kathryn that one day an elderly lady and her granddaughter approached me. They were of Hmong ancestry, a Southeast Asian people with a rich heritage of traditional counted cross stitch embroidery. With the granddaughter translating, the lady admired the work and asked if the pattern was traditional to my home village or family. I thanked them for their compliments and said that sadly, Brooklyn, NY did not have its own embroidery tradition, and that I'd found the pattern in a book. Kathryn says she's thought of this particular design as "the Brooklyn Pattern" ever since.

Technorati : counted-thread, embroidery

Not much progress for this week, but my time has not been my own.

This strip will continue marching on to the right, ending approximately at the green stripe. The horizontal blue stripe shows the approximate length of the graph for the repeat as it appears in my book. More on that below...

First, thank you to those who have left comments or sent notes of support. I know that lots of knitting readers are disappointed that I've been stitching lately. The huge drop off in visitors is a clue, but some of that is due to other factors. Ravelry for instance has just about killed all but the most popular independent knitting sites. So it goes.

Back to stitching. I've got three comments I'd like to address here. The first one is of interest to knitters. Faithful Reader TexAnne points out that long block unit repeats like the one I'm working now would adapt very nicely for double sided double knit scarves. An excellent observation, thank you! I add that anything worked in strips, like a large lap throw, an edging around a circularly knit skirt hem would also show this pattern (and its kin) quite well. I've done double knitting from these before. My oven head hat is knit up from an outtake that didn't make it into TNCM. You can see the negative/positive effect in the flipped up brim:

The chart for this hat appears in a follow-on post to the hat description. And, although not double sided, my Knot A Hat earwarmer band (which appears to have lost its picture link, although the chart link works) uses another historical knotwork strip for knitting:

Charts for both these repeats can be found by following the links above.

The second comment contains questions from Ellen R. She asks if I've ever worked these patterns before, and if they can be done in voided (Assisi) style. Here's an answer to both:

I did "Think" in 1989 and gave it to my husband to hang in his office. At the time he was working for a company that used the Scots lion as its logo. All of these patterns are in TNCM, and you can see the one I'm working on now across the bottom of the piece. It's upside down compared to the strip I'm working now, and is worked voided - with the background instead of the foreground stitched. The effect is a bit different. To my eye, it's more formal done this way. You can also see more of the repeat, although even this strip doesn't capture one full cycle. I've worked quite a few of these many times, although even I haven't done every pattern in TNCM (darn near close, though).

The last comment comes from Anne in Atenveldt, (an SCA region that includes parts of California and Utah). She's got a copy of my book and notes that the chart for the current strip shows the two interlaces and the segment between, but is much shorter than the length of the strip I'm working now (or for that matter, what's in the Think sampler). She wants to know how I do the additional segments.

I attempt to answer. The extra length is a mirror image of the section presented in the book. I work along as shown for the center point interlace and then the area between it and the next interlace as shown. On the far side of the second interlace, enough of the established pattern is shown to keep the stitcher on target, but after that point a bit of mental gymnastics is required. The stitcher has to continue on by inverting the graphed segment, mirror image style until the next mirror reflection point is reached. Again, I do show some of the area on both sides of that second bounce point to assist in navigation (and because in this case the interlaces are eccentric), but space prohibits showing a full cycle of the repeat.

Now this doesn't present a problem for me, but as you can see, I've been flogging myself with this sort of thing for a long time. And it's no shame to say that doing this in-mind reflection is difficult for you. It's a matter of wiring, and not everyone can do this with ease, no more than can everyone use a map or read music.

If chart flipping presents problems, I do know of one easy shortcut. Office supply stores still carry transparency sheets for overhead projectors. They're far less common in these days of Powerpoint and projectors, but many schools still use them so they're kept in stock. They come in several flavors for various types of photocopier or printer, so be sure you've got the right kind for your machine. (Hot process laser printers and photocopiers for example use a melt resistant plastic, and can be fouled by using something not designed for them). Copy your chart onto the transparent sheet. Put it in a page protector sleeve with a piece of plain white paper. Work off it as usual. When time comes to do the flip, turn it over inside the page protector. Instant mirror image. The only caveat is that on pattens with eccentric interlaces as the flip point (like the one I'm working now), you'll need to finish the interlace as charted before flipping to work the "in-between" portion.

In all, thanks to all who continue to read here. I do hope that my prattling on is useful to someone.

Technorati : counted-thread, embroidery, knitting

My own progress on the Clarke's Law sampler? A bit:

I've got the full segment from one bounce point (the column down the center of the trefoil interlace) to the other bounce point (the column down the center of the heavy stem interlace at the left). To be fair, this pattern's bounce points aren't exact. The interlaces themselves don't mirror perfectly left and right, but they're close if one makes allowances for the minor perturbations caused by the stem elements twisting and weaving over and under each other.

The rest of this strip is a (more or less) mirror image of what I've already stitched. As you can see, a full cycle of this repeat is very long, making it difficult to use for clothing, but ideal for household linens, curtains and the like.

I happen to like long repeats though. They're far more interesting to stitch than shorter ones. But I'm ready for the next panel. Got to finish out this one first, then it's back to the area below the lower band of the motto. I'm not sure what I'll put there, but it won't be long-armed cross stitch. Back to double running for the next panel. And it will probably be something from my design notebooks, rather than from TNCM. If so, I may consider posting it here. Stay tuned.

Technorati : counted-thread, embroidery

I really like double running stitch. The more complex the pattern, the better. Best of all are the amazingly detailed ones from the late 1500s/early to mid 1600s that are an explosion of vegetal forms. Some are inhabited by natural or mythical creatures. Here's an example:

StitchPuppy, a stitcher new to double running stitch (aka Spanish Stitch, Holbein Stitch) asked me about the logic and method of working double running. She's familiar with the working method - that the final effect of a solid line is achieved by two passes of the needle. On the first trip every other stitch unit is made, and on the return trip, the "in betweeners" are filled in:

(Pix above are from TNCM). She understands that with careful stitching, pieces in double running stitch can be made to look exactly the same on the back and the front - a plus for cuffs, collars, napkins and other applications where both sides of the work are likely to be seen. Where StitchPuppy has problems is on understanding how the method can be applied to complex patterns. She wants to know where I start when I tackle a complicated double running pattern, and whether or not I use a logic that helps keep me from running into dead ends, or that helps ensure that I do end up with a front/back reversible end product.

I'll try to answer.

First - not everything that's graphed out for double running can be done easily totally two-sided. Any design with an isolated bit of stitching that's not connected to the main pattern presents a problem. The small dolphin just below the mermaid in the stitched panel above is not connected to the rest of the design. It's a stand-alone element. To work this particular piece double sided, one would need to both begin and end off a separate strand of thread, just for that dolphin, or connect it on one or both sides to the main motif by one or more bridging stitches. Either way, the dolphin presents only a small problem. A larger one is posed by the mermaids' facial features. The eyes, nose and mouth are isolated from the main stitching areas, and are too small to be worked double sided and have enough area to finish off the ends.

The rest of the mermaid pattern can be worked double sided. There are no other logical impediments to completion. But how to work a complex design? Not hard. Any design without a discontinuity (like the orphan dolphin) can be envisioned as a single baseline, with detours to fill out the details or as a series of areas. Let's look at the phoenix I posted here a couple months ago:

(By the way - see that border? The octagonal interlaces are not connected to the little "Vs" filling out the border north and south. Lots of discontinuities there, and if you saw the back of that work you'd notice the bridging stitches I used to connect the design elements).

Back to the phoenix. It's pretty easy to identify a baseline around the phoenix's perimeter:

Sometimes I stitch this way - working a long every-other-stitch outline around the entire motif, then going back and doing the "detours" from that line. The advantage of working this way is that it's quick to block in the major design elements and to make sure they're properly aligned to each other before investing time and thread in filling in the rest of the design. The primary disadvantage is that it's hard to keep count during long straight runs. This is the working logic described in most blackwork books. This piece shows another example of the conventional baseline-first attack method:

You can see that I've outlined the blossom's main elements, and am now following along to work the individual petals.

However, I'm far more likely though to work my pattern in a more compartmentalized manner, either identifying the baseline but instead of following it and filling in detail later, starting on the baseline and taking every detour that presents itself. I'm using the baseline identified above, but instead of following around the bird, I immediately zip down to do that first little feather slice, returning to the baseline when that's done.

Worked this way, the design gets filled in early on, moving down the baseline and accomplishing the detours, and returning to the baseline after each one. All that's filled in on the second pass is the every-other-stitch segment of the baseline. .I find this method much easier to use for complex charts. It's quite easy to count little completed feather units in the bird's wingtips as I finish them. The flower strip above also shows the second method. I used it for the acorn sprigs. I stitched along the baseline, but every time I got to a branch, I finished the branch before returning to the baseline. The second pass is a straight run along the baseline itself.

Where to start? It depends on your work, the style of frame you are using, and your own preferences. In general it's better to minimize handling of the stitched area. Working from the center out is an accepted practice because it tends to keep sweaty hands away from finished stitching. But there are times when working that way isn't logical. I began the phoenix with its head, having matched the center of the pattern with the center of my to-be-embroidered area. The phoenix was also at the rough center of my finished project and was one of the early elements I completed on it. The strip below though was done bottom up. And the patterns I'm working on my current piece were begun at the cloth's center. It's all situational.

Where is the baseline in an all-over pattern? Wherever it's convenient. Here you can see that I'm using two baselines for the twisted frame element, and not worrying about completing the entire interlace in one gulp:

Is there any way to determine which method was used on historical pieces? Scholars may have made figured it out but I haven't run across word of it in popular stitching literature. The most reliable way to figure out historical stitching logic would be to pick apart an artifact. NOT something anyone sane would do.

One word of caution to those who want to work something two-sided. Resist the temptation to use veeerrryyyy loooonnnnnggggg strands of thread to minimize the number of ends. They WILL tangle and abrade as they are stitched. You will curse the day you started the project. (Trust me on this.) I do have a trick to share, though. If I use a very long strand I start from the middle of it. I pull the thread half-way through my work, then in an inconspicuous spot, I wind the excess thread around a straight pin. I stitch away with the free end until it's ready to be terminated. Then I go back and free the other end of the thread from the pin, and use that. Since I am stitching with a sane length each time I avoid tangles and thread wear, but I minimize total ends. Of course this presents its own logic problem - how do you know where to start the next mega-thread, but that's a conundrum for another day.

I hope that this is helpful to StitchPuppy and with luck others, too. If anyone has questions about identifying baselines or stitching logic in double running, please feel free to post them here.

Technorati : counted-thread, embroidery

I'm just a bit tired this morning, but I've made enough progress to post. I do prefer working long armed cross stitch to regular even-armed cross stitch, but I like neither one as much as double running:

Even so, I'm plugging along. I've got the bounce repeat center of my strip done (the trefoil interlace at the right), plus about half of the infilling between there and the complementing bounce repeat that will be further left. This particular pattern is a bit unusual because the two bounce repeats are not symmetrical. They're both different, which you will see as progress accrues. This is one of the things I like about Domenico da Sera, my favorite modelbook author. His repeats are more imaginative and less stiff than many others, with a vegetal formalism that I find most charming.

Technorati : counted-thread, embroidery

Here's what that little red scrap at the center top of the last post's picture has grown to:

To be fair, this all hasn't happened since the last post. I took that picture a couple of days before I wrote the blog entry.

This is another panel from TNCM, Plate 32:1. It's a long repeat with two reflection points. This scrap is the center of one of them. As you can see the pattern will mirror image left and right along the centermost line of the stem interlace. There's another totally different bounce line that will just make it onto this cloth, but the repeat on the other side of it won't be full cycle. I really like these extra long repeats, but they're hard to use for most modern work unless one is doing a whole length of bed linen, or wishes to stitch at gauges much smaller than most modern embroiderers attempt. The longitudinal repeat for this pattern for example is 257 units. On 14 count Aida for example, 257 stitches works out to a strip that's 18 inches long, and that's just for one repeat. I'm not much better here, stitching as I am on quite coarse 36 count linen. My repeat will be about 14 inches across, just a little bit narrower than the width of my stitched area. For the record though, this isn't the longest repeat I've got in TNCM. That one is 308 units, and is the one I want to use on my notional library curtains. Someday.

In other embroidery related news, I had forgotten that I had given my pals at the Buttery permission to post my original line unit pattern named after their house. Please respect my copyright though and don't repost the page.

Also the pattern in TNCM and available at the Buttery link above shows only a bit more than half of the fillings I worked in the swatch above. The new ones I doodled up specifically for the Do Right sampler.

Technorati : counted-thread, embroidery

At the risk of further boring what few readers remain here, I present more progress on my Clarke's Law sampler:

I've finished off the two bands of lettering north and south of my first voided strip, and have started on the foreground stitched panel that will be the one at the top of the finished piece. I'm using yet another pattern from TNCM. This one is on Plate 31:1, and reproduces a pattern by my favorite modelbook publisher - Domenico da Sera, from a work of his dating to 1546. The original is shown in a manner that implies working the background, which I replicated in my book, but for this piece I'm stitching the foreground instead. I'm also using long armed cross stitch for this panel, not plain old cross stitch. I'm doing it the easy way though. Instead of bending the path of the stitching up to follow the course of the diagonal stems, I'm just marching across in horizontal bands, worked back and forth with each row alternating direction. This emphasizes the plaited texture more than does working all of the rows of stitching in the same direction, a detail that I like but some others don't. Some folk prefer a smoother top-leg-uniform result, and use a different stitching logic altogether. Also nice, but I prefer the complexity of the herringbone family long-arm cross stitch more.

The current band should take me about two or three weeks to finish - work deadlines willing. Then I'll begin the band below the *LY ADVANCED TE* segment. That one will be another line unit pattern rather than a solid block unit pattern, quite probably one of the ones I've been storing up post-TNCM against my mythical second book.

Technorati : counted-thread, cross-stitch, embroidery

It must be exquisitely boring especially for knitters to tune in here and see slug like incremental progress on a non-knitting project. Even so, I ooze along:

I also note that this style of embroidery on the count doesn't seem to be very popular right now, at least not among web-connected stitchers. I've been web-walking for a couple of days now, looking for inspiration to share, but found very little contemporary work, although I did find the historical artifact photos cited in my last post. I guess I'm just programmed to be doing something different - knitting before it became a fad, crocheting when everyone else was doing needlepoint, and am now off stitching obscure styles.

There are a few folk connected with the SCA with work or research that piques my interest and who readers here may find inspiring, too:

• Extreme Costuming's gallery of impressive stitched pieces. Lovely, with lots of infillings or background voiding, but not exactly what I was looking for.
• ElizabethanGeek's blackworked smock is also quite charming.
• Here's a historical example (rather than a contemporary work) from an SCA affiliated researcher - a pair of impressive Italian woman's breeches (an undergarment, really) from the mid to late 1600s, accompanied by a chart for the stitching pattern used. (Other items at the Realm of Venus website are very interesting, too - especially the embroidered shifts).

