This is new for me. I've had projects that spanned years (decades, even), but never before have I had one embroidery project that I worked on without stopping, that has taken more than a year. Even my blackwork underskirt was done in 10 months. But as of mid December, I have now spent an entire year working on my big blackwork sampler. I'm not quite done. Almost, but not quite:

You can see that I'm filling in the area to the left of the dragon. I've finished the first dark band, and am now on a lighter one just above it. Two more to go, balancing the progression of shade values on the dragon's right. Then it's a sliver of the voided leaf panel at the top of the work, to finish that off even with the edge of the strips below. And finally - I will sign the piece in the strip beneath the dark panel on the leftmost edge. And it will be done. Maybe two more weeks? More if work deadlines intrude.

Here's a close-up of the latest two strips:

The sharp-eyed will note that the voided one on the bottom is included in TNCM, on Plate 28:4. It's from Jean Troveon's Patrons de diuerse manieres..., published in Lyon in 1533. Those of long memory may remember that I've used it before. It's doubled, and appears on the left and right-most edges of my filet crochet dragon window curtain.

The Troveon's original is shown single width, but the halved fleur-de-lys motifs seemed to beg use as an all-over pattern. Also, the graph of the original is shown in reverse of mine color placement, with the foreground emphasized rather than the background, more like the treatment in the crocheted piece. (Come to think of it, that knot strip along the top of the curtain might be a candidate for the dark strip at the top of my current sampler section. Hmmm....)

The lighter strip I'm currently working on will be in TNCM2. It's adapted from a non-graphed (but oh-so-obviously-intended-to-be) design in Ostaus' La Vera Perfezione del Disegno..., Venice, 1561 and 1567. I've chosen to augment it here with the frilly edge treatment.

In any case, the holidays have departed here at String. The tree is undecorated, the cookies, panforte, goose, cassoulet, and other goodies have been consumed or distributed. And the long slog through the year commences.

Technorati : blackwork, counted thread, embroidery
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I'm still trying to work up my favorite mode of double running graphing. I've pretty much dismissed all of the dedicated charting programs. They don't allow the dot/stitch metaphor that I find far easier to stitch from than heavy lines superimposed on a background lighter grid.

Again, here's that jester snippet from TNCM. I find this clear enough to stitch direct from the thumbnail, even at its tiny size/poor resolution.

It's small, but it's clear. The lines are stitches, the dots represent the "holes" in the cloth being stitched. In something like Aida, Hardanger or Fiddlers Cloth, each dot is an actual hole in the weave. If one is using plain weave linen, each dot corresponds to the interstices between each two (or three, or more) threads over which the stitches are taken.

Here's the same pattern, graphed out in one of the stitching programs (click on this, to see it better than it is shown in the thumbnail):

Yes, there are some aids built into the stitching program, like decimal bars on the graphs (every 10th bar indicated), and stitch counts along the margins, but those can be added to my style of illustration.

My main beef with ALL of the stitch graphing programs is that they treat back stitch, double running or other straight stitches as an afterthought. Sometimes the back/double running notation can't be easily mirrored or manipulated (as in KG-Chart LE, which I used for the bit above). In others it always appears as an undifferentiated or symbol-represented line, with no indication of individual stitches. And in all of these programs, scale is limited. They've been invented for folk who stitch at larger gauges than I favor. My 18 stitches per inch (36 count linen) is a bit smaller than the 7, 10 or 12 stitches per inch many modern stitchers favor. Patterns plot out waaay too large for easy display or reproduction on book size pages. So far I've taken the demos of quite a few of the dedicated stitching programs for a test drive. To date I've tried and discarded PCStitch 9; WinStitch, SitchR-XP, DigiStitch, KG-Chart, Easy Cross, Easy Grapher Pro, STOIK Stitch Creator, and Cross Stitch Professional. I will say though that most of them do a fine job at turning photos or drawings into cross stitch. (I am a bit frustrated with programs that allow very limited trial periods. I work. Lots. My hobby investigations take place over months, not days. I would have liked to have gone back and re-tried some of the earlier programs I encountered later on, but was unable to do so because my 3-day trial had expired. Their loss, not mine).

Now I've turned to general purpose graphics programs. I need one that lets the user manipulate grid density and representation, that allows mirroring and rotation, and grid-constrained line drawing. Ideally I want one that allows either patterned lines, or that allows some sort of logic-based display controls (black pixel overlaid with white pixel = white pixel as displayed; black pixel overlaid with black pixel = black pixel as displayed; white pixel overlaid with black pixel = black pixel - you get the idea).

I'm not quite at the optimal yet. But I'm getting close. I did the bit below using GIMP - a general purpose open source graphics manipulation tool. Elder daughter (the one jumping up and down, waving madly over there in her dorm room) gave some vital assistance with layer manipulation and masking. Here's the result (click on this one too):

I'm not quite happy with the dots/voids. I find my original method from TNCM much easier to parse out visually than I do the new version, with dots in the center of each void. But that may be just me.

I'm going to soldier on, looking for something - anything - that can get close to my original. For the record, that was done on my long gone Mac IIcx using Aldus Superpaint. A program that has no direct cognate today.

All advice/leads on possibles are gratefully accepted. In fact, if someone manages to put me onto an effective solution to produce the look in the first snippet above using Windows software, and I end up using their method for my next book, I will reward them with a highly suitable stitching related gift.

Technorati : Spanish stitch, charting, counted cross stitch, double running stitch, embroidery, graphing, holbein stitch, punto scritto

I seem to have picked up some new readers here this week. I answer questions and comments from Kabira, Annanna, H. from Japan, and others. Recognizing that upon completion this heads to my pile of "finish me for display", is unlikely to emerge before the holidays are over (and may not be seen again before spring) I post my wrap-up now on the almost-completed piece. Apologies for the length of this post.

