I get a big kick out of seeing what others have made from my patterns or pattern pieces. It's a bit like meeting up with old friends years down the road and finding out what they've been up to. I'm delighted to be able to show off any photos of their work here in the Gallery section.

My latest vicarious bit of happy warmth was provided by my knitpal Laura Need. She decided to do the Interweave Knits Paisley Shawl from the Spring '05 edition, but to finish it off with the simple edging I noodled up. She sent me the picture below and gave me permission to post it:



Laura used Zephyr, and her Paisley pinned out to about 46 inches square. She did a much more even job of the knitting and blocking than I did. Plus she had the wisdom to use a solid color. You can see the difference:



Laura's paisleys and eyelets really pop out. You can see the edging especially well. The piece's texture patterning isn't fighting for your attention with ground color variations. That's a big improvement. I took the lazy way out of blocking, using my wires rather haphazardly and patting them in place rather than pinning them down to tension the work. She did it the more labor intensive way that produces better results - pinning out the individual points evenly on a dimensioned blocking surface. (Hers also pinned out to be six inches larger than mine.)

All in all I'm extremely impressed and quite pleased that Laura found fun in my minor contribution to this pattern. A great job!

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

Four motifs done. My guesstimate is that four represents about 15% of the total finished area. That means I'm looking at something like 26 or so in total, with some of them being halfies.



It looks like the trillium background shapes will form rings around the star motifs. I'm really looking forward to seeing that develop. My next step though may be to work out the half-width motif set. That would include a half-hex, three normal triangles, one normal square and two half-width squares.

UPDATE - Looking for past posts here

I do try to post stuff here that I hope is useful. I also realize that much of it might not strike a reader as being useful today, but might stick in memory somewhere and pop up when the specific need is encountered. I've gotten a couple of questions (including a comment early today) about how to find past posts. I've tried to provide tools to do that.

First, for the knitting projects and some broad subject areas, I've set up category tags. You can see them in the right hand sidebar (you might have to scroll right a bit because of an over-large graphic I posted last week). Projects all are named something like "Project - Lacy Scarf" and index all the posts that mention each project. The broad subject categories also work that way. Clicking on the "Reference Shelf" tag will bring up all the posts that I thought people might find especially helpful, likewise "Embroidery" should find all the posts that discuss that subject.

Some particularly popular posts have merited direct access under the major category "References," also in the right hand sidebar. Yarn Labels 101 and 102 for example are two posts that get lots of traffic from people just becoming familiar with yarn labels and how to read them.

Finally for all those search needs that keyword indexing didn't anticipate, there's a search box in that same sidebar. You can type a word in there and bring up all posts that mention it, or you can click on the "advanced search" tag right below that box to do more complex multi-word or time-limited searches. Typing "booties" in the search box should find the posts I did on A. Krekel's pattern for booties that really do stay on.

I know I said I wasn't going to bore anyone with further progress on my North Truro Counterpane, but I did get to an interesting point yesterday, and my inbox has been graced with several questions.

First, the show and tell:



As you can see, I finished a couple more side squares of Motif #3, and seamed in most of the other little triangles that I knit over the weekend. That let me join #3 onto the two units I had already completed. I like the accidental trillium flower of negative space that forms where three motifs join. I'd love to say that was intentional, but it wasn't. There's lots that science doesn't know about this designing stuff, yet.

Now for the mailbag:

Aren't you going to have a bushel of ends to deal with?

Two bushels. Even though I'm knitting the squares out from the hex center, there's two for the center hex, plus two for each for six squares, plus two each for six triangles, minus one for the hex end I use to do the first square, and one for the end that doesn't get started at the outset of that first square. 24 in all for each motif. As you can see in the pix, I like to leave them long so they're available for sewing the motifs together. As I get further into the thing, I'll know WHICH I need to leave particularly long, and which I can plan to be shorter. Still, I plan on darning in ends incrementally as I go along rather than waiting for the end of the entire project.

Why aren't you blocking the motifs before sewing them together?

