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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Altogether a satisfying holiday season here at String Central.

We started off festivities last Friday, with a latke-fest.

We decorated the tree and deployed the M&M Man Army on Christmas Eve day, while the dinner was cooking:

There's no such thing as too many ornaments in this house, but with so many on the tree, the special ones get overlooked. So they go on a small wrought-iron stand that sits on the coffee table:

Saturday brought Christmas Even dinner. The Resident Male outdid himself, with lobster bisque, pan-seared foie gras, a succulent and crispy-skinned roast goose with chestnut stuffing, ragout of wild mushrooms, and roasted golden beets. He even made an apple charlotte for dessert.

Sunday morning was rife with the traditional anticipation until everyone was awake:

Christmas day was another goose. (You can't beat a two-goose holiday!) This time at the now-traditional gathering hosted by an old friend. It started as an "orphans' holiday" in which those of us who had not gone to visit family for Christmas celebrated together. Over the years the gathering has become its own family, with themed dinners. This year's was Swedish, with a warm and savory fruit soup to start, mushroom tarts, gravalax, the goose, three-meat stew, cream cake and many other goodies I've omitted mentioning. And a lot of good fun.

In terms of holiday present haul, I made out like a book bandit, courtesy of The Resident Male and Elder Daughter. Chief among my booty are these two volumes from the husband:

Needlework Through the Ages by Mary Symonds Antrobus and Louisa Preece is a huge tome published in 1928. It's lavishly illustrated with photos (most black and white but a few in color). It's a general survey course of embroidery starting at earliest known bits, through the end of the 1800s. A highly opinionated survey, I might add. Many of the photos are of items that are still in private collections, rarely included in other works. I will have much fun reading this, raising eyebrows at the authors' various diatribes, and exploring the photos it contains.

My other gem is L'Histoire du Costume Femmes Francais 1037-1774 by Paul Louis de Giafferi - the first volume of a two-volume work issued around 1925. (The second volume spans the years from 1774 through 1870.) Each volume contains multiple albums of illustrations - stencil colored (as opposed to ink press printed) - with accompanying descriptions. Some of the plates from this first volume are available on line, and some are available in a 1981 paperback re-issue. But the original is magnificent. And inspirational! My French may be rusty, but reading is easier to speaking, so this is more than a "pretty pictures" book, for sure.

He also gave me a contemporary work, Viking Clothing by Thor Ewing. This looks to be an excellent reference for accurate re-creation of men's and women's dress of the period.

Elder Daughter also caught the historical spirit, but in a lighter mood. She gave me Kate Beaton's book, Hark! A Vagrant. Highly funny. And Younger Daughter crafted paper sculptures. For me, a swan basket. For The Resident Male, a desk dragon:

Low key festivities continue, with the majority of us being all or mostly off from school and work. Hope your holiday is similarly pleasant, filled with family, friends, good food, and fun.

A brief foray back into knitting. A long-deserving, cephalopod-loving pal of mine bespoke a hat. Not just any hat, a hat in the shape of a squid. How could I turn down a challenge like that? So this weekend past, finishing up last night I made one.

There are several squid hat patterns on the Web, but I didn't want to make any of them. I wanted to make a more hat-shaped hat, but with fully-rounded tentacles. I thought about knitting the tentacles first, then working up from there. While there are glove pattens that start fingertip and work down, I dismissed the idea as being too fiddly. And seaming the tentacles onto a brim-up cap - even with mattress stitch onto a provisional cast-on row wouldn't give the "bodily integrity" I wanted. So I decided to work top down with a double-knit ear band, with tentacles worked in the round.

The following post-mortem can't properly be called a pattern, but the adventurous might be able to work up their own hat from it.

SQUIDLEY - A METHOD DESCRIPTION

Clicking on the image above will reveal more details.

I used approximately 150g of a DK-weight rustic wool, and US #6 (4.0mm) 10-inch long double pointed needles. I also used 12 stitch markers (four of one color, eight of another), plus a double pointed needle of indeterminate size as a large stitch holder later on. I used small scraps of white felt to make the eyes, and sewed them on. Large sparkly buttons or commercial googly-eyes could also be used. Duplicate stitch in a day-glow yarn would be suitably squid-like.

My gauge ended up being a very stretchy 5.25 stitches per inch, with the double knit section being looser.

I violated every rule of knitting, making no gauge swatch, and planning nothing out before hand. I can't speak to quantity or yarn name - this being a coned Classic Elite remnant from their old back room, well aged in my stash.

I started at the top, with a standard figure-8 cast on, the same one I use on all my socks, putting six stitches each onto two needles (12 total). From there I increased standard-sock toe style (at both sides of the toe, every other row) until I had 40 stitches total. Then I decreased at the same points I increased, but upped the rate to every row, until I had 20 stitches total. I worked a couple more rows plain to finish off the little squid-wing nerdle at the top.