First, thanks for your kind words. I've had a lot of fun stitching this piece. My sampler is more of an exercise in perseverance than anything else. The wide pattern strips, though complex, are not appreciably more difficult to stitch than are the narrow ones. All follow the same basic logic, and once a stitcher is used to following that logic the only thing that can go wrong is miscounting threads. (Bright, indirect light helps with that).

My sampler is worked on 36 count even weave linen, using one or two strands of standard DMC embroidery floss, colors #310 (black) and #498 (deep crimson). Worked over 2x2 threads, it's done at 18 stitches per inch (about 7 per cm). The entire embroidered area measures out to roughly 16 x 32 inches (40.6 x 81.3 cm). I did not work it double sided, but the double sided logic does prevail.

The Clarke's Law sampler, like all embroideries on this site, is an original composition. However the individual strips are adapted from or inspired by historical sources. I comb period modelbooks (mostly pattern books printed before 1650) and photos of museum artifacts, looking for goodies. Then I graph them out and stitch them up. I've been playing with patterns this way since the early 1970s, and over the years I've amassed a collection of designs. I put out a couple of leaflets within the Society for Creative Anachronism, the first one being issued in 1977/1978, and reprinted a couple of times thereafter. I released a second, better documented leaflet in 1983.

Then in in the '90s some friends convinced me that others would find my notebooks useful (the leaflets containing only a small bit of what I'd been collecting) and introduced me to a publisher. The result was The New Carolingian Modelbook: Counted Embroidery Patterns from Before 1600 (TNCM). Sadly, the publisher turned out to be either exploitative or incompetent, or both, and to this day I've seen almost no return for the effort. But the book is out there, and continues to sell on the used book market for absurd prices. New copies continue to trickle in via eBay and a used book seller in New Mexico, so somewhere out there beyond my reach, there is still a source.

Be that as it may, I continue to collect and "play test" patterns on samplers like this one. Here's an index to the sources for the 22 patterns used on the Clarke's Law sampler:

1. TNCM Plate 32:1 "Twined Blossom and Interlace Meandering Repeat". Known affectionately as "The Brooklyn Pattern." Ultimate source - Domenico daSera. Opera Noua composta per Domenico da Sera detto il Francoisino. Venice, 1546 - one of my all time favorite modelbooks.

2. The alphabet for the main quote is from Sajou #55, posted by pattern archivist Ramzi at his Free Easy Cross, Pattern Maker, PC Stitch Charts and Free Historic Old Pattern Books blog site. Thanks, Ramzi! I played with it a bit, working the curlicues in red and weaving them over/under the letter forms.

3. TNCM Plate 69:1 "Grape Motif or Border Repeat". I graphed it up originally from a photo in Drysdale's Art of Blackwork Embroidery that showed the Victoria & Albert Museum's artifact T.14-1931. The picture available on line is MUCH better than Drysdale's black and white photo. Many of the other patterns on this piece come from this same source. Drysdale cites it as being Spanish, from the late 16th/early 17th Century. The V&A's attribution is Italian, 16th Century. I'd go with the museum's judgment on this one, and if given the chance to republish, would amend TNCM's listing accordingly.

4. Plume Flowers. Victoria & Albert Museum's artifact T.14-1931. I've charted this out on paper but other than stitching it here, I haven't published it yet.

5. Hops. Victoria & Albert Museum's artifact T.14-1931. I've charted this out on paper but other than stitching it here, I haven't published it yet.

6. Column and Wreathe Repeat. Victoria & Albert Museum's artifact T.14-1931. I've charted this out on paper but other than stitching it here, I haven't published it yet.

7. TNCM 68:2 "Seam Decoration or Border Repeat". Graphed from photo in Pascoe's Blackwork Embroidery: Design and Technique. Pascoe cites this as being from 1545. The original was worked along the shoulder seam join line of a butted sleeve man's shirt, stitched in all black.

8. Another alphabet from Ramzi's Sajou collection. This one is from #172. It's interesting to note that several of the late 1800s/early 1900s booklets he's got quote some early modelbook patterns closely enough to recognize the direct line of heritage.

9. Meander Repeat. Victoria & Albert Museum's artifact T.14-1931, BUT this one appears on at least one other source, also on display at the V&A. The keeper of the www.drakt.org website shows a display case with what's clearly a close kin to the T.14-1931 pattern, but worked voided style.

10. Yet Another Meander Repeat (I'm running out of descriptive names). This one is also from Victoria & Albert Museum's artifact T.14-1931. I've charted this out on paper but other than stitching it here, I haven't published it yet. I worked it voided, although the original is in double running only.

11 a-d (top to bottom)

a. TNCM 55:1. "Snail Border Repeat". My original, inspired by period designs.

b. TNCM 51:1 "Brier Rose Twining Border Repeat" My original, inspired by period sources. Also in my second booklet, Counted Thread Patterns from Before 1600, published informally in the SCA circa 1983.

c. My first booket, Blackwork published in 1978. Pattern #j, which I cited as being Italian counted thread work from the 1500s. No citation though, which is why it didn't make the cut for later booklets.

d. TNCM 52:2. "Flower and Bud Meandering Border Repeat". My original, inspired by period designs.

12 a-d (top to bottom)

a. My first booket, Blackwork published in 1978. Pattern #gg, which I cited as being English, very early 1500s. No exact source though, and I didn't include it in TNCM for that reason.

b. TNCM 54:3 "Pomegranate Meandering Repeat" and #53 Counted Thread Patterns from Before 1600. Another one of my own, inspired by period sources.

c. TNCM 49:2 "Acorn Meandering Border Repeat" One of the early set I graphed from the photo in Drysdale's Art of Blackwork Embroidery that showed the Victoria & Albert Museum's artifact T.14-1931.

d. TNCM 44:2 "Acanthus Meandering Border Repeat" also #55 from Counted Thread Patterns from Before 1600. Yet another from the Drysdale photo of Victoria & Albert Museum's artifact T.14-1931. (I do adore that source!)