If you know of any pix of long-repeat works on the count, either voided (background filled) or stitched foreground, in monochrome or mixed colors - based on historical patterns or original - please feel free to post the links to them here in the comments so we can all oooh and aaaahhh.

Finally, if there's enough interest, I'll share some graphs of future pattern panels here, that aren't available in TNCM.

Technorati : counted-thread, embroidery

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!)

Technorati : counted-thread embroidery blackwork

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.

Technorati : counted-thread, embroidery

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.

Technorati : counted-thread, embroidery

"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...

Technorati : counted-thread, embroidery

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!

Technorati : COUNTED-THREAD, CROSS-STITCH, EMBROIDERY, cookies

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.

Technorati : counted-thread, cross-stitch, embroidery

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.

Technorati : counted-thread, cross-stitch, embroidery

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.

Technorati : counted-thread, embroidery

It's been a month that was here at String, with near total immersion in work-related deadlines. Therefore progress on anything else has been minimal. But minimal doesn't mean "none." I'm on my last letter of Don't Panic:

I'm not sure yet how I'll finish out the piece. Whether I'll add some spindly double running stitch curlicues to square out the sentiment, to coordinate with the ones built into the closed letters of this font, or if I'll do something else. But whatever it is, this small doodle is almost done.

The remainder of my holiday weekend will be spent cooking our spin on the usual holiday fare (turkey with chestnut/prosciutto/leek/mushroom stuffing; Chinese broccoli with garlic, glazed sweet potatoes; pumpkin chiffon pie; black bottom pecan pie); enjoying the company of Elder Daughter, home from college and flush with her new semi-independence; finishing off both samplers for hanging; and not being at work.

Things I am thankful for: good children, a husband who likes to cook, that deadlines do end. All the best to the few who follow here, may your holiday season be warm and happy.

Technorati : counted-thread, embroidery, sampler

Thanks for all the comments and suggestions on my last post! I've decided to do two pieces: my original thought of "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," and another smaller bit of stitching on Kate's suggestion of "Don't Panic." There being only limited time of late due to all consuming work related deadlines, I started on the smaller piece first but I haven't gotten very far:

I'm using an alphabet I found here on Ramzi's Patternmaker Charts blog. (Thank you, Patternmaker Charts community!) It's from an antique Sajou booklet. I'm not sure of the original date of publication, but by the look of the thing, it's most probably pre-1900.

I picked this particular alphabet out of the dozens on the Patternmaker Charts site because the little diamond lozenges in the verticals of each letter have a nervous, throbbing look, perfect for this piece. The "Panic" part will be on the next line, offset by a half or one and a half letters from the row above, just to maintain that feeling of instability. I'm not sure what else will go on this cloth besides my "Don't Panic." I started my stitching in the upper left of the cloth rather than in the center. I will either keep the piece very small, with any fill-in patterns in line with the words, or I will add some smaller patterns to complete a rectangle, with the motto occupying the upper left third of the piece. Like usual, I'll decide on the fly.

On the Do Right sampler, to answer Charlotte, I can give two answers on why the top line is so narrow. The face saving one is that my plans to finish this out include adding either hanging tabs or a hanging channel of a coordinating color fabric across the top of the entire piece, and the width of that hanging channel will finish out the visual balance of the work as a whole.

The real reason is that when I started I had no idea what was going to happen. I should have worked the first bit I did across the entire top of the cloth. I made my mistake when I finished out the right hand voided panel, taking it to the top instead of ending it in time to go back and complete the ribbon band east-west. Once I had the voided panel in place, and the sampler as a whole was taking on a distinctly balanced though not entirely symmetrical cant, I had to finish the many-motif scrollwork on the left hand side to the same length. And once that was done, I had a bottom-heavy piece with inadequate room at the top of the cloth to work a border wide enough to balance the one at the bottom. I considered a narrow but denser, darker band, but that would have looked out of place. So I opted for something narrow and simple, with a lot of movement back and forth, figuring that I'd make up the missing width in mounting.

Yes, I could have avoided this by carefully drafting out what I was going to do before hand, then stitching up the completed design to specifications. But what's the fun in that? I know myself and the way I work. Execution of the stitching is fun, but solving problems on the fly is the real joy. Figuring out all of the sticky bits first would leave me with a huge pile of half-finished pieces, many more than I have today. So instead I leap off my needlework cliffs, at risk of dashing to pieces on the rocks below, but enjoying every minute of each flight.

Technorati : counted-thread, cross-stitch, embroidery

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.

Technorati : counted-thread, embroidery

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!

Technorati : counted-thread, embroidery

Very slow progress on Do Right. A bison-stampede of work related obligations has me tooling flat out, days, evenings, nights and weekends. But here and there I grab a bit of stress abatement, and stitch.

I've decided to play with the Buttery pattern. I've used most of the flower/filling designs that were published in TNCM, plus several from my old notes that didn't fit on the final as-published pattern. Now I'm off and running, drafting out more. Since I've got no obligation to stick to forms and flowers familiar to the Tudor period (or standard but imaginary geometrics), I'm playing. Some are sort of recognizable, some are just flights of fancy:

I think Elder Daughter will be especially pleased by that one truly incongruous motif.

Here's a (very blurry) shot of the whole piece, so you can see the proportions and coloring of this strip in relation to what's there:

This strip will continue straight up to the top of the currently stitched area, which means **LOTS** more flower/fruit fills.

My only moment of pause right now is that I'm thinking of picking out the acorn spot in the current strip. When I first drafted it up I committed an awkwardness. The vertical acorn has no point on it. It annoys me, and I may restitch that unit one block down and make some other adjustments so that the up-down acorn is outfitted the same as its brothers.

Aside: For those who enjoy historical patterns, check out this collection of vintage European embroidery guides. Most are graphed alphabet collections, but there are some other gems in and among the lettering - even some charts suitable for double running stitch. I'm considering a couple of the latter for my final lacy feel narrow strip across the top of this piece. And the alphabets are great. I'm thinking of doing up an entire cloth of different forms of just one letter, as the ultimate initial-laden gift sampler.

Technorati : counted-thread, embroidery

I've finished the right hand strip on my Do-Right sampler, plotted a strip of equivalent width on the right side, and settled on a pattern. I'm using another from TNCM - the Buttery pattern (Plate 59:1). This one is original, inspired in equal parts by historical motifs, a happy communal house where many friends have lived over the years, and boredom.

The historical part is the twisted framing mechanism, with each diamond shape hole holding a different flower or fruit motif. Many of the motifs are very traditional, too. The completed pomegranate in the center of the worked strip, for example is a very common motif, and in execution would be easily accepted as an authentic motif. What's not historical is that there are no exact sources for anything in the Buttery design, not even the exact structure of my twist frame, or that pomegranate. There are historical pieces that are close, but nothing is spot on (the large number of different fills in a counted piece is for example, something for which I've never found precedent). But the overall effect isn't wildly out of phase with expected period aesthetics. I wouldn't advocate using it on a historical re-creation, but for someone with the freedom to play in the style without accountability to authenticity hawks - why not?

The Buttery part is the home of many friends over the years. Presided over by Marion and Mark, it's been the base of an ever changing constellation of people, each very different yet all living in harmony. Sort of like the collection of motifs in this piece - each unique, but each complementing the rest and contributing to the whole.

And for boredom, this is a function of having done lots of stitch by stitch repros of historical patterns. No matter how long the repeat, eventually "Are we there yet?" syndrome sets in. This piece was a think-exercise, to see how many different individual and distinct fruit or flower motifs I could come up with, given the established space constraint of the frame. The version published in TNCM has 18 different motifs. I've got a few more that didn't make it onto that page. Maybe I'll use them on this strip, or maybe I'll doodle up some others. We'll see as I begin to get to the point where I need to recycle previously stitched ones.

For the record this is the third thing I've stitched using Buttery. One was a book cover in black silk on 40-count linen, edged with black silk cording. The entire surface of the book cover was done in this pattern. I worked it around 1994/1995, around the time we moved back to the Boston area. I gave away the book cover around a blank book, as the first prize in a storytelling competition, aptly won by Richard, who coincidentally happened to be an on-again/off-again Buttery resident. I also did a small sweet bag in this pattern (sort of an Elizabethan gift bag, just big enough to hold a handkerchief or small treat). In that case I did a strip of the framing with a selected subset of the fillings at the top and bottom of the bag, leaving the center area unworked. The sweet bag was monochrome brick red stitching on a cream linen background. I forget the count, but it was also relatively fine, small enough for five motifs to march across the thing, and the bag was less than a fist wide. The sweet bag was given away as a gift, long before I began photographing my work.

Technorati : counted-thread, embroidery

Slow going, not because working voided strips this way is slow, but because of work related time constraints. Still, I'm inching up on completion of the most current strip in Do Right:

Next is to pick out what will happen on the left, to balance the current strip, do a small bit, then extend the bottom strip across to cover the same width. I'm still not sure what exactly will happen there. Stay tuned.

And for long time readers here, I present the transformation:

Was: Is Now:

Over the past five years we've replaced the leaky roof and gutters, and the rubble driveway; removed the sheep-dip useless fence leading to the front door and the big spruce tree that was leaning on the house. We also had several near dead dangerous trees in the backyard removed, pruning the rest for the first time in three decades. We've pulled down the stucco-eating ivy and repaired the stucco, then had the house painted with a stucco-preserving finish to match the original color. We had the trim pointed in red and cream to emphasize the original lines of the house, and refinished the front door, painting it a matching red. We pulled out a flock of overgrown bushes, replanting new ones, flowers, lawn, or giant grass. We moved the mailbox and added house numbers, sawed off the gratuitous signpost (no sign, just a post); and restored the front porch.

Other improvements unseen in this shot include replacing the rotted out garage door, redoing the upstairs bath so that showers are now possible, replacing all of the wiring in the house (good-by knob and tube!), replacing the plumbing under the first floor bath so it too is now usable, insulating the attic and crawl spaces, installing attic vent fans, replacing the kitchen appliances with ones that work, replacing the furnace burner, adding a hot water boost pump so that the second floor receives heat in the winter, and relining the chimneys. All in all, the house no longer looks like some place the crazy lady up the street lives, although in fact the crazy lady up the street does live here. :)

Now FINALLY we're up to the small aesthetic things - like painting and papering. And contemplating future upgrades, like restoring the front porch - taking those odd standard 1960s windows and shingle surrounds out and putting in some sort of modern non-insulated arched windows that fill the entire space, along with a period-appropriate front door. Or redoing the quasi-finished basement. But none of that until our financial capacitors recharge.

Technorati : counted-thread, embroidery

More progress on my Do Right sampler.

It's going slow due to mounting work-related deadline pressure, but it's moving along. Here's a close-up of the latest strip:

Half cross stitch doesn't provide anywhere near as dense a background cover as regular cross stitch or long-armed cross stitch, but it does give an interesting twill-like effect to the ground. Plus it uses far less thread.

And in the realm of improvised tools and gadgets - today's is the lowly thread reel. Flower Thread comes in pull skeins. Or I should say - alleged pull skeins. They are not as well behaved as standard 6-ply floss skeins. Because I hate putting my work down to wrestle with my materials I tend to wind each skein of the Flower Thread as I use it. This is a very traditional thing to do. Little flat thread winders of various configurations were common work basket items prior to the introduction of spooled and reeled threads. You can still buy bone, mother of pearl and wooden thread winders. They're a wonderful addition to one's general stitching ambiance, especially for those who pursue needle arts in costumed settings.

But me - I'm cheap. Very cheap. I also am mostly retired from SCA events these days, and no longer need to keep up appearances. I make my own thread reels from business cards. Business cards are a renewable resource for me, new ones cross my desk almost daily. Once I transcribe the giver's information into an electronic storage, I have little need for the small cardboard rectangles. But they are made from thicker, higher quality paperboard than index cards, manila folders, magazine inserts or other similar items. As a result business cards make sturdier, more durable thread reels. And did I mention that they're free?

One business card yields two thread reels. As you can see from my samples, precision snipping is optional.

Technorati : counted-thread, embroidery

During the feral burrowing to exhume some of my long put by stitching supplies, I came upon a few never-finished pieces of embroidery. For fun I share them here:

This piece is a true sampler. It's a doodle cloth I use to try out some techniques and patterns prior to full implementation on a larger piece. It's done in black linen thread on a rather coarse piece of not-quite-even weave imitation linen - about 26 tpi - 13 stitches per inch.

All of these are patterns in TNCM. The sharp eyed will recognize the same Dragon/George panel that made it onto my filet crochet door curtain, shown partially completed here:

The original modelbook page is here.

I'm especially fond of the background fill vine and bud pattern, second from the bottom on the left. That's a very small slice of the one I want to use on my library curtains, which I'm inching up on actually starting, once I find the right linen for the work.

I never intended that this cloth be shown in finished form. It lived in my work bag, pulled out and doodled on when I felt like playing with it.

This one on the other hand did start out as an Actual Project. It was going to be a challah cloth or matzo cover for a couple of pals, intended as a wedding gift back in the days when I had more time than money for gift giving Sadly, the engagement only lasted for about as long as the stitching shown here. I can't say I'm superstitious, but after my friends' break-up I never had the energy to finish off the project for another recipient.

This piece is worked in DMC embroidery floss on Hardanger cloth (roughly 22 units per inch). It's in cross stitch - 22 per inch, inspired by (but not a duplicate of) a Siebmacher modelbook pattern. The edging is the closest to the original, but it's not exact. The field pattern in the inner ring is my own elaboration. The corners and mitering too are my own invention. Mitering patterns for knitted lace is different in execution but very similar in theory, so doing them isn't a wild leap into the unknown for me.

This close-up shows the pattern and corner slightly better (a rare un-blurry photo for String):

Three of the edge motifs takes up a bit under two inches, and I finished the edging for one 13 inch long side, but was only about 70% done with the inner loop for that side. I used three colors - black, red and yellow. The small white accents are bits of the ground cloth showing through. The idea was to run the border and the inner motif ring all the way around the square, leaving the center bare, with the intention of stitching something relevant to the couple there - a Hebrew verse, or perhaps the date of their wedding. But it was not to be.

Technorati : counted-thread, embroidery

Yes, in addition to finishing up the phoenix graph I posted yesterday, I was able to make a bit of progress on the sampler over the weekend. Not much because work obligations intruded, but some.

In this typically blurry String photo you see the center strip, with the handkerchief panel stretching across a wider area. I've started filling in another strip panel on the right. Since I'm winging this rather than planning it out fully prior to execution, I wanted to begin that panel so I would know how wide to make the bottom strip. There will be another two-tone panel of some type (pattern as yet unspecified) at the left hand edge. I'm going to try to make these both the height of the entire sampler, minus perhaps another as-yet unidentified narrow strip across the entire top.

This new pattern, like the majority of the others is pictured in The New Carolingian Modelbook. This one is the other pattern on Plate 63 (63:1). The ribbon bit at the center top is on that same page. This one I graphed up from a photo of an artifact appearing in Lanto Synge's Royal School of Needlework Book of Needlework and Embroidery. It's a curious piece, stitched without background in blue silk. The curious part is the reverse gives clues that it might have been done in something like reverse chain stitch, with the chains on the back, showing a top appearance similar to double running. I'm working it in plain old double running, and have chosen to accent the pattern with a background of half-cross stitch. I'm working the background with verticals and horizontals on the reverse rather than reversibly as true double running because I'm short on the gray thread, and want to economize as much as possible. Better pix on this panel soon, I promise.