After that I designated five evenly spaced increase points and began shaping the top of my hat, working make-one invisible increases at each marker, working them every other round. About 2 inches down from where I began the hat body increases, I added an additional five increase points to broaden out the shape a bit and make it more full. I worked those in the same every other row progression as the other five until I had 88 stitches, and the hat body was wide enough to sit comfortably on my head. From there I continued in stockinette for about 4 inches, until I had reached the top of my ear (more or less). At this point things become interesting.

On the next round, I took a second strand of yarn and holding it with my main strand, knit all the way around with both strands. This was the set-up row for the double knitting section and doubled the number of loops on my needles. From here to the point where the tentacles start, the hat was worked double-knit style. I do this using a strickfingerhut (knitting strand manager thingy), to hold my strands side by side, but some people prefer to work double knitting in two passes. In either case, what you end up with is two layers of knitting, "back to back." Remember - I worked the set-up row using two strands of yarn. As I work the next row I will tease the double loops I just made apart, and treat each one as a stitch. I will also use the two strands of yarn separately (this is where the strickfingerhut comes in handy to manage them).

Using Strand A, I knit one of the two loops that make up the first of my set-up row stitches. Using Strand B I purled the other loop of that first set-up row stitch. Taking care not to cross the strands, I continued this way all the way around, alternating knit-with-A stitches and purled-with-B stitches. I ended up with 88 knits interleaved with 88 purls, for a total of 176 stitches. NOT TO WORRY - the hat will NOT grow twice as wide. My own gauge for double knitting is slightly looser than plain one-strand stockinette I worked this way for about two inches to make a nice, cushy, warm earband (which is not a bad idea on any top down knit hat). At this point the hat-part of Squidley was done and it was time to make tentacles!

Squids are decapods. They have eight shorter tentacles plus two longer ones with little pad-like sucker-bearing ends. The two longer ones are often skinnier than the other eight. This worked out well for me as you will see.

Taking care to begin on the stitch column that aligned with the center of the squid-nerdle at the top of the hat, so that the two long tentacles would be properly lined up with the sides of the hat, I began moving my stitches to my spare circ. As I moved them I placed tentacle defining stitch markers, like this. I used two colors of marker (marker and Xmarker) to make life easier.

8 - Xmarker - 18 - marker - 18 - marker - 18 - marker -18 - Xmarker - 16 -X marker - 18 - marker - 18 - marker - 18 - marker -18 - Xmarker - 8

Then I shuffled the stitches around the circ so that I was at one of the Xmarkers that designate the smaller tentacle. I took two of my DPNs and moved the stitches onto them BUT I held my two receiving needles in one hand and put knit stitches onto one and purls onto the other. I ended up with two needles held parallel, with the stitches assorted around them, ready to knit in the round in stockinette like the finger of a glove. You might like to use more and shorter DPNs, but all I had in this size was a set of 3, so I was stuck.. All of the tentacles begin this way, shuffling stitches from the long circ onto DPNs for working in the round. I worked the two long tentacles first, shuffling stitches around the DPN to get to the second one, so that the memory of working the first one would be fresh (remember, I was working on the fly with no written directions).

To make a long tentacle - Starting with 16 stitches, Work in stockinette for 10 rounds. K2 tog, k6, k2tog, k6. Work in stockinette for 10 rounds. K2 tog, k5, k2tog, k5. Work in stockinette for 10 rounds. K2tog, k4, k2tog, k4. Continue this way until only 6 stitches remain. At this point I moved the stitches to one needle and worked another 2 inches I-cord style, then I divided my stitches back onto two DPNs to make the sucker pad. Make 1 (invisible increase), K3, M1, K3, knit one round. M1, K4, M1, K4. Knit one round. Continue working this way until you have 16 stitches total. On next round K2tog, k4, SSK, K2tog, K4, SSK. Then K2tog, k2, SSK, K2 tog, K2, SSK. Then K1, K2 tog, K2, K2 tog, K1. The final row is S1-k2tog-PSSO, S1-k2tog-PSSO. Break the yarn leaving an ending tail, and thread the tail through the final two stitches to end off.

To make a short tentacle - Starting with 18 stitches. Work in stockinette for 5 rounds. K2tog, k7, k2tog, k7, work in stockinette for 5 rounds. K2tog, k6, k2tog, k6. Work in stockinette for 5 rounds. Continue this way until you reach the row that leaves you a total of six stitches. Knit only one row of stockinette instead of five at this point. Then S1-k2tog-PSSO twice, break the yarn leaving an ending tail and thread the tail through the final two stitches to end off.