13. Wreath and Columns Repeat. Victoria & Albert Museum's artifact T.14-1931. I've charted this out by hand but other than stitching it here, I haven't published it yet.

14. Columbines(?) and Twists Voided Repeat. This one also appears on the same Drakt website photo taken at the V&A as one of the sources for #9, above. I can't make out the artifact's accession number though. And yes - I graphed it direct from the on line photo, as seen on the screen.

15. TNCM 58:1 "Strawberries and Violets Meandering Border Repeat." Also #61 in Counted Thread Patterns from Before 1600. This is the pattern adapted from the very famous Jane Bostocke sampler, also resident in the V&A. But my source materials were photos in Gostelow's International Book of Embroidery and King and Levy's The Victoria and Albert Museum's Textile Collection: Embroidery in Britain from 1200 to 1750. If you're familiar with those sources you'll understand why my squinting at them came up with the odd raspberries in between the flowers, instead of what can now be plainly seen as simple twists on the V&A's own photo page. I'd amend the description to "After Bostocke.." were I to republish TNCM now.

16. Black strip pattern. From page 57 of Louisa Pesel's Historical Designs for Embroidery, but I worked it outlined and voided instead of foreground stitched.

The patterns I tested on this piece will probably make their way into a sequel to TNCM - once I find a graphing program capable of handling double running stitch with ease, and that can chart out giant repeats at a small, but useful gauge. I want to be able to present largest of these patterns on a single page, and to do it using a background dots and voided line style of presentation which I came up with for use in TNCM, and which I find much easier to follow than regular dark line on background graph paper charts:

(Snippet of Jesters pattern, TNCM 69:2)

What's next? I'm not sure. I'm certainly not stitched out. I'd like to do another big sampler to try out more patterns, but I haven't decided on its size or form yet. There's also the possibility of a set of matched but not matched napkins - six all using the same colors, but all different. There's also a pile of holiday knitting to achieve between now and the end of the year. Rest assured - I won't be idle.

Technorati : Holbein stitch, Spanish stitch, blackwork, counted thread, cross stitch, double running stitch, embroidery

A look at how far I've gotten on this last strip, sans frame:

I still think a narrow dark black strip is needed below this panel to establish a visual border along the bottom edge. After that the only stitching left is to fill in some small doodles at the motto's line ends where my text didn't span horizon to horizon. And to finish off the thing I need to edge out the piece with mitered fabric strips (sort of a self-matting made from cloth), and figure out whether to frame or rod-suspend the final piece. I've been working on this now since the first week of December, averaging between 30 and 45 minutes per day. Not particularly fast, but about what I thought it would take when I embarked on my project.

To answer my far-flung offspring - What's next? Not sure. I owe a ton of holiday socks, so I may take a knitting interlude. But I haven't broken the stitch itch yet, and will probably start another randomly executed band sampler, although I haven't decided it it should include a saying, some alphabets, or be just another collection of patterns I'm auditioning for future publication.

Another possibility is the immense dragon from my favorite source (seen at the left of center in the photo). I've already begun charting it up. It's gigantic. Just the little pepper shaped blossom object at the lower right spans more than 40 stitches. Given that few people appear to be interested in this stitching style at the level of complexity that fascinates me, I'm not sure if a multi-page dragon graph would be of use to anyone else. Still, I might do it just for the fun of just doing it. We'll see.

Technorati : Embroidery, Holbein stitch, Spanish stitch, blackwork, counted-thread, double running stitch, strapwork, voided embroidery

Evidence of progress on my penultimate (possibly ultimate) strawberry panel, way down at the bottom of my Clarke's Law sampler:

A strip this wide with a voided filling does take a bit of time to complete. Still, I'm chugging along, about a quarter of the way through, perhaps a bit more. And I'm thinking on what to do next. I do owe a ton of holiday socks that need to be knit between now and the end of the year. But I'm just not engaged to produce socks right now. What I want to do is to keep stitching. It's always a bittersweet moment when a project is within sight of the end. There's impatience to be done with it and be on to the next. There's indecision about the direction of the next work. And there's dissatisfaction with and pride in the current piece mixed 50/50. I can see what I'd have done differently on this one, and I can also point to bits that turned out even better than I expected.

In the mean time, I hope someone got use out of the three part tutorial on stitching logic. Here are recap direct links to all of the posts:

Double Running Stitch Logic 101 - Two Sided Work and Baseline Identification

Double Running Stitch Logic 102 - Working from the Baseline

Double Running Stitch Logic 103 - Accreted and Hybrid Approaches

I also took an earlier and less organized stab at the subject here:

Double Running Stitch Logic

Technorati : Spanish stitch, blackwork, counted-thread, double running stitch, embroidery

I'm still working on the accreted section post, but I'll hop in to answer my own questions from my last note.

First, here's progress to date on the current strip.

The baseline anomaly in this one may be easier to spot now. If you click on the image above and look closely you'll see that the pattern is composed of two identical sections that never meet. There's a void that runs through the entire longitudinal stem. Therefore since the upper and lower sections are totally separate, there are TWO baselines in this one, an upper and a lower one. Here's a suggested baseline for the upper section:

And the baseline for the lower section:

Sneaky to be sure. But the sneakiness is my fault based on a misinterpretation of the sources I had available.

This pattern is graphed out in TNCM as my (early) interpretation of the center-most design in the lower section of the ultra famous Jane Bostocke sampler in the V&A. At the time I did this I was working from a tiny 2" square photo in a book, and did not have the luxury of the magnificent photos now available on line. I did the best I could under the circumstances, fudging the little violets in the center somewhat, missing the ornament running down the center of the main vine (which may or may not connect the top and bottom halves of the pattern) and missing the true nature of what looks to be mulberries between the strawberries in my piece. In the original they're more like little spiral tendrils. I've also missed a couple of other fruits/leaves branching from the main line. If I were to re-issue this design now I'd play up "inspired by" in my description. Still even with my clumsy amendations, the pattern is recognizable as a scion of the Bostocke design. Or perhaps not since no one identified it over the past week.