Technorati : embroidery counted-thread

As promised, here's the chart for my double running stitch phoenix

Click on the chart thumbnail to see a larger version. Apologies to those with slow connections - it's big.

LATE ADDITION: For those of you who would like a larger, clearer version of the chart, I post this PDF.

Enjoy!

Technorati : embroidery chart

The latest addition to the Do Right sampler is this strip, which will run across the bottom of the piece.

The few who might be familiar with this type of work will spot it right away as being a Famous Design. The original is in the Victoria and Albert Museum - it's a handkerchief, dated to between 1580-1600. Among embroiderers it's a near iconic artifact, and has been pictured in many books including Digby's Elizabethan Embroidery, and King and Levy's The Victoria and Albert Museum's Textile Collection: Embroidery in Britain from 1200 to 1750. I've got a graph of the design noodled out from artifact photos in TNCM (Plate 64:1), and there's a simplified version of a very similar pattern in Pesel's Historical Designs for Embroidery, Linen and Cross Stitch, although Pesel cites her source as a sampler dated 1658. (Perhaps there's a point of origin for this design in a now lost pattern book or broadside that both historical stitchers used).

In any case, you can see one whole repeat here, and I've started on the second. In complex double running stitch designs of this type I proceed in one of two ways, both of which can be seen on this piece. The first is the baseline method. I identify a baseline, then if I encounter a branch or digression along that baseline I follow it to completion. If you look at the narrow strip acorn and leaf border at the top of this segment along the left hand side you'll see that I've been working in that manner. The baseline here is very easy to see - it's the single solid line at the base of the acorn/leaf units. I've traveled along it, then up into each sprig as I encountered it, completing the sprig and returning to the baseline. When I work on that strip again I'll start on the baseline and fill in the remaining few double running stitches before continuing on to work more sprigs.

The second method works better on more complex designs. While I could establish a baseline and then fill in every deviation from it on the honeysuckle and vine center motif, if I were to do that and then discover that my stitching was out of alignment, there would be much swearing and stomping around, not to mention endless hours of meticulously picking out previously finished areas. So for these bits, I generally try to rough in major areas with a line of stitching that establishes their boundaries. Then I go back and fill in the detail. You can see this on the second flower. I've done a jog around the outside edge of the flower, confirming its position relative to previously stitched bits. Once I'm satisfied that there are no mistakes in the placement of the flower, I go back and do the more detailed infilling bits. Here's another detail of the working method, from a piece previously featured here:

As I've said before, while I dearly enjoy knitting, it's a vacation from my first love - embroidery.

Technorati : embroidery

Knots are now finished.

It's time for the larger framing strips across the bottom and on the left and right. I'm not sure what I will do. Left and right should balance in density and I'll probably also work them them in the same color, but I haven't decided on the actual designs yet. Ditto for the bottom. Lighter than the knots, perhaps as dense as the ribbon strip at the top. In terms of space, I've got free ground at the bottom that's about 80% as wide as the ribbon strip, and space left and right that's about 50% as wide as that strip. The bottom strip will be the same olive green as the top unit.

I'll start by thumbing through TNCM and see if anything hits me. I'll also look through my earlier hand-drawn booklet. Most of the patterns in there made it into TNCM, but there were several that on further investigation turned out to be too late, or of uncertain provenance. Since provenance doesn't matter on this work, I may use one or more of them.

Or maybe I'll finally graph up the indistinct large band that's just above the red strawberries on Jane Bostocke's sampler from 1598.

It's also time to start contemplating finishing. In all probability I'll back this with another fabric for stability, maybe with some kind of thin interfacing, then do the bars-top-and-bottom-with-a-hanging-string treatment. One small sticky hook should do for actual suspension on the wall. Framing would be too elaborate for dorm use. It can always be remounted down the road.

Technorati : embroidery

To follow up yesterday's post and to answer the question "What do you mean by deconstructing and reassembling the knot motif?" I present this:

Click on the image above to get the pattern JPG at a useful size.

The original motif is presented in my book in negative, as it is in the 16th century originals - with the background blocks filled in and the foreground left plain, but this way works, too. They had to do this by hand-carving a wood block, the fewer flimsy little lines interrupting clear areas, the better. I have the luxury of Visio.

The strip at the top is representative of how the pattern was shown in those originals - a three unit knot with a one unit spacer. But that design is full of possibilities. The center interlaces, end units and terminal twists can be recombined into an infinite array of patterns. I present some that I just doodled up tonight.

So look at those old pattern books, historical or contemporary with a new eye. See how the pattern repeats - where it can be broken apart and recombined. You may end up with something entirely new and pleasing, perfect for your next project.

Technorati : crochet, embroidery, knitting

Invaders having been secured, I add another panel pattern. This time it's a nifty knotwork interlace, also graphed out in TNCM, on plate 31:1.

What exactly it looks like will become clearer as I move along. This block unit pattern appears in several early books. I spotted it in a Ensamplario di Lavori published by Vavassore in 1532, and also in a different modelbook entitled Convivio Delle Belle Donne, also dated between 1530 and 1540. If you look at enough of these early pattern books, you can see all sorts of reprintings, adaptations, regraphings, possible block trading, and very probable plagiarism as the various semi-itinerant publishers interacted.

If you consider that each print block was very laborious to create (these patterns not being amenable to moveable type), the habit of publishers of re-issuing some of their old pages in new collections is easy to understand. Trading is, too. I can imagine two publishers based in different areas, but who traveled around a circuit (or who had agents who did) exchanging blocks so that each would have new material at minimal additional invested effort.

The "borrowing" is also easy to conceptualize. These pattern books were very popular, and the designs in them were highly sought after. It's quicker to copy a design from a competitor's book than it is to come up with a totally new one yourself, especially in the days when pre-printed graph paper was a rarity (some of the pattern books are mostly just that - blank graph paper, with a few pages of pre-done patterns as intro.)

How to identify copying versus trading? You have to get up close and personal with the patterns. As I regraphed them for TNCM I noticed small variants among different versions of the same basic design. Peter Quentel's two-birds panel from 1527, reproduced on this page from blog Feeling Stitchy is well represented, and exists in many very close variants. There are very slight differences among them in the layout of the flowers, the position of the birds' feet. This same pattern persisted in middle European folk embroidery, gaining and losing detail over time as it was copied and recopied, in sort of a multi-generational needlework game of telephone.

This particular knotwork pattern has always been a favorite of mine because of its versatility. You see a three-loop knot at the center of the piece I'm stitching now. The knot itself is easy to deconstruct and reassemble. I'll be using the three-loop center, with a one-loop iteration on either side. Then depending on spacing and relative room, I'll either do another two or three-loop knot followed by a one or more little terminal center loops to finish.

And finally to answer the person who wrote to say that they liked my stitching but found it woefully modern, and thought TNCM was "contaminated" by my including my own designs - I have to respectfully disagree. I took extreme pains to carefully document every design in the book. The ones that were "inspired by" rather than transcribed bear that notation. Original work is always marked and is less than 10% of the book. Most of it is there to fill out pages so that no space would be wasted.

[controversial thought warning for the following]

I do not believe that producing a slavish copy of a period original is the highest form of expression or understanding. Yes, it does demonstrate extreme mastery, perseverance, and skill that deserve praise. But to create a totally new piece that were it compared side by side with its historical siblings, and see that piece as an absolute exemplar of the type - to the point that were it transported back to the point of origin, it would be unquestioningly accepted - that's mastery of the inner form. It's parallel to martial arts practice. Knowing the katas and training forms perfectly is a matter of high skill, but that skill might not equate to being able to abstract the lessons in those forms and apply them in an un-choreographed street fight.

I do not pretend that my doodle samplers and contemporary stitching approach the new-artifact level (with the possible exception of my forever coif). But I do think that the few original designs presented in TNCM do come close, and the reaction some readers that they feel "cheated" proves my point. If those designs were somehow substandard and not tempting, people would not be expressing frustration. Do those looking for meticulous documentation to substantiate and produce a pedigreed work for an SCA Arts and Sciences competition want use my original designs? Some might, from an aesthetic standpoint, but they wouldn't do so because those patterns can't be sourced back to a specific stitch-for-stitch or published historical original. But that's why they're marked as mine.

Technorati : Embroidery

This is going to be a STRANGE sampler, to be sure!

(I do have to pick out and redo the mother ship and invaders on the right side, they're one unit too far from the center block). Not sure what goes underneath the phoenix. Probably something in brick or chocolate cross stitch to maintain balance, then on to fill up the rest of the cloth with various double running patterns. Maybe some more heraldic/mythical beasties in the corners... We'll see.

Technorati : embroidery

Invaders!

I never claimed this was going to be a period piece, or a compendium of solely historical stitching. And what better thing to give a gamrchx than something ornamented with sprites?

In other news, the best season of all is creeping up on New England. The tops of the sugar maples are beginning to go red; the air is crisp and clear; kids are headed back to school; and lobster is reasonably priced. What's not to like?

Technorati : embroidery, stitching

Not much to report here on the knitting end, but I have been stitching. The Do Right sampler for Eldest Daughter continues to grow:

In answer to a question, I'm probably going to use the two stitch styles shown (cross stitch and Spanish Stitch - aka double running, Holbein stitch) and possibly long-armed cross stitch. The jury is still out on the latter because it's dense and heavy compared to these lighter styles, and I don't want to overwhelm the piece with it. No, this isn't all that will be, there's ample blank cloth surrounding this center part that I am going to defile with additional stitching.

The large green ribbon motif and the gray frame around the phoenix can both be found in my book The New Carolingian Modelbook. The ribbon is shown in plate 63:2, adapted from an early Spanish sampler; and the frame is adapted from the strip motif in plate 52:3 (it's original, but inspired by historical motifs). The phoenix is new. I drew it up this week past just for this project. If there's interest, I can post it here, along with another Visio stencil optimized for the production of line unit patterns.

Technorati : embroidery

Knitpals please bear with me, I'm taking an excursion into counted embroidery.

As reported here before, Eldest Daughter has gone off to college. Nagging has gotten considerably harder to do, being parceled out via eMail and texting, so I decided to invest all that correctional energy in a more tangible reminder. I'm doing a stitched piece for her wall. I'm still wrestling with this camera, but you can see the beginnings here:

I'm working on 32 count linen, using discontinued DMC Flower Thread (I've got a stitching stash, too). The mark of the tambour frame is very evident, although I took it off so you could see the words. The astute may note that the alphabets used for the first and second lines are slightly different, with the top line being compressed by one unit. That and the non-standard, non-lockstep alignment of the words (including the g encroaching on the N) were done on purpose, to give the thing a less rigid look.

This piece will be multicolor, but in subdued ashen hues, and aside from the motto, mostly in linear stitching like double running. If you've got a copy of my book The New Carolingian Modelbook, you may recognize the snippet above "Right" as being from Plate 63:2, a meandering repeat I charted from a late 16th/early 17th century Spanish sampler photographed in Drysdale's Art of Blackwork Embroidery.

I'm not sure what I will do to fill the cloth. This like so many other of my embroidery pieces is going to grow through accretion rather than planning, but I will not be constraining myself to historical motifs only. Expect some surprises as I find them.

What will target Elder Daughter think of all this? Probably that she's being nagged in front of the whole Internet...

Technorati : Embroidery, knitting

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I've stumbled across a box of unfinished stitching, packed away in a prior move and long unseen.

This piece I can date pretty accurately. I was working on it just before I joined the SCA, in January-February 1975. The counted thread patterns are from a mix of historical sources, mostly pix of antique band samplers, and illustrations in embroidery books. The composition was (of course) my own. The bottom panel was going to sport an Adam holding the apple, and an Eve rolling her eyes. They were going to be surrounded by an assortment of standard fauna and flora. I had just started the snake on the tree when I put my needle down. The brown thread for the tree's trunk is coiled on top of the snake in the center.

My color choices on "Eve Was Framed" weren't very good. I was working from a student's stash of small quantities of floss, and never actually sat down and planned layout or color coordination. "Clashing haphazard" however was a common color set of the time. The faux linen butler's tray cloth I was using as a ground was even weave, but rather coarse, about 24 threads per inch (12 stitches per inch). I stopped working on it when I realized that although many of the patterns had precedents, the work as a whole was a sad mish-mash. I wanted to spend my time doing more historically accurate pieces. So I shelved my subversive sentiment, rather than finishing it to hang on my dorm wall.

I will say that many of these styles and patterns are better known today than they were when I was doing this piece. You can buy pattern leaflets, design books and even full commercial kits today to make reproductions of historical band samplers, and patterns from period pieces have informed the work of many contemporary stitching designers. But back in '75 there were very few people doing this type of stitching. And certainly even fewer using it to make trite political statements.

Technorati : embroidery

Another week of low inspiration here. I'm half way through the brown/tan/ecru entrelac socks. They're working up nicely, but as I mentioned last week, the yarn has had lots of knots in it, one or two interrupting the color progression, but most clearly knotted before the stuff was dyed. I'm not pleased and will consider greatly before buying Berroco Sock again, even though I like its other properties that are so similar to more expensive European label sock yarns.

I've also picked up my olive tablecloth again. Rounds are still interminable, and nothing much interesting has happened since I put it aside last year. I'm still in the spiderweb section, with at least eight more rows of that two-row pattern before I have enough width to consider moving on to the final design element. I share my last olive picture again. The piece now looks the same, except the spiderweb around the outer edge is now about twice as deep.

And finally, in yet another traditional blurry String picture, I show off a partially completed embroidery. This one is a true sampler - a piece that exits only to try out random counted patterns. I had no particular goal in stitching it, it wasn't intended to be displayed and remained a work in progress. The super long repeat in maroon shown separately is one of the design candidates for my curtain project mentioned here before. That work is still in the larval planning stages, mostly pending finding an affordable close to even weave linen or linen look alike.

Gauge on this sampler is approximately 15 stitches per inch on 30 count linen, in DMC Danish Flower Thread. Stitches used are cross stitch (green at top left), double running (grapes down center of piece and the two-tone framed flowers bit), and long-armed cross stitch (the extra long repeat). At this gauge the red repeat is just under 3.25 inches wide. To make my curtains less of an aeons project and to achieve the heft I want for my curtains, I'm looking for a plain weave even weave of about 12-15 threads per inch. That would make my stitched ribbon about six inches wide. Considering that I would need four panels to cover my windows, each 71 inches long x 35 inches wide, the six inch strip width would be in proportion to the rest of the project. But I haven't found the linen yet, and certainly haven't had the time to start, so my embroidered curtains remain a mental exercise for now.

Graphs for all of the patterns on this piece except for the small bans of field filling squaring out the area immediately to the left of the frame flowers can be found in The New Carolingian Modelbook. DMC DFT is now discontinued, which is one of the reasons why my play sampler ended up in my Chest of Knitting Horrors(tm).