Good question. Sometimes I do block the motifs before I assemble them. This time I didn't. This particular no-name yarn and needle combo seem to produce motifs that lie relatively flat, showing the openwork well without the block. I suspect my squish problem WOULD be partially fixed by blocking, but leaving the hex motif live on the circular as I finish out the squares isn't exactly conducive to the knit-block-assemble production method. Plus pinning out each night's production means leaving the ironing board up to do the blocking, and I don't want to trip over it for the next umpteen months.

Are you going to leave the edges wavy?

I could. You can see that the lower edge makes a nice gentle wave. I could leave the thing raw, edge it with I-cord, or sew on a (yet to be designed) complementing edge strip just as it is. But I probably won't. Just on the principle that the biggest fun comes from the most abstruse and useless effort, I'll probably do up half hexes and half squares to produce a nice straight edge, then affix that as yet mythical edging to it.

Lovely crib blanket! You're nuts for spending so much effort on a baby blanket.

Huh? This is destined to be an oversized Queen-size spread for my own bed. (I've knit a blankie for each of the kids, why can't I have one, too?) If you think I'm addled for attempting this as a mini-throw, I'm sure you think I'm a gibbering raving loon for doing one that big.

I was busy this weekend past.



I worked out the plain triangle and made two. Both are sewn into the growing group. One is indicated by the arrow. I do have a bit of a scrunch problem, but probably not so much that it can't be ignored. The sides of my triangle are less tall than its base is wide. Therefore, when I'm sewing the bases of the patterned triangles onto the sides of the plain one, I have to squish them up a bit. You can see the slight rumples that result.

I do however like the way the points of the stars align. While the orientation I tried last time had more movement in it, because the stars were offset, this one will have less background area.



For those who have asked how I add arrows or other annotations to my photos - I use Macromedia Fireworks to slim, retouch, or otherwise manage my images. I cheat - the arrows are Wingding font "letters" added with the text tool.

Shoe size chart

Some people have pointed out that their European shoe sizes are off a bit from the chart shown yesterday. Mostly at the upper end. The chart's represented equivalent for US shoe sizes Women's 9 and above seems to work out one unit larger than people are reporting. So a 10.5 would be closer to a 42 than a 43. Grains of salt are advised.

I came across this on an Adidas shoe box, and thought it might be of interest to sock knitters, especially those knitting socks as gifts knowing nothing but foot sizes. It's a chart showing adult men's and women's shoe sizes in the US, the UK, France, and Japan. I've added the red line to show my own giant size - US Women's 10.5 (Euro 43, if such a beast exists).

Now by the official centimeter length my giant size works out to a squidge over 28.5 cm. I find my own wool and wool blend socks fit best if they are about 25-27 cm when measured from heel to the tip of the toe: stretchier, finer yarns at the smaller end, less stretchy or heavier yarn at the top end. The one pair of cotton socks I made was about 27.5 cm, to allow for that yarn's lack of stretch.

Why do I make my socks shorter than my actual foot length? If your feet feel like they're swimming in your socks, your socks are too big. Socks NEED to stretch just a bit for optimal fit. Otherwise one gets bunching and foot blisters where the fabric accumulates in folds inside the shoes. Too big socks also wear out faster. All that sliding and rubbing oversize socks do inside shoes translates to extra friction, and friction is a sock-killer.




Click on image above for full size chart

More bits and pieces are accumulating. You can see I'm more than half way done with the second meta-motif. I've got two triangles to sew on (I don't actually do the stitching until the squares on both sides of a triangle are complete.



In this photo you can better see what the motifs look like individually. The center hex is pretty straightforward. The triangle is knit base to tip. The tip's center is a textured stitch. The square (shown attached to the center hex at the bottom right) also features the same textured area in the parallelograms that flank its center spine. When the motifs are placed together, these textured areas join up to make the star-shaped framing device that surrounds the center hex's flower.

Unfortunately this sort of project isn't very good for blog progress reporting. From here on in it's going to be more photos of exactly the same thing, done again and again and again and again. You get the idea. I'll probably mark the completion of each meta-unit, and show a couple more photos of significant milestones - like joining the motifs using the plain triangles I wrote about last week, but I'll try to avoid boring everyone with needless repetition. Which means I'll have to think up something else to write about.

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.