Technorati : counted-thread, double running stitch, holbein stitch, sampler, spanish stitch

Another quickie. First apologies to the mathematicians and topologists among us. I should have more correctly stated "any continuous wall maze can be solved by following a right hand (or left hand) wall." Discontinuous mazes are like double running stitch patterns with breaks in them. They can't be stitched (traversed) 100% double sided.

I've made some progress since the last picture which was taken this Friday past. I've selected the penultimate strip for my piece. This one is wide, and I'm working it two-tone.

You get extra points if you can spot (from this partial repeat) something about its baseline. Hint: It's not that the strawberry pips and texture on the pansy type flower keep this from being a candidate for 100% identical double sided work. With a little bit of cleverness, the two sides could be made to read mostly similar, although the pips and textures would by necessity not be identically placed.

Double points if you can identify the source I used as point of departure. TNCM owners, ssshhhh!

In other news, I'm still working on a follow-up post with more info on baselines, and on the accreted section stitching method.

Technorati : blackwork, counted-thread, embroidery, sampler

While writing and graphing the last post took up the better part of a week's discretionary time, I did make progress on my Clarke's Law sampler. Here's the area to the left of the center motif - the area that balances a similar section to the right. You'll note that the pattern I used for the tutorial is the lower of the two narrow red double running stitch bands.

Lovely photo courtesy of Younger Daughter, who is much better with a camera than I am.

This week's follow on post covering the accreted section double running stitch tutorial will be late. I've begun it, but some obligations this week will make it hard for me to finish it by Friday.

Apologies!

Technorati : Spanish stitch, double running stitch, embroidery, holbein stitch, voided embroidery

Amazingly, in the middle of the constant stream of work-related chaos, I did manage a half day over the weekend to unwind. Here's the result:

I've finished the panel of narrower bands to the right of the central motif. Now, with my right hand edge better established, I can finish out the voided, red band immediately below. Then it's on to th set of four narrow bands on the other side of the center. They'll be different (and different widths) but they will also alternate red and black. For the record, all four of these narrow bands can be found in TNCM, the pomegranate and foliate bands being two of my special favorites.

Here's a partial shot showing more of the piece. I still have to fill in "-A.C. Clarke" immediately to the right of the word "magic," but I haven't identified the smaller but complementing alphabet to use. I'll fill any left-over space above and/or below the author's name with another narrow black double running stitch band.

And on the bottom? Yes - there's one more wide band to go after all of this is done. I'm not sure. Something spectacular, with liberal use of both red and black. I'm not sure what that will be either, although I do know that whatever it is it will need to be between 50 and 60 units tall. (point of reference - the grapes at the very top of the photo above are 65 units tall.

Technorati : blackwork, counted thread, double running stitch, embroidery, holbein stitch, spanish stitch, strapwork

Where have I been? First swamped with work, then on my annual week at Cape Cod, then swamped with work again. Through it all I've kept stitching, although admittedly the vast majority of new stuff below was done on the beach in North Truro:

I finished the inhabited bit in the center, but decided not to stretch that strip left and right. Instead I did one repeat, put a new voided strip below (as yet unfinished), with the goal of stacking narrower simple double running stitch bands left and right of the center motif. The narrow band of red acorns is from my very first pamphlet on blackwork, which I produced in the SCA circa 1975 or so. The pomegranate under it is from TNCM, which was published in the mid-'90s.

I also knit on socks when the evening's light grew to dim to stitch. My beach report and photos will follow. But as usual, I'm totally under the gun with work obligations here and have to run. Consider this a "drive-by blogging."

Technorati : blackwork, counted thread, embroidery, strapwork

The latest strip:

I've been alternating red patterned panels and lines of black lettering. I've run out of lettering, but I'm keeping the red-black-red alternation. This one is also from the V&A 14.931 sampler. I'm working the foreground double running stitch using a single thread of DMC 310 black, and the background in long armed cross stitch using two strands.

I'm having way too much fun with these patterns to stop. I've been talking about a sequel to TNCM for years, but now I'm engaged in doing it. I'll be resuming my search for a decent charting program (or general purpose graphics program) specific to the needs of legible presentation for double running stitch. And given my horrible experience with the publisher of The New Carolingian Modelbook, I'm looking into other options, in specific - the feasibility of self-publishing, but I know very little about the various web-based micropublishing alternatives, but I'm open to all concepts. I do know that for this type of book paper copies are still valued by most. I don't believe that there's a critical mass of stitchers out there yet who would make use of an ebook stitch reference when hard copy sits so quietly in one's workbasket without consuming batteries.

I'm also considering different formats. The last book was a 200+ page compendium of patterns, with lots of appendices of various sorts. I don't think that's necessary this time out. Other options exist. Shorter booklets or broadside sheets for example lend themselves more easily to web-based publishing both for the issuer and the downloader. Pricing is also problematic. The income stream this would represent is quite small, and the burden of record keeping as a small business for taxes is immense by comparison to any possible profit (discounting entirely the major effort involved in creating the work itself).

So I put these question to the few folk who visit this place and who I presume might be interested in such a thing:

1. Would you be interested in a sequel to TNCM?

2. Would you find ebook format (meaning to be read on a book reader or iPad) useful?

3. Would you be open to receiving a print-your-own PDF rather than bound paper?

4. What length book would you consider worthwhile - a leaflet of 20 pages or fewer? A booklet of 21-50 pages? A small book of 50-100 pages? 100+? (Bearing in mind that content for a 100+ page book would take a while to compile).