Technorati : embroidery, knitting

More nostalgia. I was digging through an old trunk the other day and I came upon a stack of my old embroideries, mostly unfinished. The majority of my finished work got given away as gifts. The completed pieces I still have I've posted here on String already, so this stash is in fact my "Chest of Embroidery Horrors™," a precursor to my "Chest of Knitting Horrors™." The first item in my stack was this odd little object, about 4 inches wide by 7 inches tall.

I doodled it up one weekend while I was in 7th grade (age 12 or so), obviously to hang in my middle school locker, picots and all. There was quite a fad for locker interior decorating among the other girls at Teaneck, NJ's Benjamin Franklin JHS at the time. They did up elaborate confections of varying degrees of utility using contact paper, ruffles, shelf liner, sweet little color-coordinated pouches and shelves, magnetic mirrors, beads, decorative buttons and the like, trying to out-cheery or out-trendy each other. Many did whole themes in the school's colors, or paeans to favorite bands or actors. Others copied design tips from hot teen magazines. I suppose it's not shock to see that this same generation grew up to worship at the shrine of Martha Stewart.

I stitched my sad little sampler partly for fun, and partly to poke fun at the overly elaborate, overly girly, just plain over done lockers of my peers. I don't remember if the other girls thought much of my embroidered commentary, but I do remember a couple of teachers coming by and asking to see the thing, then convulsing with laughter. And seeing it each day jump-started my mornings with much-needed sarcasm. Subversive stitching in 1968 from a sardonic pre-teen.

As to the various animals and plants on the sampler, there's no deeper symbolism behind them, except for the cats and the budgie at the bottom. When I was a kid we had a couple of cats. The white one with the black tail was named Pixie. The Manx was Cola, from his rain-soaked tabby color and the Spanish for "tail" - an attribute he lacked. The other tabby and the bird belonged to friends. It happens that my severe allergies disappeared when I went off to college, away from home and the cats. I still miss their antics, but I'll never live with a cat again. Breathing is much more fun.

I'll post pix of some of the other pieces. At least one of them also qualifies for the subversive label.

Technorati : Embroidery

I was rooting around in some boxes last weekend as I searched for left-over batting to stuff the chicken hat. I ran across a truly ancient one, full of dawn of time artifacts. Among them was this.

This sad little sampler is the second thing I ever embroidered. It's a pattern stamped on linen, stitched in whatever leftovers were in my grandmother's thread basket. I must have been around 5 when I did it because I remember bringing it finished into my first grade class show and tell during the first week of school.

I also remember picking it out. My grandmother and I went to a small, dark shop somewhere in a neighborhood in Brooklyn, NY. It was a hot summer day, and even though the sun was out, the street was heavily shadowed by an elevated subway track. The store specialized in needlework supplies. I remember there being a tabletop display of sorts, one of those elevated shallow wooden bins, slopping over with small squares of this type. Thinking back, most were probably iron-ons that the shop applied to their own yardage, but there were also pre-printed strips for applique onto other items, plus toaster cozies and pillowcases. I remember Sunbonnet Sues and lots of flowers, but not that many with mottoes, and none with alphabets. That last point sticks with me because I wanted to stitch an alphabet sampler. And I remember taking the subway back home, anxious to sit down with my grandmother and start sewing.

The stitches are oddly leggy and none too precise. The inopportune colors have faded (the pale pink now was a very dark carnation when new). Thread coverage is spindly, - a haphazard mix of Perle cotton and stranded floss. The French knots are knobby growths, and the tension on the detached chains makes them look like squinty little eyes. The back is a horror.

But I can see the spots that I did last are neater, and by the end of the project I had learned to make all my top legs lie in the same direction. But most of all - I finished the thing.

It may be an ugly little artifact, but I'm proud of it.

Technorati : embroidery

Out web-walking again, I've stumbled across a treasure trove of books on spinning, weaving, and other textile arts. It includes historical and recent works on lacemaking, embroidery, tatting, knitting, crochet and some other less practiced crafts, as well as ethnographic material, periodicals, and academic papers. I'm sure I'm the last to find out about it, but I share the reference all the same.

This textile-related archive is maintained by the University of Arizona. Its collections are available on-line, with the individual works so distributed either aged out of copyright, or presented with the authors' permission. There are thousands of items - mostly geared to industry and manufacture, but with a healthy smattering of works detailing hand production. Scans are available as PDFs, with the larger books broken out into smaller segments of under 15MB. Not all are in English.

Among the works I found that are of greatest interest to me in specific are:

Whiting, Olive. Khaki Knitting Book, Allies Special Aid, 1917, 58 pages. PDF

This compendium of knitting patterns presents sweaters, wristlets, socks, scarves, mittens, hats, caps, and baby clothes intended in part for troops overseas during WWI, and for the comfort of refugee families displaced by the war. Patterns for knitting and crochet are both included. The socks shown mostly knit top-down, some have a gradually decreased instead of grafted toe. Some of the socks are worked on two needles and seamed. One pair in particular (marked as a pattern from the American Red Cross, p. 13) seems to include a written description of a grafted toe, but it does not name the technique. Directions are a bit more detailed than is usual for pre 1940 knitting booklets. Fewer than a quarter of the patterns are illustrated with finished item photos. Aside from a list of abbreviations in the front, there are no how-to or technique illustrations.

Nicoll, Maud Churchill. Knitting and Sewing. How to Make Seventy Useful Articles for Men in the Army and Navy, George H. Doran Company, New York, 1918, 209 pages. PDF

This book is a bit more detailed than the previous one. It also contains a rundown of standard troop knitting patterns - hats, mufflers, balaclavas (called helmets), mittens, socks and the like. Every project is illustrated either with a photo or a line drawing of the finished product. Instructions are written out in a fuller format than in the Khaki Knitting Book. It also has some valuable bits of instruction including a list of yarn substitutions, plus two full size color plates showing the wools used, identified by name; a small stitch dictionary section,

Of special note are some unusual mittens (including a mitten with truncated thumbs and index fingers - p.68), half-mittens - p. 77, "doddies" or mittens with an open thumb, p. 80, and double heavy mittens intended for seamen or mine sweepers hauling cables - p. 94). The grafting method of closing up sock toes is clearly described AND illustrated, but it is called "Swiss darning" (p.131). I've heard that term used for duplicate stitch embroidery on knitting, especially when the decorative stitches are sewn in rows mimicking actual knitting, rather than being stitched vertically, but I have never before seen it applied to actual grafting. The entire section on socks and stockings is particularly clear and useful. There are even a couple of crocheted and knit mens' ties in the sewing section.

Finally, the sewing section (about a quarter of the book) might be useful to people doing historical costuming or regimental re-creators who are looking to augment their kit. The one drawback is that most of the sewing patterns are predicated on Butterick printed patterns, and the schematics are not provided in the book. Among the offerings are money belts, a chamois leather body protector and waistcoat, various types of shirts and undergarments, pajamas made from heavy blanket fabric, and a book bag (like a messenger's bag).

Egenolf, Christian. Modelbuch aller art Nehewercks un Strickens, George Gilbers, 1880, 75 pages. Note: Reprint of 1527 book. PDF

Ostaus, Giovanni. La Vera Perfezione del Disegno [True Perfection in Design], 1561, 92 pages. Note: 1909 facsimile. PDF

These are two modelbooks of the 1500s. There are several others in the collection, but they are mostly books of needle lace designs. Ostaus also offers up mostly patterns for the various forms of needle lace, plus some patterns that can be adapted to free-hand (as opposed to counted) embroidery, plus a large section of allegorical plates to inspire stitched medallions, slips, and cabinets. One thing I've always liked are some of his negative/positive patterns. These are designs that if laid out on a strip of thin leather or paper and cut can be separated longitudinally into two identical pieces. There are several of these scattered around the middle of the book.

Starting around page 73 or so there is a section of graphed patterns, a number of which landed in my New Carolingian Modelbook collection.

The Egenolf book also is mostly line drawing suitable for freehand embroidery. Some are pretty cluttered, but some are very graceful. The oak border on p. 32 has always been one of my favorites. There's one plate with a counted pattern, on p. 72.

---. Priscilla Cotton Knitting Book, Priscilla Publishing Co., 51 pages. PDF1, PDF2, PDF3, PDF4, PDF5, PDF6.

This books is obviously a seminal source behind many of today's reference books on knitting technique and patterns. Notation is sparse and "antique" with n (narrow) being used for k2tog, and o for yarn over, and other oddities. There's a fair bit of circular doily knitting, but it is of the knit radially and seamed variety seen also in Abbey's Knitting Lace. In fact many of the doilies appearing in Abbey appear to have been adapted directly from this work. You'll also recognize many Walker treasury edging patterns in these pages.

In addition to the stitch texture and lacy knitting sections, there's a bit on "cameo knitting" which appears to be another name for stranding (in PDF2). The section on filet knitting (in PDF3) is relatively extensive, and clearly shows both the strengths and weaknesses of this rarely described style.

---. Priscilla Irish Crochet Book No. 2, Priscilla Publishing Co., 52 pages. PDF1, PDF2, PDF3, PDF4, PDF5, PDF6, PDF7, PDF8.

This has got to be the single most complete and eye-popping source I've ever seen on Irish crochet. Not only does this contain an amazing amount of eye candy, it also gives directions on how to create it, offering up pattern descriptions for the individual motifs, the joining brides and grounds, and the working method of fastening the motifs to a temporary backing while the grounds are being worked.

---. Egyptisch Vlechtwerk [Sprang], Holkema & Warendorf, 36 pages.PDF1, PDF2

As an example of the depth of the collection, here's a work on Sprang, one of the lesser known fiber manipulation crafts sometimes mistaken for early knitting. It is in Dutch and appears to be from before WWI, but it is illustrated with photos of finished pieces and works in progress.

These are just a small sample of the hundreds of works available at the University's website. Again, most are on the industrial aspects of the textile arts, from fiber acquisition (including sericulture and sheep raising) through spinning, and weaving, but a goodly number are of direct interest to hand-crafters. Topic lists exist for knitting, crochet, embroidery, cross stitch, lace, tatting, and a multitude of other subjects. Support this valuable resource by visiting and using it. I know I'll be combing through here for years...

Technorati : crochet, embroidery, knitting, lace

My list of future (someday) projects keeps getting longer.

Contemplating our living room, The Resident Male and I have decided that the perfect thing for over the fireplace would be a tapestry. So we went looking at various tapestry reproductions sold on-line. The ones in our price range are pretty uniformly horrible - bad cartoons (the drawing on which the weaving is based), cheap looking materials/bad drape, and garish color choices predominate. I won't even mention the awful chenille surface type and printed things that look more like stuff that along with 8-foot tall inflatable teddy bears are normally sold out of the back of vans parked at busy intersections in the summer.

As we were looking we also saw some of the painted canvases intended for needlepoint. Big ones that encompass scenes or details of historical woven tapestries. The better ones imported from France seem to offer more faithful reproductions of their inspiring works than do all of the modern woven reinterpretations.

Now I've done needlepoint before. It's not my favorite, but technical implementation of the style is not a barrier. Plus I know exactly how long (read forever) it takes to do one of these. My mother did a a needlepoint tapestry reproduction in the early 1970s, working a rendition of this classic bit of canvas:

She did it in DMC embroidery floss, stitching the details including the hunter's face, gloves and tassels, plus the hound, songbird, and hawk all in petite point. It's heavy from all that cotton, but substantial enough (and mounted well enough) to resist distortion or curl. That she did most of it in basketweave rather than tent stitch has helped it keep its shape. The thing is a bit less than a yard wide and a bit more than 4 feet tall. It took her the better part of a year. Maybe a bit more. It's roughly the same size as the one that caught our eye - a reproduction of a French woven tapestry from the mid 1500s (the clothing style is early 1500s, but the weavers may have been deliberately trying to imitate earlier works):

In canvas, even with the full thread kit, this one would be within my price range. Not counting a year or more to stitch it, of course. Will I end up doing this? Will the curtains I described yesterday come first? Will I stay true to knitting, and deaf to the enticements of other needle arts? Only time will tell...

Technorati : needlepoint

No knitting today. It was a happy but hectic holiday weekend here at String, full of family and food. Needless to say nothing beyond the targeted activities was accomplished. Still all are fed and happy, with grandparents spoiled beyond their expectations and back on their grand tour road trip.

Just as all of this was getting underway, I received a package from Long Term Needlework Pal Kathryn. She sent me glossy print catalogs from Bradbury and Bradbury, an outfit that offers reproductions of historical design wallpapers. She's right in that some of their offerings are spot on for our 1912 house. I've not trembled to a halt on any of the offered designs yet (although several are very tempting), but I can say that after leafing through the catalogs I am in the early stages of project lust for something else.

Curtains for our library.

The bulk of the pictures from the catalog are available on line. You can see the type of curtains there that hit me. Plain linen rectangles of simple line, hung from narrow brass rods threaded through the top (or through small brass rings rings). But I don't want unadorned curtains. I want to embroider mine. I happen to have on hand a huge set of counted thread border patterns of various widths at my disposal. Plus a pretty good idea of how to go about it all.

I want to put a pair of curtains on each of my two windows, each stitched with a border parallel to the center and bottom edges. Kind of like this:

If you happen to have a copy of The New Carolingian Modelbook to hand, I'm thinking of doing the full giant repeat of Plate 33 - the daSera grape leaves and flowers meander. Possibly in deep hunter green on natural linen. At four curtain panels to cover two windows that are about 5 feet tall by 3.5 feet wide, yes I'm nuts. So nuts in fact that I have to do more serious contemplation as to whether or not I will have the fortitude to take something like this to completion. But I've already started looking into linens...

Once more Kathryn leads me astray!

Technorati : embroidery

[Repost of material originally appearing on 25 August 2006]

Like socks? Ever hear of the socks shown at the Great Exhibition of 1851? No? You're in luck. The Victoria and Albert Museum never forgets. Their collections are now searchable on-line. A bit of poking around brings up this set of images, socks from that very exhibition, when all things Scots and the latest advances in machine knitting were the rage.

Now don't poo-poo machine knitting. Sock machines of that time required quite a bit of hand manipulation. How about these socks - stockinette, with some openwork, finished off with hand embroidery, from the early 1840s?

Socks too mundane? Contemplate Sara Ann Cunliffe's exquisite cotton lace baby gown, knit sometime in the late 1800s.

White cotton lace knitting too late for you? How about a brilliant 17th century silk and silver brocade jacket, with a thumbnail opinion that it was probably knit on needles and not a frame. What do you think. Cut and steeked? I think so. Even at 17 stitches per inch, I'd love to make one...

Looking for wool? How about an early 1800s baby ensemble that looks like it inspired Debbie Bliss.

There's 19th century bead knitting, too. And (amazing to me) 18th century beaded knitting! Not to mention hand-knitted lace doilies from the Azores (1875-1900); 16th century liturgical gloves, a Shetland shawl to die for (19th century), and lots of other stuff from every era since knitting impinged on Western consciousness.

