At long last I can present my finish photo. Not my mounted and ready to display shot, but my "all stitching done" pix:

and proof that I've signed the thing:

I finished it up within 24 hours of my last post. Where have I been since then?

Wallowing in post-project ennui. Knitting socks for Elder Daughter. Treating myself to a flat Millennium Frame for the next stitched project, which being silk, is not a good candidate for a round frame. Working on a lecture on embroidery patterns, to be given at the Hrim Schola XVI (also here)- an SCA event focused on sharing learning about needlework, to be held on 17 March. Working on TNCM2, which now looks to be topping out at 60 plates of source-annotated historical patterns, more or less. Handling work deadlines. Shuttling said Elder Daughter back to college, and Younger Daughter to fencing class. Mocking The Resident Male for being a latecomer to blogging. The usual.

Imminent Death of wiseNeedle

On a more serious note, I am also preparing to take down wiseNeedle. Some of the content will be salvaged and re-offered, like the patterns and the glossary. But the rest won't be.

Why do this after a on-the-Web run dating back to 1995? Mostly economics. I've supported the thing out of my own pocket since the beginning. It wasn't cheap because we need a commercial grade SQL service to support the yarn review collection, plus incorporation to protect family assets from potential suits by folks upset by yarn review content. Ad revenue made it a business, and taxes on that tiny income stream had to be handled, too.

Thanks to the advertising, wiseNeedle broke even for several years, but no longer. Yarndex made a slight dent in readership, but our independent non-sponsored stance preserved interest. Folk knew that when they saw wiseNeedle reviews posted, the information was all-volunteer and totally unsponsored. But when Ravelry broke loose, traffic here nosedived and never recovered. It's now at about 8 percent of what it was back then. They now take up the lion's share of knitting traffic on the Web, with their own advice boards and yarn review collection. It's clear that concerns beyond the hobbyist level - small time independents like wiseNeedle no longer have a place on the 'Net. Ravelry as a newly minted 500-pound gorilla, wins.

String and its URL will continue although we will be porting it to a lower cost service later this year. I am hoping to preserve String's back content, but I'm not sure how to handle wiseNeedle's sublinks. All of those (plus String's) may break. It's a shame that the yarn review back catalog of info will be lost. It covers lots of yarns dating back through time and is still a valuable resource for people looking to make substitutions. Unless there's an entity interested in buying and hosting the database (sans contributors addresses, to preserve their anonymity), it will be going away soon.

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O.k. Here I am:

Only inches away from total done-ness. Just a tiny bit more gridded void fill at the uppermost left hand corner, and to finish out two narrow strips in the final section:

I'll probably finish all of it up tonight or tomorrow. Then the only thing that remains is the signature strip.

I'm plotting that out right now.

Post-project separation sadness has already set in.

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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.

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