5. Any suggestions for publishing options aside from self-created PDF download via wiseNeedle, or commercial services like Lulu, iUniverse, or Etsy? Any cautions on the commercial service route?

6. Would you object to a higher proportion of original and adapted patterns mixed in with exact stitch recreations, so long as all patterns were documented as to origin and modifications (if any)?

7. Anything else you want to see in a book of patterns of this type?

Technorati : Embroidery, blackwork, counted thread, double running stitch, voided

The latest strip. As you can see, a relatively un-normal quiet week allowed me to finish up the last lettered strip and begin the next. This one is done in standard double running stitch (aka Spanish stitch, Holbein stitch) using one strand of plain old DMC cotton embroidery floss. I was thinking of working the background, but I think I'll leave it plain. I don't want to overwhelm the delicate scrollings.

I graphed this from the same photo of a Victoria and Albert Museum sampler that many of the other strips here and in TNCM came from. If the link above doesn't work, search for item #T.14-1931 (it's also pictured in Drysdale's Art of Blackwork Embroidery). It's listed as Italian, 16th Century in the museum records, but Drysdale lists it as later. Another source lists it as Spanish, which is where the attribution in TNCM came from, but that's wrong and if I were to re-issue the book, would be corrected. If you squint at the photo you'll see the sources for my tilting columns, grapes, and the hops flowers and plume flower strips.

But this pattern doesn't appear only on this one source (right edge, lower four up from the bottom, and just below a red pattern, also see the snippet below). The unknown keeper of the www.drakt.org website took some photos of other samplers at the V&A among them is a page of showing shots of two cases of voided work. Thank you Unknown Keeper! If you look at the centermost of those three photos, you'll see a pattern very much like the one on 14.931, but instead of outline only like that sampler's (and my) rendition, this one has a filled in background. Here are the three versions of my current pattern side by side:

The 14.931's version is on the left. The unnumbered V&A bit from the Drakt site is in the center, and mine is at the right. I charted mine from 14.931, as best I could. Thankfully I have a better photo from which to work, provided by long time stitchpal Kathryn. For the record, I have not seen this exact base pattern with its distinctive frilled/curvy leaves in my amateur's wanderings through historical modelbooks, although there are quite a few designs in them that are vaguely similar to it.

Let's look at the two historical pieces. The V&A calls out 14.931 as possibly being a professional's work sheet - a sampler in the truest sense of the word, collected by a stitcher of high proficiency as a record, as a reference. The stitcher did just enough of each pattern to set the repeat. The Drakt photo is of a finished band, tricked out with accompanying side flourishes. I'm not sure what the finished band would have adorned. Possibly a pillow or bedcovering, or some table linen. It's not impossible that it came from clothing, but linens are more likely.

Discounting the worked background, the similarities between the two outweigh the differences. Those are minor - the treatment of the center binding band and stems/bodies of the central flowers, and the treatment of the diagonal arm that links each up-down motif. 14.931 uses a more architectural binding in the center, with more delicate center stems. Its diagonal arm is adorned with an S-shaped squiggle rather than chained solid fill diamonds. But even with the differences between the two historical renditions, it's clear to me that the two stitchers involved were cribbing from the same source, with minor changes creeping in much like the modern game of telephone, in which a comment whispered to one end of a line and then passed up along the chain often turns out different than the original message. I happen to prefer 14.931's lines and proportions, so that's the pattern version I started with.

My amendations are mostly in the treatment of the two terminal flowers in the pattern's center, a minor elaboration of the binding bars in the center, and the filling in the diagonal arms that connect each central motif. I didn't like the sponge like "down flower" at the center of 14.931, and I had trouble seeing exactly what was going on with the "up flower." Plus I didn't like the smashed tulip look of the comparable center bloom in the Drakt photo. I tried several variations on the S-squiggle in the diagonal arm, but didn't like any of them. I ended up with th ladder shape in order to make the airy and open terminal acanthus-like leaves look lighter by comparison. And then I added the second narrow binding bar to correct proportions in the motif's center. I could have raised the original bar two stitches, but I liked the way that it lined up with the separation between the leaves, so instead of moving it I increased its depth and intensified 14.931's horizontal lines.

I consider my own changes very much in the spirit of the original, and well within the range of variation presented by the two historical samples. I've preserved the look and feel of the pattern without debasing the delicacy or detail of the original, and left it a totally identifiable scion of its parents while tweaking it just a bit to my own taste. Your mileage may vary.

Technorati : blackwork, counted thread, double running stitch, embroidery, holbein stitch, spanish stitch

Thanks to a relatively quiet week with only two late nights and one day of weekend work, I managed to make significant progress on my sampler.

I finally finished the band of tilting columns and started on the final line of lettering.

After the lettering I have room for several more patterned strips, the exact number depending on how wide each one is. I'd like to include a row of strawberries, but I haven't found a historical pattern for them that I really like, so I'll probably doodle up one myself. I'm also considering several inhabited bands, with dragons, lions or mythological creatures, not unlike the mermaid strip I included in TNCM.

Another possibility would be a series of two-tone patterns, using both black and red in the same strip; or another long armed cross stitch band of a pattern similar in style to the one at the top, but worked voided. That would be very heavy though, and if done at all, should probably be relatively narrow. Maybe I'll save that for the last one, to give weight to the bottom of the composition.

Technorati : BLACKWORK, CROSS-STITCH, Embroidery, counted-thread, double running stitch

Work continues to gnaw on my life and spit out the bones, but I do have something to share. Caroline, a regular reader of the blackwork discussion group on Yahoo, used a line unit pattern from TNCM to make a sweet biscornu:

The pattern she chose is the Brier Rose Twining Border (Plate 51:1). It's one of my own as opposed to a pattern with a specific period source, and it's one of my faves. I really like the way she's taken the corner and adapted it to fill the top of her pincushion with a chaplet of roses. I've used the rose pattern several times, but always as a longer border run either with or without the corner; and I've never played with working the flowers and stems in different colors.