Of course, if you prefer stitching over knitting, especially Blackwork or monochrome embroidery, there's some well-known examples of that there, too. Also samplers showing motifs straight from early modelbooks. Even an Egyptian piece from the 14th-16th century I've never seen before. I'm in heaven.

Technorati : embroidery, inspiration, knitting

[Repost of material originally appearing 10 August 2006]

My old friend Marian pointed me at a fascinating Web-based resource. The Web Gallery of Art. It's an on-line (sort of) searchable collection of art images from pre-1800. I'm in the middle of thumbing my way through Renaissance-era portraiture, in part to plain old enjoy it, but also with an eye to the embroidery used on clothing.

Now the few folk who visit here may know that in addition to knitting, I'm a sucker for embroidery. Especially counted embroidery from before 1600. My favorite family of styles is often lumped under the term "blackwork," and had a popularity run spanning about 100 years or so, until it morphed into other things and/or fell out of fashion for upper-class clothing, sometime between 1600 and 1630. It did however live on through its descendants (most familiarly some of the bandwork common on early samplers) and peasant embroideries of several regions Through these descendants some of blackwork's substyles have enjoyed little renaissances in the centuries since.

So. What is blackwork?

Not to be facetious, it's monochrome embroidery worked in black thread on white ground. Most but not all of the time. Non-black or multiple colors were occasionally used. Most people think of it as counted work - embroidery that uses the threads of the ground fabric as a foundation "graph".. Again, most but not all of the time. Some sub styles are clearly worked on the count. Others may have been, and still others are clearly freehand drawn. Some people are under the impression that there are clearly defined national or regional substyles, with English work being distinct from say German or Italian. Again, that's partly but not entirely true. If you're unfamiliar with the basics, The Skinner Sisters website has an excellent survey of Blackwork styles available on line.

Here's one of the most famous examples of band style blackwork, worked on the count. It's seen on the sleeves of Jane Seymour, as painted by Holbein in 1536 (you can click on the images in the linked pages to display them in greater detail). Very linear, clearly done both two-sided and on the count in a stitch that today goes by several names - Holbein Stitch, Spanish Stitch, Double Running Stitch. Harder to see (peeking out just above the gold and red units at the edge of the bodice - is a tiny line of blackwork on Catherine of Aragon, painted circa 1525-7 by Lucas Horenbout. Catherine is often said to have introduced the fashion for blackwork to the English court.

Here are heavier outlines, but still very geometric, suggesting a counted ground to me: Pierfrancesco di Jacopo's Portrait of a Lady, dated to 1530-1535. This one, too - Gentleman in Adoratio nby Giovanni Battista Moroni, dated 1560. Moroni's Gentleman wears a style that I associate more with English strapwork than embroidery of Northern Italy. To some extent, these styles traveled via printed pattern books and were international.

These suggest work on the count, but possibly in satin stitch rather than double running or another linear stitch. Bernadino Luini's Portrait of a Lady, 1525. (See. Not all early blackwork is double running!). Also this one - Romanino's Portrait of a Man, 1516-1519. This is the picture that Marian alerted me to, starting this whole rumination. The regularity of the piece leads me to think "counted." The angles of the ends of the leaves makes me think "satin stitch" rather than a solid filling done in another method.

This one - Portrait of a Venetian Man by Jan van Scorel (1520) looks very much like cross stitch is used to form the stitched repeat. It's also done in red. There is no zoomable detail page for it on the website.

Of the most famous types is the inhabited style, in which outlines were infilled with all-over patterns, done on the count. My own forever project is an example of this type, although it's my own composition and not a repro of a historical piece:



Bettes' 1585-90 portrait of Elizabeth shows sleeves that are (at least in part) done in the inhabited style (Link via the Tudor Portraits site)

Yet another sub-style, again outlines done freehand (or drawn) rather than on the count, and accented with metal thread work. The most famous again is in a portrait by Holbein - Catherine Howard's cuffs, 1541. Here's another example of freehand outlines but without the infilling geometrics: the shoulder area of Hillard's portrait of Elizabeth I, 1575-6. Some examples of this subgroup use stippling (tiny scattered stitches) almost like pen-done line shading to provide textural or shadowed interest, or include embellishments like seed beads, pearls, or spangles.

More blackwork using colored threads? Here's Caterina van Hemessen's self portrait, 1548. Although tough to see, I'm pretty sure there are red cuffs and collar bands there. Red was the most popular color used after black. (I wish I could see her coif better)

There were other styles, too. All confusingly lumped together under the modern term "blackwork."

Finally, there are portraits that show things that look vaguely familiar, but not in enough detail to be sure they are related.

• Band stitching, done in gold, with details too small to determine whether it was worked on the count - Jan Sanders van Hemessen's Woman Wearing Gold, (undated, but the artist lived 1500-1556).
• A small collar worn by a man. Looks vaguely blackwork like, but detail isn't very clear. Foschi's Portrait of a Man (1530s)
• Matching(?) bands on chemises of both husband and wife. Lorenzo Lotto, 1523. Possibly freehand.
• More red blackwork? This time possibly on the collar of Charles V's undershirt, in a piece by Bernaert van Orley, 1519-1520.
• Blackwork on edge of chemise? It's so light as to be doubtful. Portrait of Jacquemyne Buuck, by Pieter Pourbus, dated 1551
• An all-over design produced by counted black stitching, or some sort of brocade? Hard to tell. Ambrogio de Predis Portrait of a man, dated 1500

Technorati : embroidery

To recover from the charting series, I present tiny mental vacation in the past. 1972 to be exact. That was the year I embroidered this jacket.



It was well before The Warner Brothers Store and WB characters being available on licensed merchandise. I drew my Roadrunner freehand from cartoons on TV. As you can see by the variant color (the official Roadrunner is blue), my Looney Tunes years were spent in front of a black and white TV.

I had a lot of embroidered clothing back then - a pair of jeans with large phoenix that wound up one leg, starting in flames at the cuff and finishing with a peacock-frilled head on the hip pocket; a blue workshirt covered with wildflowers copied from herbals; and a denim vest done in Shisha mirrorwork. Except for the denim jacket all are long gone, sold while I was in college to pay for books. You might have seen the other pieces if you wandered past the window of the Red Dog second hand clothing boutique in Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA, sometime between '75 and '78 (back when the Square was more edgy and gritty than it is in its current Urban Redevelopment/Mall of America glory). I've always wondered who bought my pieces.



My Roadrunner is done in plain old 6-strand cotton floss, mostly in chain stitch. The two-tone tail happened when the store that sold Coats & Clarks embroidery thread dropped it in favor of the DMC line. I ran out of my original stock and had to do the closest color match I could. You can barely make out the blue sig block below the front foot. When I stitched this, the denim ground was the same color blue as that block.

Elder Daughter wears this now (fraying and all), and would kill for the other pieces. They may be long gone, probably discarded from the homes of others, but I still have some of the Medieval history textbooks they funded.

I've finished my Snake Scarf. It's about 58" long, which works. I've used all but about four yards of my fancy yarn. The jury is still out on the edging thing. Perhaps something very narrow in black just to give it a contained, outlined look. Perhaps not. Lots depends on whether I have time to hit my LYS, as there's nothing suitable in stash. Or I may just leave it as it is.

I played a long time with the final section, trying out several ways to do it that preserve the look of the ribbed sections that went before, because the usual way of ending off an Entrelac section lost the directionality of the ribbing. My corners don't exactly match, but that's because the entire piece has a definite beginning and end. If you were to work this idea like a seaman's scarf, with a center third of plain ribbing, and both ends worked out from that ribbing, they would match exactly. Perhaps that's the next step, provided I find a suitable yarn in a color set I like.

I make no claim as to inventing this concept. Entrelac is pretty standard. I've seen recipes for it going back to instructions for sock tops printed in the 1890s or so. Nor is doing it in a narrow strip unique. Quick searches on the Web will surface lots of other people's experiments with directional knitting and narrow scarves. And I certainly can't lay any claims to ribbing, or to using long repeat multicolor yarns in a narrow scarf. However, I can claim the serendipty that happened when I played with all of these concepts together. The trumpet like manner in which the ribbing spreads and curves is (to me at least) both amusing and graceful, and presents a different effect than working this idea in garter or stockinette stitch. I did work out the ribbed treatment for the final end, and have provided my own graph for it.

As far as using this with other yarns since the Kureopatora is now long gone - I suspect that Noro Silk Garden or Kureyon would work nicely, as would some of the Daikeito yarns that are beginning to show up here in the US. (I haven't seen the latter in person, but I've read reports of them on the Web.) What you want is a yarn in which each individual color lasts for about a yard (or more) before shading into the next one. The glorious hand-painted yarns that are hank-dyed in skeins that are about a yard around would NOT produce this wide stripe effect. They'd be lovely, but the color sections would not be long enough to make dramatic stripes like Kureopatora's.

Just to annoy the natural-fiber-only crowd, I do observe that the yarn for this project needn't be a top-drawer luxury product. There are some very inexpensive acrylics that have exceptionally long color repeats. I'm not fond of working with them in general, but if you're thinking of knitting a rugged scarf for a little kid, those yarns might be worth considering.

Enjoy!

---

KUREOPATORA'S SNAKE - A KNITTING PATTERN



Materials

• US #6 needles
• Gauge for this project, taken over 1x1 ribbing, at the midpoint of a section where it isn't particularly stretched out: approximately 6 stitches (3 ribs) per inch
• 30 stitches at widest point
  
• Width of scarf: about 4.25 inches. Length of scarf: about 58 inches.
  
• Anticipated yarn consumption for this size: About 250 yards of a multicolor worsted weight yarn that normally knits in stockinette at 5 stitches per inch.
  

As for working method, this scarf is done in a pretty standard Entrelac edge column technique - think Entrelac project reduced to just the right and left most columns, without the basket weave effect sections between.

Row 1: Cast on 1 stitch, knit in the front, then purl in the back of this stitch [2 stitches on needle]
Row 2: Knit in the front, then purl in the back of the first stitch, K1 [3 st on needle]
Row 3: Purl in the front, then knit in the back of the first stitch, P1, K1 [4 stitches on needle]
Row 4: Purl in the front, then knit in the back of the first stitch, P1, K1, P1 [5 stitches on needle]
Row 5: Knit in the front, then purl in the back of the first stitch, finish row in established K1, P1 ribbing [6 st on needle]
Row 6: Knit in the front, then purl in the back of the first stitch, finish row in established K1, P1 ribbing [7 st on needle]
Row 7: Purl in the front, then knit in the back of the first stitch, finish row in established P1, K1 ribbing [8 st on needle]
Row 8: Purl in the front, then knit in the back of the first stitch, finish row in established P1, K1 ribbing [9 st on needle]

Continue rows 5-8, adding one stitch in each row but doing it to maintain the K1, P1 rib pattern. Keep doing this until you have 30 stitches on your needle.

Entrelac body section:

Row 1: Knit in the front, then purl in the back of the first stitch, SSK. Turn work over so the next row heads back in the other direction. Note that this first row is only 3 stitches long.
Row 2 and all subsequent even numbered rows: Work P1, K1 ribbing as established.
Row 3: Purl in the front, then knit in the back of the first stitch, P1, SSK. Note that from now on this row-ending SSK will be composed of one stitch worked on the previous row, plus one stitch from the dormant stitches on the left hand needle. Turn work over so the next row heads back in the other direction. You now have 4 stitches in the row.
Row 5: Knit in the front, then purl in the back of the first stitch, K1, P1, SSK. Turn work. You now have 5 stitches in the row.
Row 7: Purl in the front, then knit in the back of the first stitch, P1, K1, P1, SSK. Turn work. You will now have 6 stitches in the row.

Continue to work in the manner of rows 5-8, adding one stitch at the edge of each right-side row in the established rib pattern until you have incorporated all of the dormant stitches on the left hand needle. You will again have 30 stitches on the needle. At this point your segment is done. To do the next one, flip the work over (the and begin again from Row 1 of the Entrelac section). Continue adding entire trumpet shaped sections until your scarf is of sufficient length. (Mine maxed out at about 58").

Final section:

Rows 1-25 - work as for a standard Entrelac section. At the completion of Row 25 you should have fifteen active stitches on your right hand needle. The left hand needle should hold the other fifteen stitches. Work Row 26 as usual (marked in blue on accompanying chart).

Row 27 and all subsequent odd numbered rows: SSK, work in established ribbing, ending row with SSK and turn in the same manner as in the Entrelac section.
Rows 28 and all subsequent even numbered rows: Work P1, K1 ribbing as established.

Continue in this manner until you have completed Row 50, and three stitches remain on your needle.
Row 51: Slip, slip, slip, knit all three stitches together through the back of the loop (this is a three-stitch variant of the standard two stitch SSK decrease).

Darn in all ends.

The Kureopatora snake scarf continues. It's longer, but otherwise looks the same. I will probably finish it up tonight and post my how-to thereafter.

In the mean time, here's another of the embroideries that litter my house. This one is another doodle - a sampler in the true sense, done to try out patterns that ended up in my book. It's done in a single strand red linen on a linen ground, at about 15 stitches per inch on linen that's about 30 threads per inch. The long dark band at the bottom was done in long-armed cross stitch. The lion, the knot at upper left, the narrow diagonal band next to it, and the dark band at the left edge were in more standard regular cross stitch. THINK was stitched on the count using chain. The rest of the patterns were worked in double running (aka Spanish Stitch, Holbein Stitch).




The dense rose corner surrounding the lion is original, the rest (except for THINK) all have historical precedent, and are all graphed out in The New Carolingian Modelbook. In general I'm not that fond of this one. Done as a true sampler as it was, placement of the motifs was very haphazard. I stitched whatever I felt like trying out, and if the pattern didn't fit - I didn't care (the leggy grapes are truncated at the bottom edge). I didn't plan anything, and the imbalance of the whole thing reflects that.

THINK ended up hanging in my husband's office for a time. That company he was working for in '89 used the heraldic lion as a logo element, which is why THINK and the lion both ended up on the thing. He's no longer there and has another, better embroidery at work now. THINK along with its obsolete logo has been exiled to the upstairs hallway.

Here's a curious piece that came to me from the same grandparents as my fly bowl (I've been told that it's actually a bee dish, not a fly bowl).



This is an original pen and ink line drawing that appears to depict a piece of stumpwork embroidery. It bears a sigil of the letters HCs (possibly CCS) but has no other signature on it. It hung in my grandmother's library for years, and always held a certain fascination for me when I was a kid. At that time I didn't realize the embroidery connection. At seven I liked the whimsical little animals in the corners, and the fact the central figure was a queen. Anecdotal family tales say the title of this piece is "Queen Esther."

Years later when I began embroidering in earnest (started on that path by the same grandmother), I stumbled across the stumpwork style and recognized the drawing for what it was. I'm torn. I'm not exactly sure if this is a copy of a piece displayed in a museum, or if it's a freehand drawing inspired by that style. I rather suspect the former. There is supposed to be a stumpwork piece depicting Queen Esther n the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society, but I haven't seen a picture of it, so I can't say if my pen and ink drawing shows that particular artifact.