Finish off all ends, and sew on eyes of your choosing!

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Pre-holiday bustle continues here at String Central. Cookies have been baked, cakes marinated, menus planned, the tree obtained (it will be decorated this coming Saturday), candles and chocolate coins obtained, presents squirreled away awaiting wrapping and distribution. You know the drill, or live it vicariously through others.

Speaking of presents - here's one. I was charmed by the stitchable iPhone cases available for both the latest and last model phones. I don't have an iPhone, but that didn't stop me from grasping the fun of such a thing. So I took three of the Ensamplario Atlantio patterns and fitted them to the case dimensions and stitch count. One caution - I did these the week that the iPhone 4 was released, and all three patterns are based on the stitch count for the earlier model's case. I would suggest if you're stitching for a newer phone that you start in the middle of the design, aligning it to the center of the case, and work out from there; rather than starting at one end or the other.

If you click on the image above, you'll get a full page size JPG to print and stitch for the iPhone fiend in your life. (Google iPhone Case Cross Stitch to find one of the many retailers who carry the plastic pre-punched cases.)

Enjoy!

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Long time readers here will remember that December can't happen without sufficient cookies. Ten kinds. This year, plus panforte and fudge. Which makes quite a pile on the sideboard:

What kinds?

Starting from the top, and going around clockwise, and ending in the center

1. Mexican Wedding Cakes - a pecan shortbread type. Very yummy.

2. Raspberry Thumbprints - Still looking for a good jam thumbprint cookie whose dough retains it shape better. And I suppose I'd be better off with jam instead of preserves, which don't melt as evenly.

3. Mint Cocoa Swirls - Mint baking pieces were a gift from Needlework Pal Kathryn to Younger Daughter, who produced these. Slice and bake is an underrated cookie type. Will have to explore this more deeply in the future.

4. Oysters - a hazelnut spritz with dark chocolate ganache filling (my own invention).

5. Thin Ginger-Spice - this one (with a handful of finely minced preserved ginger for extra oomph) is rolled out with a peculiar gizmo to impart the design instead of using cookie cutters. I am told that cookies formed this way are called Spekulatius in Germany - Thanks Rainer!

6. Buffalo Bourbon Balls - I usually use rum in these but we were out, so I reverted to the original recipe and used bourbon.

7. Peanut Butter Sunburst - Instead of the traditional fork marking, we use a cookie stamp.

8. Earthquakes - a brownie bite style Chocolate Crinkle cookie, rich and very chocolaty. Nicknamed for the obvious fault lines.

9. Chocolate Chip - the traditional Toll House recipe, with nuts.

10. Lemon Cut-Outs - a standard sugar cookie, with extra lemon juice and zest in the cookie, plus a confectioners sugar icing made with lemon juice instead of the recommended royal icing.

The fudge declines to make an appearance, being still under sentence of refrigeration prior to being chunked into pieces. And yes, those are the two panfortes on the sideboard, marinating in Armagnac. I'll top those with melted chocolate prior to consumption.

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O.k., I've finished the upper right hand corner, shown here in a traditional String pre-dawn fuzzy photo:

And here is all that's left to go:

Just the upper left. You can see I'm finishing out the leaf strip that runs across the entire top. Then I'll find several smaller strip patterns for the area beneath it. I'll use two relatively narrow dark strips to set off the space, similar to what I did on the right, then fill in with lighter ones. But they will be different from the set on the right. I used five total there. I might use six on the left. It will depend on what strikes my fancy when I get there. After that the only thing that will remain will be signing the piece in the small blank area immediately beneath the mega-dark strip on the left hand center edge.

I get notes from folk marveling on my rapid progress. But it hasn't been all that speedy. The first note I posted about this project was on 2 January of this year. I had already been stitching on the piece since around the second week of last December, but hadn't written about it because I was in the middle of posting my tutorial on graphing line unit patterns using GIMP (November-December 2010). Here's the first snap of the thing, so you can see the progress since:

To be fair, just the small area I completed yesterday is larger than many contemporary commercial samplers, but even so, a project in a simple technique that takes more than year to finish even when working with daily diligence, isn't exactly being worked at light speed. Or is being stitched by someone with a day job...

In other news, there are major seasonal celebrations afoot. First is a happy birthday to Long Time Needlework Pal Kathryn Goodwyn -she of "Too many centuries, too little time." Long may she research and stitch! And I tease readers here again about her forthcoming Flowers of the Needle series, which I've had the opportunity to see in preview. It's worth every bit of slavering, panting anticipation.

Plus it's Cookie Season again in String Central's kitchens. That means the obligate ten varieties, plus Panforte again this year. I delight in having an apprentice baker now, and no longer having to staff the entire manufactory myself.

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