What's a biscornu? It's a little eight sided pillow-type pincushion, made up from two squares of fabric of the same size. They often have a bead, button or stitch dimpling the center to accentuate the shape. Some are stitched on both side, some on one. Biscornus have become more popular recently, with the enthusiasm for them starting in Europe a couple of years ago. Their popularity has blossomed because they're a charming little project, ideal for showing off counted or freehand embroidery. They've been featured in recent issues of both print and on-line stitching magazines and blogs, with lots of free patterns on line. There's a nice article about making biscornus here.

To get the odd shape (which is the origin of the name, from the French for "quirky," or "odd shape"), the two squares are sewn so that the points of one square align with the center of the sides of the other (think about taking the two and matching them exactly, then give one of the squares an eighth of a turn clockwise or counterclockwise). Caroline has finished hers especially nicely, with neatly done stitching along the seam. You can see the point of her bottom square matching up with the center of the stitching on her top, ornamented one.

In any case, great job Caroline! A lovely (and useful) little project. I'm delighted that she thought to share the joy of her needle with me, and that she consented to give permission for me to share it with you.

If you've stitched, knit or otherwise worked something from one of my patterns and would like to see it posted in String's gallery, please let me know.

Technorati : biscornu, blackwork, counted-thread, embroidery

Suzie asks to see the back of my Clarke's Law sampler. Here it is in the dawn light:

I've not been very assiduous about making it 100% two sided, but double running stitch does lend itself to highest efficiency if one follows that logic. I'm also using knots, for which I am wildly unapologetic. Also, I'm not one of the back-is-perfection nazis. Neat, yes. Long jumps and stringy bits can be shadow-visible from the front of the work. Plus work should have a logical progression that uses thread efficiently. Rabid about it though - no. Historical works weren't perfect.

If you notice, both the plume and hops flower patterns contain elements that cannot be worked 100% double sided - isolated lines or units not attached to the main work area. For example, in the hops flowers those are the little detached diamonds that inhabit the central motif. If I were to work this pattern double sided I'd modify it slightly, adding a vertical connecting each of those diamonds to the lozenge that surrounds it. That way front and back could be completely alike. But since the back on this won't be visible once it's mounted, I'm not making an extreme effort. Still, you can see that with the exception of the voided backgrounds, I'm pretty close:

Plus as you can see from the back of the piece at the top, I'm on the letters that follow the hops band. What to do next? I haven't decided yet.

Technorati : blackwork, counted thread, embroidery, voided

Spring floods here. A minor one in the basement, brought on by the inordinate amount of rain we've had in this area this month, and at work, with more deadlines rushing one upon the other. Which must be good for business, but is exhausting none the less.

Last post I promised two things. The first one is a dream project. Something I will probably never have the time or resources to accomplish (especially the time): my own embroidered casket. Not the kind you're thinking of.

Back in the 1600s the crowning achievement of what passed for female education was the completion of a small box covered with embroidery. These were called cabinets or caskets, and often featured dimensional embroidery. They were about the size of a large tabletop jewelry box and were truly spectacular. The Peabody Essex museum in Salem has one one dated to 1655.. Here's a particularly nice one in the Minneapolis Institute of Art's collection. They're highly sought after by collectors.

Via Needleprint, I stumbled across this:

It's a modern chest base, made by a woodworker specifically for creating cabinets. If you click on the link you'll see that the individual panels are made to be removed. All that needs to be done is stitch up a piece of the correct dimension and lace it onto the panel, then refit the panel into the cabinet. Now all I need do is set aside two years, a pile of silks and metal threads, some excellent linen, and $800 for the box base (including shipping). Another item on my ever growing never-never list...

The second thing I promised was word of a snail invasion in the Antipodes. Again, not the kind you're thinking of. Garden plantings are safe. But Friend-of-Friend Fred Curtis, resident in Australia happened upon my book and is doing all manner of happy things with my snails. Here's a trial for a man's necktie to be covered with snails. He also stitched a camera straps using TNCM patterns (shown in process), and has used another of its patterns on a baby bib. But back to the snails. Here's another of his pieces, offering up early spring inspiration to those of us in the Northern Hemisphere.

(Photo reproduced with permission). I'm always tickled to see stuff worked up from patterns I've posted, both for knitting and embroidery. If you'd like to see them posted here in the Gallery, please feel free to send me an image or a link. Fred - thanks for the smile!

Technorati : Embroidery, counted-thread

Poking my head up from yet another marathon sprint at work here. With promise of another one hard on the heels of the last, I'm probably surfacing just long enough to note limited progress on my sampler and report other news.

First the progress:

You can see that I've completed another row of text, and I'm on to another double running stitch panel. I'm working this one voided too. It's a mishmash, with the bulk of the elements taken verbatim from the sampler that provided the previous strip. The hops flower(?) and the strange ocarina-like turnip things on the side are direct quotes. The finials on either side of the hops flower were very difficult to copy though, so I took the liberty of substituting bird heads for them. Lots of patterns of this style/era include animals, humans or birds (all or in part) sprouting from vegetation. My treatment of the voided area is however a total flight of fancy. I chose to use half-cross stitch, massed into a field of diagonal lines. I used a diagonal fill on the Do-Right sampler, too:

Unlike the graph paper like squared fill I on the grapes strip, I haven't seen historical precedent for the diagonal line treatment. But it's not totally illogical. If you've seen an artifact worked this way, please let me know. Other unusual treatments of the voiding include working the background narrower than the foreground and the direction of my diagonals. I've only seen one historical piece worked this way - a late 16th early 17th century panel photographed in Cavallo's Needlework. I graphed that one out, it's in TNCM on Plate 74:1 - I worked a bit of it a while back, and am considering doing it again on this piece:

Mirroring the diagonals on either side of the central motif is new. I haven't done this before, and I've never seen it done on any other piece. Again - I can't claim originality, there's only so many ways to do things in needlework, and it's a sure bet that the most obvious have been tried before. One last thing I'm planning on doing is NOT filling in the voiding in the background behind the little triangular areas above and below the strange, mutant turnip things. That will make the central hops flower motifs on their lozenges of darker background look a bit like a series of very large beads.