Stumpwork (raised or embossed embroidery) was popular in the 1600s, tailing off into the early 1700s. It has enjoyed a couple of minor revivals since. It's characterized by three dimensional effects, and is gaining interest right now, in part fueled by the popularity of ribbon embroidery and Brazilian embroidery, two other more modern styles that also employ three dimensional effects. There are also traditional forms of padded stitching practiced in Thailand and Cambodia that also use heavy stitching on separately embroidered motifs that are affixed to a ground over stuffing.

In stumpwork, much of the stitching is done over raised grounds, separately stitched and sewn onto a backing fabric. These motifs and slips are stuffed underneath with batting or even little wooden forms. Additional raised effect is provided by the inclusion of detached stitching, much of it based on detached buttonhole, hollie point, or other "free" lace stitches. On some pieces, further embellishment is provided by the liberal use of gold and silver threads, sequins, spangles and even beads. Some say that the little wooden forms used for stuffing are the "stumps" that gave the work its ungraceful name, others say that the name is a corruption of the word stamp, as many of the faces of the figures were printed by stamping rather than being stitched. It's heavy and encrusted looking except in its very lightest manifestations, not well suited for wearing. Instead it was employed mostly for decor - panels, mirror surrounds, book covers, cushions, and most especially small chests (cabinets) that were covered inside and out with the stitching.
Creating a cabinet was a crowning glory for the amateur needleworker of the late 1600s. They were expensive to do, required better than average skill, and represented a sort of needlework "graduation" for teens just about done with the course of informal study that passed for most girls' educations at that time.

There are several articles on stumpwork available elsewhere on the web, but precious few pictures of historical examples: This one has a useful bibliography, Janet Davies has some photos of artifacts that show the dimensionality of the stitching on her stumpwork and raised Elizabethan embroidery pages, CameoRoze also offers up an article on the modern revival of the style. In a Minute Ago also offers up a nice round-up of stumpwork and related styles as they are practiced today.

In the mean time my Not Embroidery hangs in my bedroom, where it complements a larger blackwork panel.

In the absence of any knitting progress, I offer up another embroidered tidbit.



This is the last pattern in my New Carolingian Modelbook. It's the same one that the SCA Lady Lakshmi used to make a hat for her friend Mistress Morwenna.

As you can see (in spite of my lousy camera work), my panel isn't centered on the middle of the repeat. Instead I've skewed it a bit to focus on one mermaid, and to show the second bounce center - the twist at the panel's extreme right. This is in part because I wanted to work one full cycle, but was limited by the size of the piece of linen I had available. For the record, this is done on 30 count linen (about 15 spi) using one strand of standard DMC embroidery floss.

This is one of the pieces I entered in the Woodlawn Plantation embroidery exhibition over the years. It won an honorable mention prize (feedback was that the judges didn't like the skewing of the repeat). Amusingly enough, my brazen, bare-breasted mermaids must have offended some sensibilities. The piece was displayed at the very top of the wall in a room with 15-foot ceilings. The prize ribbon was clipped athwart the bosom of one mermaid, and a yellow sticky note was affixed to her sister's.

A few knitting and non-knitting related questions from the inbox:

How did Killer Bunnies go?

Tons of fun. We played as a mixed-age group, with the youngest being 7. We had hoped to get the Red Expansion Pack at Puzzle Me This in Provincetown, but they were out. We settled for Violet, the next one in sequence. The game plays more smoothly if you add them in order because each pack builds on the last, but we were able to use most of the Violet cards anyway.

What size needles did you use for the two versions of your counterpane?

The old version in the heavier cotton was knit on one of my odd size needles, it's a set of old long steel DPNs, they're probably antique 9s - and just a bit larger than standard US #4s (3.5mm), but closer to #4s than #5s (3.75mm). The new piece is knit on 3mm needles, which in some makers' lines is a US #2, and in some is somewhere between a US#2 and a US #3.

Did you finish that embroidery doodle while you were away?



Are you planning on assembling the counterpane in the same way as the last try?

No. These units can be joined in many ways. Last time I butted the triangles together. This time I plan to join squares. My goal is to do the layout shown at the upper right. Last time I used the one at the lower right. Both use some plain solid triangles in addition to the pattern bearing units.



Where did you buy the counterpane pattern?

I didn't. I made it up, starting with a standard spiraled star. I added the outline-like bars to emphasize the motif, and played with several treatments for the ground behind the star. This one like my Mountain Laurel counterpane plays with a textured ground and smooth star, but unlike that piece, plays a bit more with the ground. I also wanted to do a counterpane that was an tessellation of more interest than a flat tiled hex or a plain octagon and hex. That's why there are four units - the center hex, a patterned square, a patterned triangle, and a plain triangle. The layout above is actually an early draft showing how I played with the concept, looking at ways in which I could use the patterned units to extend the lines of the center hexes.

Can you send me the pattern?

Be patient. I plan on posting it to wiseNeedle this year - probably after I've gotten considerably more done on the thing and have a decent representation of the piece's final look. I'd also like to noodle up a complementing half hex and border.

From the inbox:

How did you draw the pattern on the cloth?

I didn't. I have the design drawn out on a piece of graph paper. I'm copying that design onto the fabric, using the weave of the linen as the equivalent of graph paper. Each unit on my ground cloth is a two thread by two thread square. I worked from the graph to establish the outlines in the center motif, then "colored in" the long armed cross stitch background. I worked the first repeat of the lettuce around the edges from the graph, but subsequent iterations of it from the piece I embroidered (much less cumbersome than toting around a book).

Was this stuff actually done on the count in the 1600s?

A vast amount was. There are a couple of caveats though. Some people assert that a minority of counted thread pieces worked on very fine linens used some other method to establish the evenly spaced graph-like appearance. In particular, they suggest that some sort of evenly woven but easily unraveled fabric was placed over the ground cloth, and used as a stitching guide. The stitching was done over the placement aid, and its threads were later removed from the work. Other people suggest that pouncing, either over paper or another fabric was used to produce evenly spaced dots, which were then employed as the spacing mechanism for the ground. I'm kind of skeptical on the pounced dots thing. That's a ton of very smearable dots in a very small space.

Another exception is theorized for other forms of voided foreground stitching. (Yesterday's piece is voided foreground). Some of the panels look more like someone drew the foreground motifs freehand, then filled in the background with the covering stitch. Again I can't confirm or deny this. Some panels (especially those with repeats) look quite precise to me - too stitch-precise and weave-aligned to have been freehand sketches. To my eye, the few pieces that might have been done this way are pictorial panels that have almost a folk-art type naivety of line and motif placement. One of these panels is pictured in Bath's Embroidery Masterworks. While it's not a probability that all voided foreground works were done this way, it's not a impossibility that some were.

I'm sure the total state of research into the origins of voided foreground styles and Assisi embroidery has gnawed into this problem. I haven't kept up my reading in it of late. My long time pal and needlework buddy Kathryn Goodwyn has an excellent article on voided foreground stitching on line (this group of styles is her specialty). She mentions the hand drawn outline variant as a curious offshoot.

Are the colors accurate?

Green wasn't the most popular but it was used. However the natural color, brownish unbleached linen I had on hand wouldn't have been used. A historical stitcher would have preferred a much lighter ground. The accompanying black outlines in this piece are also open for debate. Few pre-1700 pieces employ contrasting color outlining, although most later examples of the style do. The original of this design clearly employs two different colors in the work. Even in the black and white photo of the original (dated 1560-1625), the background is clearly a different color from the outlines. The original also shoed background area behind the lettuce north and south of the main panel as being worked in long-armed cross stitch - something I don't intend to do. (Lettuce isn't a technical term for the extra borders framing the main panel, it's just my own term of reference).

Linen thread?

It is out there. DMC has some. There are linen threads made by other makers, too. But sometimes expedience wins. I'm not doing this piece as a totally accurate historical study. It really is a doodle. I'm playing. I happened to have the Flower Thread on hand, and it worked nicely with the weave size of my ground cloth.

I'm offended. My 11-spi stitching isn't "coarse!"

For me, 11 stitches per inch on 22 count linen is much less fine than the gauges I usually pursue. I prefer the look of stitching on a really buttery thick 50-count linen (that's 25 stitches per inch). Compared to that work, 11 stitches per inch is as large as logs. My doodle is a quick study, again not intended for any purpose other than to let me do some stitching at events, and for the fun of it.

What does the back look like?/Do you use knots?

My backs are relatively neat, not because I'm a fanatic about making them so and not because I believe that that's the way they should be. My backs are neat because that's the way I stitch (historical pieces often have absolutely chaotic backs that would make most modern needlework judges recoil in horror). And yes - heresy of heresy - unless I'm working something that's intended to be totally two-sided, I do use knots. No - if done carefully they don't pull out or show through to the front. Savage me if you must, but I reserve the right to ignore you.



What stitches did you use?

Double running (aka Spanish Stitch, Holbein Stitch, Vorstitch) for the outlines. Here's a double running stitch mini-lesson from the Skinner Sisters website. I could also have used back stitch, a less represented but also historically accurate way to do them on voided foreground works. Long armed cross stitch is less well known than it's X-like cousin with equal length arms, but it's a very useful thing. There's a research article about it here by Christian de Holcombe (another needlework pen pal), but a short example of how to (along with quite a few related stitches) at this site.

Doodle?/What's it going to be?

I haven't thought that far ahead. I'll probably end up mounting this piece for wall display. I called it a doodle because it's an offhand and trivial effort, a time-filler, and bit of life's marginalia. It's not a Big Project, nor a planned project. It's just... a doodle.

Your book is out of print, it's o.k. for me to copy it, right?

No. Absolutely not. Copyright doesn't last until the publisher decides to skip town, or drop the item from current inventory. US copyright lasts 75 years. Even if I get hit by a truck, that copyright is part of my estate and would be owned by my heirs until 2070. Anyone who respects authors, living or dead, should respect copyright.

I'm not an ogre, hoarding rights and royalties (lord knows I've seen almost none of the latter). I AM trying to get the thing back into print. One publisher has turned me down flat in part because his research indicated that illegal copies were being made.

So don't do it, as tempting as it might be. There's more about copyright - in specific your rights as a purchaser, as well as the author's intellectual property rights at Girl From Auntie and Yarnaholic Confessions.

This weekend past we went to a local SCA event. We're not very active in the organization any more, but every now and again it's fun to show up and partake of the day. This particular day was quite warm, and we arrived late - missing the most strenuous part of the planned activities. We mostly sat in the shade and enjoyed various song and story performances. In the evening a very ambitious dinner was served, consisting of dozens of dishes from a recently translated 16th century Italian cookbook.

I keep a small sampler I work on when I go to events like this. Now that I'm up to the easily replicated borders, I rarely stitch on it in between events.



My doodle is worked on even weave unbleached linen, using DMC's Danish Flower Thread. The Flower Thread is a matte finish cotton. In construction this thread is a single strand, as opposed to the more commonly seen multstrand embroidery floss. Having used both, I find that for small pieces, this thread mimics the look (but not the stiffness) of linen thread. I'm working at at the extremely coarse gauge of 11 stitches per inch, on 22 thread count ground. It's quick and easy to see.



All of the black lines in the piece are done in double running stitch (aka Holbein Stitch, Spanish Stitch). You can see the bit in process, where I've established a baseline. All of the "growths" from that baseline are traced out and filled in again as I go along. The background is done in long-armed cross stitch, worked back and forth across the piece to heighten the illusion of a plaited ground. Since I've already done a full repeat of the border, I no longer need to refer to my original printed pattern. Also, because the whole goal of this piece is "quick and portable," I'm not working it in a large rectangular frame. Instead I'm using a plain old 7-inch diameter round tambour-style embroidery frame. My matte finish single construction thread stands up to the hoop's abuse much better than does silk or even cotton floss.

The design is another one from my New Carolingian Modelbook. It's on Plate 74:1. I graphed it from a photo of a late 16th or early 17th century artifact, appearing in Adolph Cavallo's Needlework. (New York: Cooper Hewitt Museum, 1974). What I like about this design in particular is the way the edges of the work pop past the internal border. The meaty branches have an almost palpable vitality, as if they can't be contained by the formal constraints of the stitching. Working a solid background (as was done in the original) heightens the effect.

I've only tried out one repeat of the central design. The historical piece repeated the S-shaped flourish, mirroring it at either end. Since this is a self-contained unit, it can be either mirrored or it can be repeated in the same orientation to make a longer length of patterning. Period embroiders used both methods of composition to construct longer decorative bands.

Well, I did make some progress on Rogue over the past several days. I've finally gotten past the grief of the pocket (my fault); finished the equivalent depth of the body behind the pocket, and fused the two together.



Here you see the area adjacent to the nifty pretzel-terminated side panel, showing off the contrast between that knotwork design and the Little Dragon Skin patterning.



The pocket fusing step went off without a hitch. I remembered to bind off four stitches of the body at either side of the pocket fusing row, again to leave a notch inside which the zipper will be installed. Here's a process shot, with the pocket stitches held on the pink needle, and the body on the silver circ. Because my right-side rows have so much shaping, I made sure to do the fusing on a wrong-side row - all purls in the patterned part.



Progress however has been somewhat less than it might have been because I've gotten two new needlework assignments since Thursday.

First, my mother has asked me to design a needlepoint pillow top for her that incorporates multiple Fleur de Lys motifs in wine, an off white background, and some sort of framing mechanism. She's looking to make a piece on 16-count canvas. This is pretty much a "bring me a rock" assignment (one of those in which your efforts are greeted by the response "Wrong rock. Try again.") Here's my first attempt at just a single motif:



The second was a last-minute request from Wild & Woolly in Lexington, MA to cover a class in sock making. They has a workshop scheduled for March 20th that covers cuff-down socks on two circs and one oversized circ (aka "Magic Loop"), and the original instructor has had a last-minute conflict. I'm the designated hitter for this one. Which means that because my own favored method for socks is toe-up on DPNs, I have to do a bit of brushing up before I can demo and explain those methods to others. If you've signed up for this class, please don't worry. I guarantee that in two weeks I'll be fully confident in the material to be covered.

Katherine asks what subtitled movie I was watching the other day that had me so engrossed I fell into multiple errors on my Rogue. It was Red Beard, the Kurosawa movie starring Toshiro Mifune.

Since Rogue is going so slowly, here's another side trip. This time into the past.

The dress itself is Melton wool, and weighs a ton. Overall it's a rather poor example of SCA costuming, but the underskirt is something I've enjoyed for a long time. It's a blackwork panel I stitched a good [mumblefratz] years ago. It was inspired by a piece from the Art Institute of Chicago pictured in Embroidery Masterworks (Virginia Churchill Bath, 1972). That book was a birthday present from my then and present pal and needlework buddy, Kathryn -?she of the motto "Too many centuries, too little time."



This didn't start out as being an underskirt. When I began the piece, I intended it to be a tablecloth. I was uncertain whether or not I'd just edge around the outside of the rectangle with the motifs, or I'd cover the whole surface with them. As a result, the stitched area is larger than the skirt's opening shows. Some motifs were done as partials to eke out the space.There's a truncated pomegranate at the lower left. The total stitched area is about 20% larger? than what you can see and is hidden by the edges of the dress. I never trimmed the back of the piece, it's still a large white linen rectangle. My assumption was that I'd eventually go back and finish out the stitching as a wall panel. As you note I haven't done that yet.

Instead this?panel has gone on to inhabit four SCA costumes, and was one of the very few pieces I kept during the 13 years I was totally absent from that organization. (When you've got something like this, you can't toss it or let it languish in a drawer when you have need of a nifty outfit). It's the piece I intend to complement with my Forever Coif.

For needlework enthusiasts, this?panel is about 33 inches from point to hem, about 25 inches wide at its widest visible point, and about 28 inches wide at its widest stitched point, counting the motif parts you can't see. The stitching is rather big, especially compared to my coif. The ground is a linen blend tablecloth, with a weave of about 24 threads per inch, and the stitches are worked over 2x2 threads (about 12 stitches per inch). The threads used are perle cotton for the chain stitched outlines, and cotton embroidery floss for the infillings and solid padded satin stitch bud details. The detail shot is rather large. Click on the thumbnail if you want to take the time to download a larger image.

?

I started stitching on a Monday in mid-October. That Friday The Resident Male and I plus a carload of other friends drove down from Boston to the Baltimore/Washington D.C. area to enter the East Kingdom's fall Crown Tournament (see Footnote). He was carrying my favor- another blackwork bit. I've got a picture somewhere that shows the two of us at that tourney, him in armor and me carrying the cloth in an embroidery frame, with only the pomegranate at the lower right finished.

After he won the Crown Tourney and we were slated for an April coronation, I decided I had to wear the panel at that event. I finished the piece out enough for that purpose, meeting my deadline and installing it in the first of many dresses. Don't worry. I didn't lavish all my sewing time on me. I made a linen shirt with a black silk?needle lace edging, and an extremely short black velvet?doublet/tunic thing for The Resident Male to wear over it. Very fetching.One amusing aside -? I got a college research paper on embroidery out of the blackwork?piece, and so received academic credits for the time I spent stitching. We were both still in school, and I was taking sophomore-level Renaissance art history. )

It turns out I was one of the first to introduce the blackwork embroidery style to the East's populace at large. I encouraged embroidery (and women fighting) during the reign and after, writing how-to booklets and teaching classes and workshops. Blackwork became quite popular because of the richness of the finished look, coupled with the ease with which beginners' pieces can be done. Soon it was showing up everywhere. About a year later I was recognized by the Order of the Laurel for counted thread embroidery in general, and blackwork in specific.

Footnote: For those of you familiar with the SCA, that was back in the Five Kingdoms era (AS XI-XII), when Atlantia was a brand-new principality, and the East stretched from Maine to North Carolina. A very long time ago, indeed.

For those of you unfamiliar with the SCA, twice a year the East Kingdom selects a (mostly) ceremonial leader by conferring that honor on the winner of a very big sword fighting competition (other weapons are used, too). The winner becomes King or Queen by right of arms, sitting first as Prince or Princess for five months before ascending the throne for the six months after that. That winner is accompanied by a counterpart or consort on the throne - the person in whose name and honor the fighter fought, and whose favor they carried through the tournament (designated beforehand, of course).

I found a box of stuff I've?been carting around forever. (At least it seems like forever). In it were mouldering reminders of decades past. Including this little doodle sampler I did to hang on my dorm wall:

From the stitching standpoint, I can say it's unremarkable - cross stitch and crewel type stitches, done on muslin ground in standard-issue DMC floss. There's a bit of couched silk ribbon, too. The turquoise ribbon has faded, leaving only the little turquoise fastening stitches, and the bits of matching color cotton down below. It's signed "KEB '74."

As to the sentiment. Like the title says. It was the '70s.

I?stitched it up?over a weekend and had it on the wall by Monday. I think I did it mostly to annoy my first roommate: a gal who managed to arrive at college with calcified attitudes, white kid gloves, and a life-long desire to take two years of college at the most to?find a husband and then drop out. She did manage to do just that and start a family, although not necessarily in the order she would have preferred. I guess she never quite took the sampler seriously...

More on Sontags

My friend Kathryn the costume doyenne, tells me that?the original?sontag isn't really exactly like a poncho. Sort of, but not quite. It's more like a scarf or fichu meant to cover the front of the upper torso that fastened behind the neck. They were usually buttoned or tied in the back. The idea was to avoid shawl points or dangling ends that could pose a danger in the era of open fires. Think of "Gone with the Wind" costumes, with the long shawl-like thing criss-crossed over the front of the body, with the ends tied behind the waist.

That makes sense. Looking at the item in the page from the NYPL it may be pictured from the back. The wearer would be facing away from the viewer, and the spot where the two sides meet would be at the lower back. It still looks like?a capelet/shawl hybrid to me, but worn backwards from the way that seems logical today.

More distraction while I accumulate enough progress on my dragon panel to be worth displaying.

As promised, after much fiddling with the frame and expenditure of batteries (still close-ups are difficult with a two-bit digital camera) I present the reverse of my red embroidered yoke:

Sort of neat, but not compulsively so.  And yes - Heresy #1 - I use knots on one-sided pieces.  My knots however are well formed and placed, and do not pull through to the front of the work.

Heresy #2 - Blackwork in Color

Like I said the other day, there's a time to be absolutely historically accurate, and there's a time to burst out in a fit of playfulness.  Yes, the patterns on this piece are (mostly) from historical sources.  No, the fabric (Hardanger cloth); color choices; and mode of employing these colors have zero reason to exist besides the fact that I felt like doodling with them at the time.  I started this piece as a wedding present for a couple whose engagement did not last longer than the stitching.  Blame the bride for the insipid country-kitchen colors. 

You see about a third of the total length.  The rest of the piece includes a bit of inhabited blackwork;  plus another standard Roman alphabet; and lots more cross stitch and strapwork patterns.  Some day I might finish it.  Or maybe not. 

Recognize the squash/lily-form tulip flowers (bottom-most whole strip)?  Yup. They were on my Anything Worth Doing sampler, too.  The framing strawberry chain here done in pinks and greens also shows up in blackwork on my Forever Coif.  Think of it as pattern recycling.

Apparently the red bit of stitching I posted yesterday piqued a bit of interest.  I received some questions on it:

I can't see the pattern you describe.  Can you post a detail shot?

Here's the best I can do:

Where did you get red muslin?

I didn't.  As you can see in the detail shot, the ground isn't red.  In fact you can't see the ground fabric at all - the entire piece is completely overstitched in red, black, yellow, green and light blue. 

What thread did you use, what stitches, how big is the piece?

Thinking back to '75 or so when I made this, and hoping I remember it all - I used two strands teased from standard DMC embroidery floss.  The entire piece is done in plain old cross stitch, nothing fancy.  The muslin was a remnant from the discount table of a neighborhood fabric store, back in the days before big box crafts stores.  I worked my cross stitch over 2x2 threads of my muslin ground.  And yes - all the top legs are crossing in the same direction.

The entire thing is about 11 inches wide and 14 inches deep, both measurements taken at its widest points.  As far as gauge or stitches per inch, the weave of the muslin wasn't square, so my cross stitches aren't square.  The flower motifs themselves graph out exactly square, but because of the weave-induced distortion, they end up looking like rectangles.  Across the motif (the stretched dimension) it measures out to about 16-17 cross stitch units per inch.  Up and down the motif (the squished dimension) it measures out to about 21-22 cross stitch units per inch.  The imprecision is there because I have the piece mounted in a frame, and it's tough to hold a ruler close enough to get an accurate count. 

The mounting glass is also why this is photographed at an angle.  I hoped to bounce the flash so I didn't get a glare or - like yesterday - a ghost image of me taking the picture reflected by the frame.

What's the design source for this one?  Why is it a funny shape?

I started with a couple of traditional Ukranian counted thread patterns, most notably an illustration in Mary Gostelow's Complete International Book of Embroidery, then played with them a bit.  What I ended up with was a yoke for a blouse or dress.  I did wear this yoke, appliqued onto two garments.  The first was a very thick linen peasant-style blouse, smocked just beneath the panel and finished with gathered and tied cuffs.  After that blouse met an untimely soy sauce/bleach-related death, the second was a black straight tunic-type linen top, rather North African in shape.  Thankfully the embroidery itself was unharmed by the soy sauce and subsequent attempt to clean it.  Another thing - this is the piece that was recognized with the Nellie Custis Lewis prize at the Woodlawn Plantation Needlework exhibition in '93.  That year the special prize was given for garment trim or accessories. 

So, what relevance does all this have to knitting anyway?

One thing that gets me fired up is the possibility of cross-pollination among needlecrafts.  Why can't I take a 16th century pattern intended for lacis, counted embroidery or weaving, and use it in filet crochet or knitting?  Why do I have to stick to traditional Scandanavian, North Sea island, and Baltic motifs for stranded colorwork?  For example, why not mess with this red bit of stitching, adapting its motifs for knitting? 

Why for that matter do I have to stick to any one type of needlework?   I've done that.  I've made the repro historical pieces. It's virtuoso work when done to the n^th level, but  it's also limiting.   I want to do more.  What gets me truly involved is moving away from staid verbatim reproduction in one of two directions, either -

• Making an entirely original and new piece, but doing it in such a way that were it transported back in time it would be accepted as yet another contemporary example of its type.
• Taking motifs, designs, or aesthetics from one branch of traditional needle arts and using them either in combo with another form, or for use entirely in another form.

This attitude one of the things that makes me a Rogue Laurel in the SCA.  Yes, making an exacting reproduction of a meticulously researched and documented artifact is a manifestation of skill (and perseverence) on a high order, but I don't see it as the ultimate expression of the deepest level of understanding. 

Believe it or not, I see the elusive goal of true mastery of a needlework form as having parallels in martial arts.  It's one thing to learn fencing, Judo, Karate or Aikido exercises perfectly and to perform them with grace and precision when required.  It's another thing to abstract the principles behind the exercises, and be able to summon them up to defend oneself from someone who doesn't know the other side of the script.    It's the inner form of these arts, the part that you can recognize at a visceral level, internalize, and use as a point of spontaneous application that is the goal of practicing the outer form of the techniques.

So from street fighting, I cycle back to stitching and knitting.  I have done many of these other things amd tried out many different needle arts because I see deeper parallels among them; because the lessons I learn in one pursuit inform my investigations of others.  And bogus pseudo-philosophy aside - mostly I do these things because they make me happy.

Footnotes:  SCA = Society for Creative Anachronism.  Laurel = SCA's kindgom-level award for achievement in the arts - one of the highest achievements possible withing the group, and an ardently sought-after goal.  I am honored to have been recognized in the East Kingdom in '79 for fostering the practice of historically accurate embroidery, in specific - blackwork and related styles.  Rogue Laurel = one so honored whose opinions differ from the established consensus, who ends up being in the minority on most arts-related issues, see related entries under "pain in the butt," and "gadfly."   I'm mostly retired from active participation in the SCA these days, but I can still be found on occasion at events in Carolingia (greater Boston, Massachusetts area branch).

More questions from my inbox:

Can you use the same type of charted pattern for knitting?

Why not?  It's a plain graph.  You can use any charted pattern for knitting, darned net, embroidery, colorwork or filet crochet so long as you understand the proportions of the units your chosen craft employs.  Even though the original was graphed in square units, my units are rectangles.  As a result, my piece is a bit squashed left to right because my units are wider than they are tall, and I worked across the piece's short dimension.  Had I worked the long way across, my dragon and George would have been squashed top to bottom instead. 

By carefully choosing the direction of one's work one can either minimize the effect of non-square units, or employ it as a design feature.  Here's a cross-stitch embroidery I did on white muslin.  The original graph was square.  The muslin's weave wasn't.  The flower units end up being squashed top to bottom, but that turned into a design feature. 

There are some ways around the problem if you want to work a square graph on a non-square medium but want to preserve the original height:width ratio.  Depending on their gauge, some knitters replicate every third or fourth row when working from a square unit chart.  This practice is built on the premise that knitting stitches are usually wider than they are tall (more rows than stitches per inch).   Others use drafting software with layering capabilities, importing the original chart, then overlaying a custom grid built to their stitch height:width ratio, finally knitting or crocheting off the new gridding.  Finally, some people manipulate their craft to produce units that are more square.  For example, I've seen some knitters take graphs and translate each box unit into a unit of 2 stitches x 3 rows.  While that "blows up" the design, making it a much larger piece than would working one stitch per one charted square, it usually does produce a result that is more visually true to the original.

Me?  I don't bother regraphing.  I play with the ratios and pattern placement instead.  For example, the Knot A Hat headband on wiseNeedle is worked from a square unit graph (available as a *.pdf via link on the pattern page). 

My knitted version is elongated along the length because my stitches are like most stockinette - wider than they are tall.  But I don't care.  I think the design's stretch isn't out of place and until I pointed it out, you probably wouldn't have noticed.

How did you get your mesh to look so even?

The same way you get to Carnagie Hall - practice, practice, practice.  [grin]  Seriously, in crochet just like in knitting one gets used to the hand motions of making a stitch, and providing the optimal tension on the thread becomes second nature.  I find if I concentrate on keeping things even, they go all to hell, but if I relax and just do the work - my stitches are all the same size.  Some crochet beginners strangle the hook, pulling the loops way too tight and making the formation of stitches more difficult than it should be.  Others make their stitches waaaay up the needle's shaft where the shank gets wider to accommodate gripping.  Those folks often end up with loose, irregular stitches as their too-big loops are distorted by the actions of making a stitch.  Again, not to be a smart-ass - but practice and patience are key.

Filet looks nifty.  I didn't know crochet did more than granny square blankets.  What other types are there? Where can I learn more?

There are all sorts of crochet books out there.  Not as many as there are knitting books, it's true, but there are quite a few.  Some are pattern collections, some are technique instruction books, and some are toss-the-rules and be creative sources of general inspiration and encouragement.  Crochet history however is harder to come by. 

The best source of info on crochet history and styles I've got is Lis Paludan's Crochet:  History and Technique.  It's a fair size tome that details not only crochet's murky historical beginnings, also covers how the craft developed over time.  It gives copious illustrations of various styles, mostly from engravings and other period sources, and even has a nifty how-to section in the back.  Unfortunately it appears to be in rather limited supply, although I still see copies at the original retail price on bookstore and needlework specialty store shelves.  It's also pretty well represented on library shelves.  [Reminder to self:  Add rider to homeowner's insurance to cover out of print needlework book collection!]

Progress continues.  Here's the latest:

I've included the tape measure because a couple of people who have seen the thing in person thought it was much larger, and were surprised by how small the individual meshes were.  It's not exactly teeny, but at around 8x6 meshes per inch, it's not exatly honking huge, either.

You can see the edge frame, now well developed along the left.  In the original (and in my book) it appears as a single-wide.  Here I've mirrored it along the long side.  There will be another block of the same at the right edge, but the top and bottom (right now) look like they're going to be single-wide.   I have to say I like the piece, and I'm quite pleased.  It will be killer on the door.