Given my impossible work schedule, the stitching density of both the foreground motif (again worked with two threads of my DMC floss), and the background (worked with one thread), this panel should take me quite a while. After this one comes the rest of my quote. So far I've stitched "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indi-" Next comes "-stinguishable from magic. In all probability, the "magic" won't fit on the next line of text. I'll deal with that problem when I get there.

Next post - snails in the Antipodes! My dream casket! (Not the kind you're thinking of...) Stay tuned.

Technorati : BLACKWORK, COUNTED-THREAD, EMBROIDERY

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

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

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

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

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

Progress continues to mount on my Do Right sampler. The band at the bottom will be wider than the present stitched area, and the upper part will be flanked by two longer vertical strips. These may be two-toned, possibly with foreground in double running and some sort of background, but I've not decided yet for sure. My thread quantities are very limited, to the point where doing full up long-armed cross stitch is precluded.

Here's what I've got so far. Details of the honeysuckle strip from the V&A handkerchief photo, and of my phoenix are presented for NeedleGal and Maria, respectively. Enjoy!

Stitches used so far are the obvious ones - double running (aka Holbein Stitch, Spanish Stitch), and plain old cross stitch. Nothing fancy at all. The back is neat, but not compulsive, due to the nature of the stitching it's almost reversible, although I've taken no special pains to make it so, and yes - I do practice the stitching heresy of using knots on the back of my non-reversible pieces.

Oh. And I'm cleaning up my graph for the phoenix, translating my pencil scratchings and the as-stitched presentation into something usable by others.

Technorati : embroidery

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

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

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

For those who have asked, the dragon panel pattern from the Siebmacher modelbook I regraphed for The New Carolingian Modelbook has been posted over at Bibliodyssey.



Apologies to anyone who wondered why this was posted three times.  I've had problems wrestling with the "post away from home" feature.

Enjoy!

Long-Time Needlework Pal Kathryn (she of "too many centuries, too little time") is mid-sock, knitting up a pair loosely following Paton's own recipe for Kroy Socks. She's using Kroy in Retro Red, plus navy and Blazing Blue. The nifty cloverleaf motif she's using is the reason for this post. She's adapted it from my New Carolingian Modelbook, Plate 1!

As ever, I'm tickled to see one of my pattern children make it out into the real world. Great socks, Kathryn! You made my day. (Photo is Kathryn's, reproduced with her permission.

Technorati : knitting

I met my major deadline today, and am beginning to decompress. The best way to do that is to think of something completely different, so I've begun to contemplate patterns in general, with some idle thought to my Spanish hat. So I began playing with motifs I have lying around. Like this one

I don't think this particular one is great for the hat, but I have an odd fondness for it, plain as it is. As the source annotation states, it's one of the patterns I included in The New Carolingian Modelbook. While it looks like it would be at home as a border on the wall of a 1950s era tiled bathroom, it does in fact date back to 1546 by specific annotation. It may well have appeared elsewhere, although most of the da Sera patterns are pretty unique to his books. (If you think pattern piracy is rife these days, you'll not be surprised by 16th century publishing ethics).

This particular pattern would work as nicely for stranding or for knit/purl textures as it does in cross stitch or other forms of counted thread embroidery. In fact it would have a number of advantages if done in knit/purl:

• Complete reversibility
• Low curl factor - roughly equivalent amounts of knit and purl
• Deep texturing - the knit/purl sections would pull in a bit like ribbing unless strongly blocked
• Ease of memorization - purl rows mimic the lay of the knit rows below them, and there are only two different row patternings, alternating blocks of k2, p2, and alternating blocks of k6, p6

So I put it here in part to make up for the consternation I caused with yesterday's subject line.

Technorati : embroidery, knit

Another entry from long ago. The link provided is no longer good, but the advice still holds. Copies do surface every now and again on eBay and on AbeBooks. Nothing has changed about my royalty situation or the low esteem in which I hold the owners of the publishing firm and their total lack of responsibility. This first appeared on 24 June 2004.

Some people have asked me where to buy my book of charted embroidery patterns. I have to say that there aren't many places that sell it. It's a long, sad story involving publishers who were sloppy and unprofessional at best, and downright unscrupulous at worst. Copies do surface every now and again. I wish I could say that I was selling them, or that I had a prayer of getting royalties from those transactions, but I don't.

However a friend just notified me that some copies have surfaced on eBay. The seller isn't the original publisher, they appear to be an independent bookseller. I also apologize that the books appear to be going for well over the original cover price. I have absolutely no affiliation with this seller, nor will I benefit from these sales. But if you're desperate for a copy, it's the only source I know.

Hmmm. As I was writing today's entry, I wanted to refer back to a post I remembered writing back in June of 2004. Apparently not all of the posts for that month imported correctly when we transferred our archives over. So the posts you'll see today are hand-carried ports of the AWOL material. Apologies for the deja vu. True new content tomorrow. I promise.

Material originally appearing on June 14, 2004. For the record, the pattern for the Spring Lightning Lacy scarf is now in the main wiseNeedle pattern collection.

WORKING REPORT - SPRING LIGHTNING LACY SCARF

My lacy scarf is done!

As planned, the ribbed center section pulls in a little bit, making the two diamond panel ends flare out. Stretched and blocked, across the widest point of the edgings it measures 14 inches at the end and 12 inches at the center. It's about 80 inches long. That's big for a scarf and narrow for a stole, but I like the size. I really enjoyed this project. It was just the right combo of super-easy and super-exacting. The Greenwood Hill Farm 2-ply laceweight yarn was wonderful. I Can t say enough about it. It's the softest, most buttery Merino I've ever worked with. It's hand-spun look is unique. You can see the slightly whiter areas in the photo - those are spots where one of the plies of the two-ply yarn gets a bit fluffy. There's a lot of variation skien to skein in the amount of the fluffy bits, so if you order it or buy it at a sheep and wool show, you may want to try to pick skeins that are similar (or not, as your taste and project needs dictate).

I'm not sure whether I'll keep this scarf or give it as a gift. On one hand I really like it. On the other hand, while it would be an interesting contrast with my guy-style brown leather aviator jacket, I know several people who might appreciate it as much as I do. Plus I'm not tired of my Kombu Scarf yet. Good thing I have the summer to think about it before scarf season resumes.

FILET KNITTING

Here's an obscure style. Mary Thomas in her Knitting Pattern Book mentions Filet Lace Knitting. It's a style of knitting more or less equivalent to filet crochet, which is itself an adaptation of earlier lacis and other filled net or withdrawn thread style darned embroidery. In this set of styles, the needleworker follows a graphed pattern, working solid or "empty" squares. The pattern is built line by line by these blocks of squares. This butterfly insertion is a good example of filet crochet:

(Pix from http://www.knitting-crochet.com - attributed there to Star Needlework Journal, 1917)

On page 263 of her book, Thomas describes a way to do something like this using knitting. Solid blocks are formed by units of three stitches x four rows. Spaces look to be formed by a combo of yarn overs and bind-offs. I haven't quite figured them out yet, but Thomas gives several illustrations and a couple of easy practice pieces.

I'm asking if anyone has ever actually tried this because I have never seen any lacy knitting that was done this way - not as a piece of actual knitting, nor in a photo either on the web or in any other book. I have never seen a lace pattern for a project done in this style either. So I'm asking. Have you done this? Do you know of any pix or other sources for the style?

The reason why I'm asking? I'm in the middle of one of those panting-and-eyes-wide moments of gotta-do-it-but-how? inspiration. Yesterday we closed on the new house. I am now the proud owner of a massive Arts and Crafts style front door, with a glass window that's 30 inches wide by 18 inches tall. There's mounting hardware there for a lace curtain panel, currently holding a dingy scrap of Woolworth's best. The door cries out for a better curtain.

But not just any lace panel will do. I've **got** to make one, and not only do I want to make one, I want to make one from THIS panel from my book of embroidery patterns:

The ultimate source is a book published in Nuremberg Germany around 1597 by one of the more prolific and well-known makers of embroidery pattern books. Not only did Johan Siebmacher put out several (this pattern was in his Schon Neues Modelbuch vol allerly listigen Modeln naczunehen Zugurcken un Zusticke"), his books traveled all over Europe so they're very well represented in museum collections. Many plates from them were copied and re-issued during the counted pattern "Renaissance" of the mid 1800s. This particular panel has cropped up several times over the years - often simplified or truncated. The most recent adaptation from it of which I know is a pattern for an cross stitched kitchen tablecloth and curtains set in an Anna magazine from the mid 1960s.

I haven't a clue as to how I'd go about making my George and Dragon panel, but I've got the will, the how-to book, the cotton yarn (Crystal Palace Baby Georgia), and the blissful confidence born of total ignorance.

Technorati : knitting

I know there are folks who are looking for my book on embroidery.  Every now and again a copy or two surfaces in Albuquerque, where the fly-by-night publisher was.  Always at the same bookseller.  It looks like that same bookseller has "found" a couple more copies.   I get nothing from these sales, but I do know that people are rabid to lay hands on the thing.   Even if this sale is closed by the time you get there, keep an eye on these people because if more copies resurface anywhere, it will probably be with them.

Please note that I have no affiliation with the seller.  In fact on my previous attempts to contact them, they told me that I was dead (which was news to me); and rebuffed my request for the publisher's last known address. 

My thanks to embroidery pal Mistress Karen Larsdatter for spotting the sale notice!

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.

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.

I am so flattered!?

My friend Nancy has done an amazing thing with some graphs from The New Carolingian Modelbook. She took the tulip repeat from Plate 5:1, and the dragonflies from Plate 12:2, some snappy color choices, a good eye for placement, a comfy garment shape, and a true talent for stranded knitting and came up with this:



I'm tickled pink (and blue, and green, and yellow...)

Details on the graphed patterns

Tulip - This pattern was published at least?three times?prior to 1600 (early pattern book publishers freely copied off each other.)? The first appearance of it I've found is a book entitled Furm Oder Model Buchlein, put out in Augsburg, Germany, 1524.That makes it from?one of the earliest extant books of graphed patterns. (It's theorized that broadside sheets were sold prior to entire books of collected patterns, but none of those leaflets survive.) The?other appearances of the tulip pattern?I've stumbled on were in Matteo Pagano's Trionfo Di Virtu, Venice, 1559; and Sessa's I Frutti, also Venice, 1564.

Dragonflies - This one is my own, inspired by insects appearing in a series of Italian pattern books from the 1530s.



The excellent photo was taken by Nancy's friend Terri (credit where credit is due). Nancy didn't tell me the yarn she used, but she's a frequent visitor - perhaps she'll see her masterpiece and leave a comment.

For those looking for a copy of TNCM, it's hard to come by. The publisher did a disappearing act shortly after the book came on the market. Copies continue to trickle out for sale, and it sometimes shows up used or on eBay. Both Amazon.com and abebooks.com list used copies as being available, although some of them are at grasp-the-chest-and-stagger high demand/collector prices.

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.

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.