In house-related news, String Central is mostly put back together.  We've completed the network wiring on the basement and first floor, and I've been able to unpack and set up my base station machine and comfy chair.  Goodbye laptop!  Goodbye typing on top of the oil tank!  Slowly but surely I'm making a dent in the Continental Divide of boxes that separates room from room.  Yesterday's find was the long-lost lid to my spaghetti pot.  At this point I'm truly thankful for similar small points of progress.

Other questions that have come in via eMail:

How is crochet to do for long periods compared to knitting?

I find crochet slightly more tiring.  The way I hold my hook and thread involves a good deal of wrist rotation to form stitches.  By contrast, my knitting requires almost no wrist movement.  Also at the small gauge I'm working, my overripe eyes need a fair bit of light, otherwise I end up squinting and workng by feel.  Stab.  Ouch.  Got it?  Nope.  Re-stab.  Ouch.  Got it! Grab loop, loop, loop.  Repeat.  That's hard on both the eyes and fingertips.  As a result, I can knit happily with no ill effects for long stretches of time, but I can only crochet for a couple of hours before eyes, fingers, and wrists all demand stopping for a glass of wine.

What thread and hook size are you using again?

I'm using Coats & Clark Royale, size 30; and a recently made Bates US #10/1.5mm.  I posted a short discussion of hook sizes several digests back.  So far I've used 1.8 balls, but don't anticipate using more than three total. 

Where did you buy the pattern for your curtain/please send me the pattern.

If you've been reading along, you'll know there is no pattern.  I'm feeling this one out as I go along.  As for sending out the graph for the dragon or the edgings I've used, I might consider posting one or more of them on wiseNeedle some time in the future, but other than that, I am not sending any of them out.  If you've got access to my book on embroidery, all three are in there.  If you've got access to other needlework resources, including microfilm and other repro collections of early pattern books, here are the citations:

• Dragon panel - Siebmacher, Johann. Schon Neues Modelbuch von allerly lustigen Modeln naczunehen Zuqurcken un Zusticke. Nurnburg, 1597(?), 1602/3/4.  (Plate 30:1 in my book)
• Acorn, Leaf, and Flower Meandering Repeat - Pagano, Matteo.  Honesto Essemplo del Vertuoso desiderio che hanno le donne di nobil ingegno, cira lo imparare i punti tagliati a fogliami.  Venice, 1550.  (Plate 27:3 in my book).
• Framed Twist and Flower Border or All-Over Repeat - Troveon, Jean.  Patrons de diverse manieres inventez tressubtilement Duysans a brodeurs et lingieres et a ceulx lequelz vrayment veullent par bon entendement User Dantique et Roboesque frize et moderne proprement en comprenant aussi Moresque.  Lyons, 1533.  (Plate 28:4 in my book).

Of course, looking these up in a research library will entail actual work.  It's been my experience that people who idly ask for free patterns are rarely disposed to bestirring themselves to expend the effort.  However if there is sufficient interest, I'll consider publishing my graphs on-line. 

Elissa wrote to me to ask how I could tell what graphed patterns might go together well as I was looking for more borders to eke out the edges of the dragon panel. I am not quite sure I can answer, in part because I'm not quite sure I've made successful picks yet. I do a fair bit of this type of composing in the course of stitching up monochrome embroideries. The best way I can discuss this is to show a blackwork sampler I did a while ago:

I stitched this up while I was working on my book of embroidery patterns.  Some of the patterns on this piece made it into the book, others didn't.  The ones I left out were ones that turned out to be too late in origin for inclusion in the book, or whose documentation and provenance weren't complete or accurate as the rest.

You can see several things on this mostly-blackwork piece.  First, even though I was working exclusively in double running stitch (aka Spanish Stitch, Holbein Stitch) and cross stitch, there is a tremendous variation in density and the depth of tonal values among the various patterns.  There is also variation in the delicacy of line, even comparing the airy double running stitch patterns.  The highly geometric bit in a similar style to Jane Seymour's cuffs (center top) presents a very different look than the curled plume-like leaves in the bottommost left.

Now this piece is far from entirely successful for several reasons, design by accretion being the leading one.  Like my dragon curtain it was done "bungee jump" style.  I took my ground cloth and just began stitching, picking my patterns one by one as I finished the last.  The first bit I did was the sorrel leaf strip in the upper left (looks like clovers).  I worked more or less across and then down from there, leaving the center blank until I hit upon something to put there.  That happened to be my father's favorite saying, and a large yale, but I certainly didn't plan on them being there when I started.  (A yale is a heraldic goat with skewed horns, although some heraldic specialists will debate whether this is a goat or a yale.) The last bit to be filled in was the small rectangular area just below the yale, which I patched in with several smaller scale fillings commonly used in inhabited blackwork, finishing up with my sig strip at the center bottom (KBS '83).  I used a couple of these in my blackwork underskirt and Forever Coif, too.  

Had I actually sat down and planned the piece, I would have better balanced the placement of light and dark areas, and the apportionment of delicate curved lines with harsher block geometrics would have been more pleasing.  Those sorrel leaves for example are way out of place.  They're too light and too leggy sitting as they are on top of the darker knot strip.  The large double star motif beneath the yale's back hoof is also out of place.   While it balances nicely with the English acorns on top of "Worth Doing" and the star and fleur de lyse at the center right edge, in combo with the Chinese peonies just above it the heavy visual density weighs down the composition along the left edge. 

All this is a long way to go to answer Elissa's question.  In a piece as small as the dragon curtain, with a limited number of patterns, I wanted to call attention first to the center panel.  To that end, I framed it with a strip repeat lighter in value than the average tone of the dragon and knight unit.  I tried not to "fight" with the center panel, picking a repeat that was rather delicate in line rather than a heavier one to avoid the the overpowering effect demonstrated on my Anything sampler.  However, once that frame was completed and I wanted to add more width, I decided to use strips of a heavier, more geometric border around the whole piece.  With luck, now that the lighter inner area has been established (sort of like matting a painting), the denser second border will serve the same purpose as a dark carved wood frame on a painting - defining the inner space inside the frame and accenting the center, by contrasting with both the mat and the piece's focus.

A short post today on a time-stressed weekend day. 

Buzzing in on the hopping heels of last week's bunny, here's another small graph from my embroidery book.  This super-simple one is original. One dragonfly can be spot-placed, or they can be done in series using stranding.  A strip of dragonflies can be aligned either katywumpus as I show here, or all facing the in same direction.  In knitting, I think that these would be particularly fun to accent with shiny beads or duplicate stitching on the body or wings.  They'd also be a killer trim if done in bead knitting. 

Other uses for simple graphs include filet crochet (Mary Thomas' Knitting Book describes filet knitting, too); all types of cross stitching; needlepoint; and lacis or pattern darning.  I've even heard from people using TNCM patterns for wood marquetry and tile mosaics!

I was re-graphing this rabbit from my book of embroidery patterns, and I thought angora-fanciers might like to work it into a headband or sweater front. 

The original plate from 1597 showed a large group of animal motifs clustered together to save space.  It included this one, two coursing dogs (possibly greyhounds) a squirrel, an owl, a stag, a unicorn, a parrot, a yale, and the lion I previously shared for Gryffindor pullovers.

The past two days' posts aside, I have been making progress on both my lacy scarf and my fulled pillow.  Knitting on the pillow is almost done.  I've got maybe one more evening of garter stitch left.  This weekend I intend on fulling it when I do laundry.  I'm rushing a bit on it because I want to be sure to be able to full it completely before I have to leave this washing machine behind (it was a negotiated sacrifice in my house sale).  I'm afraid the older hand-me-down machine at the new house might not be up to the challenge.

On the lacy scarf, I've finished re-graphing the patterns I intend on trying out.   I'm working on modifying them a bit so that they play off each other better.  I'm also narrowing the edging by either messing with or eliminating the double column of faggotting shown in the pattern original. 

For those new to the term, faggotting is a true lace knitting stitch, in which increases and decreases occur on every row (as opposed to a lacy knitting stitch, in which rows containing increases and decreases alternate with plain knitted or purled rows).  One common form of this effect when worked in the flat takes only two stitches and two rows for the entire repeat.  Row 1 would be  an endless repeat of the (YO, SSK) unit.  The accompanying Row 2 would be an endless repeat of (YO P2tog).

So?  Why is it called "faggotting" anyway?  [Warning.  This is a Kim-theory, so go chip yourself an enormous grain of salt before reading on.]

It's not immediately evident why the name stuck to this particular knitting texture stitch.  In historical usage, faggots are bundles of sticks - especially twiggy sticks used as kindling or cheap firewood.  Nothing much looks bundled if you examine just knitted pieces.  But if you look at those pieces in in the context of other needlework contemporary to the Great Whitework Cotton Knitting Craze of the mid to late 1800s the reasoning is pretty clear. 

 Withdrawn thread embroidery was one of those contemporary needlework styles.  Commonly used for hemming or decorative insertions, it can range from the pretty simple to the amazingly complex.  The sampler below shows several withdrawn thread patterns spanning several different substyles (the lacy white-on-white bits).  Disclaimer and attribution:  this sampler isn't my own work, it's a piece in the collection of the National Academy of Needle Arts that I found doing a Google image search.  I didn't find a more exact attribution on their website for it.  Great work though!

The top three little bands on the sampler are the most widely known and used forms of the technique.  The others, while nifty aren't as often seen.  The two most common names for this substyle that includes the top three are "Italian Hemstitching" and "Faggotting."  The multicolor bands are double running stitch (aka Holbein Stitch or Spanish Stitch).  

You can see in the openwork bands that the horizontal threads of the linen ground were snipped at the left and right, then teased out.  The cut ends were secured with stitches, usually before any cutting took place.  The remaining vertical threads were bundled tightly with tiny hemming stitches that tie the  fabric threads together like little bunches of sticks.  In the more complex forms on this sampler, these bundles were further embellished with threads woven in among them, or were subdivided and/or twisted by additional stitching.

The second strip of the sampler with it's running VVVVVs is the most interesting one for knitters.  Compare the zig-zag pattern of one often-seen type of knitted faggotting:

The zig-zags produced by faggotting in knitting mimic the groups of verticals created in withdrawn thread hemstitching.  That's where the bundle idea came in, and from where I believe the knitting stitch borrowed its name.   This snippet is excerpted from Lewis' Knitting Lace, p. 146 (Yow!  I just saw the used book price. I need to update my insurance to cover my library!)

Again apologies to those on the updates mailing list. I did a bit more maintenance, adding categories to all the existing posts so it's easier to page through this ever-growing mound.

A couple of people have asked for the graph I used to knit the interlace shown on my overly warm teal and black alpaca hat.   Here it is. 

This one didn't make the cut for my book because it's one of the designs for which I lost my notes.  A long time ago I had a miserable move between apartments.  Several boxes were stolen off the back of my truck.  Among the things that went missing was a notebook full of source notations for counted embroidery patterns.  I had been researching them casually for more than ten years, and had hundreds compiled.  The sketches for most of them had already been redone on my ancient Macintosh, but all associated notes remained solely on paper. 

When I was composing The New Carolingian Modelbook I had to go back and confirm the exact origins for all the counted patterns I wanted to include.  I managed to find the sources for about 200 of them, but a third as many more have eluded me.  This particular interlace is from my collection of the lost.  It is similar to designs by Matteo Pagano as published in his 1546 book Il Specio di Penfieri Dell Berlle et Virtudoise Donne, but I can't swear that it came from that or one of his other works.  Given the relatively clumsy, heavy spacing and short repeat it might even have been something I doodled up myself after a day of research.

Many of these early Modelbook designs got there by way of Islamic influences (especially patterns cribbed from woven carpets and embroidered texiles).  Over the years the patterns drifted away from work worn by the elite to work worn by middle and then lower social classes, eventually ending up in folk embroidery where they never quite died out.  Counted thread needlework styles were revived big-time among the fashionable in the mid 1800s. Researchers found and reproduced surviving older pattern books, and began collecting motifs from traditional regional costumes and house linen.  Some of the later and folk uses of counted patterns include standard cross-stitch, Hedebo, Assisi-style voided ground stitching, and various types of pattern darning or straight stitch embroidery done on the count. 

This pattern can be interpreted in many crafts.  Historically accurate uses contemporary with first publication include cross stitch panels (the long-armed style of cross stitch is overwhelmingly represented in historical samples compared to the more familiar x-style cross stitch); weaving, or lacis and burato (types of darned needle lace). 

Counted patterns are a natural for knitting.  The first book of general purpose graphed designs that listed knitting as a specific use came out in 1676 in Nurnberg, Germany and was published by a woman:  Rosina Helena Furst's Model-Buchs Dritter Theil.  (the title is actually much longer).   There may be others that predate this book, but I haven't seen mention of them, and I haven't seen the Furst book in person.  It's in the Danske Kuntsindustrimuseum in Copenhagen, a tad far for a day trip from Boston, Massachusetts.  The entire group of graphed designs displayed in the early Modelbooks shows a straight continuity with the geometric strip patterns found in modern northern European stranded knitting. 

The short 14-stitch/17 row repeat of this graph does work well at knitting gauges.   I've always meant to use this one again on socks - either as-is or stretching it a bit by repeating the centermost column so that it better fits my sock repeat, or doing eight full repeats at an absurdly tiny gauge.  As is, you'd need a multiple of 14 stitches around.  A standard 56-stitch sock could accommodate 4 full iterations of the design without adding any columns.

Some people have asked how to get a hold of my book.  The answer is, aside from the used market where it is going for quite a premium, I haven't a clue.  Sadly all I can report is that the publishers absconded shortly after publication.  I have no idea where they went, and have had no replies from them to any queries since 1996.  I received only about a year of royalties on the first 100 or so copies, in spite of the fact that the book went through two printings with an estimated total run of 3,000.  New copies continue to trickle onto the market even today (they're sold as used but mint).  The new-copy seller has rebuffed my attempts to find the ultimate source.  

Moral of the story - don't enter into publication contracts without a literary agent, and if the company has a name like "Outlaw Press" there's probably a reason.

I thought readers here might like something interesting to look at while they were waiting for me to post a picture of my Forest Path stole in mid-block.

Knitting isn't my only needlework pursuit.  I also embroider  A while back I pulled together a book of historical counted thread embroidery patterns.  It proved as popular as the publisher proved to be untrustworthy.  Both are now hard to find.  The publisher appears to have disappeared, and the book is out of print.  Be that as it may, I still enjoy counted thread embroidery - especially blackwork.  Here's a piece I've been working on for quite a while.  (In fact, were it knitting it would qualify for inclusion in my Chest of Knitting Horrors^TM just for the amount of time it's taking to finish.) 

It's going to be a blackwork coif.  That's a small, flat bonnet-shaped hat.  The design is partly original, and partly adapted from 17th century sources.  I'm doing it in black Krenik silk on 50-count linen.  he working method of doing first rows of cross stitch, which are later entirely oversewn by a raised outline stitch (in this case, chain stitch) is something I'm toying with after seeing a similar approach in a photo of a half-done piece in a book of sources (excuse small images, something screwy is going on at PicServer.  I'll put the big ones back when they become available again). 

And a detail shot: