Hmmm….. did I really just add up all the stitches on my Ukraninian Whitework table mat????

Anyway, it’s all finished, and in use on my dining room sideboard.

It is so long since I posted anything here, but I have been stitching and stitching and stitching on this mat, so I couldn’t really post progress pictures, could I? They would all have been the same! Just as well I love doing this sort of embroidery or it could have become very boring. But I just love seeing the patterns emerge as I stitch, and celebrating the completion of one side, then looking forward to another band of needleweaving.

Wait! I did find the needleweaving a bit boring. Oh well. Moving on…..

It is around 16 inches, 40cm, square and done on 32 count Belfast linen.
As usual, you can click on the picture to go to my Flickr page, then click on “All Sizes” to see a bigger picture.

And now – onwards to something else. And with a bit of luck, more frequent blogging.

I had a sudden urge to make a table mat or doily for our dining table, but I didn’t want to spend any money on it, so had to go with what was in my stash. The only suitable fabric was this khaki one, and the only perle thread I had in 2 different weights was this white…

So khaki and white it had to be.

I didn’t plan it out much really, and just started to stitch, using ideas from Pam Eaton’s book “Ukrainian Whitework”.  But I confess that after doing the centre of the first side I did plan it all out in Excel. I don’t have any fancy stitching software so I just use Excel. Just make the grid-lines into squares, and add the lines with the drawing function. Fiddly perhaps, but easy.  ‘Group’ the lines, then you can copy, paste and rotate them to produce repeated sections.

I haven’t decided yet what will be in the centre of the empty squares. My first thought was a satin-stitch motif, but now I think I might put some eyelets in them. What do you think – any ideas?

So what do I call it, now that it’s finished?
A blanket? But it won’t live on the bed.
An Afghan? Sounds like a biscuit!
A throw? Crazy word – I won’t be throwing it anywhere.
It will have to be ‘the Big Knitted Thing” I think.

72 squares, each one 20 x 20cm (8 x 8 inches), each one knitted with a different stitch pattern. 3 shades of wool.
I’ve been knitting the squares for a couple of years, adding another one every now and again because I would usually rather be embroidering than knitting. But now it is all finished. Well, except for some of the ends that aren’t sewn in yet, Oh, and I intend to crochet a border right around it. But other than that it’s finished LOL. And as you can see it is being used! KC the cat approves.

It’s lovely to snuggle into, on a cold wintery day; and it has found its way to our bed on a cold wintery night too.

I found lots of stitches I hadn’t tried before, and some of them I just love. The smocking (dark grey in the photo below) is really really textured and dimensional. Some of them would make fabulous jerseys if only I knew someone who would wear a hand-knitted jersey LOL. I wore them all the time as a kid, and a teen; and I knitted for my kids when they were little. But you hardly ever see anyone wearing handknits these days.

Knitting as a past-time is on the increase – thousands of members on the ravelry.com website, lots of knitting blogs etc; but but I don’t see anyone wearing the stuff. Well, not in NZ anyway. Perhaps they are in USA. But there’s lots of other fun things to knit now that I’ve finished the Big Knitting Thing.
Mr Dangly
Pin cushion (I’ve done of these, it’s great and I use it every day!)
Baby Doll Cradle Purse – scroll down the page – so cute. Wish I knew a little girl. Maybe I will knit one for me
A human heart
Dodecahedron
A Crazy Pokng Stick
A swine flu mask
and of course ….
a digestive system

Diamond Iris is hanging on the wall – most unusual as most of my embroidery ends up stuffed into a cupboard. I hummed and hawed over how to complete it, and came up with this method which works well I think, and was certainly easy to do.

I covered 2 pieces of heavy cardboard with purple fabric, then wrapped the embroidery around the smaller one. Then I sewed each of the 4 points of the smaller piece to the bigger one, and bingo – all completed.

Well, nearly all completed. Of course I found that the weight of front piece was pulling at the fabric on the back one and making the fabric pucker. And no-one likes a bad pucker! So I got some strong but thin beading thread and took a couple of stitches from each point right through both bits of cardboard and tied them off at the back. That means the thread is taking the weight, not the actual fabric, so no more puckering.

Easy peasy way to finish off a piece of embroidery.

Holy moly, I can travel through time.

I have just been looking at the statistics page on my Flickr account, and noticed that some people clicked on Diamond Iris to view it yesterday.

And yet I only posted it there THIS MORNING about 3½ hours ago!!

Woohoo – maybe I’m a Time Lord and will get to travel through time with David Tennant in the Tardis

I promise I won’t say a word about it just proving how far ahead of the rest of the world New Zealand is.

I am very pleased with how this design that was offered by CyberPointers has turned out.

For once, I have changed very little from the pattern – usually I cannot resist changing things as I go. I did use different threads, ‘cos some of the ones that were suggested are not available here. And I did change the colour of one of the leaves – it was supposed to be much lighter but I just didn’t like it, so made an ‘executive decision’ to change it LOL.

That leaf on the far right is a bit weird, isn’t it! But I like the way the one above it turned out.

I am going to have a break from needlepoint for a while, and start a Jacobean-type piece that I’ve had in mind for some time. I shall make it up as I go, so it remains to be seen if my idea works!!

I have finished the stitching on my whitework sampler!
But now what?

I really want to get this one finished and up on a wall, and not leave it to languish in a cupboard (the fate of most of my work!).
I will probably send it to a professional framer, but what do I do to preapre it? It needs a bit of a wash – any advice? I guess I cannot just chuck it in the washing machine, LOL.

So how do you clean your embroidery before framing it? It is all DMC perle, on linen, if that makes a difference.

Exploring the Pavilion stitch.
I belong to CyberPointers, which is the online chapter of the American Needlepoint Guild (imagine me belonging to an American embroidery guild!) and we have just started a stitch-along where we will be looking at various stitches, to see what we can do with them.

Yes, yes, I know the threads in this piece are not laid at all well! In fact, I made no attempt to lay them neatly at all. I just worked with the canvas in hand, no hoop, no stretcher bars etc, so I didn’t have a spare hand to use to lay the threads.

Of course, I have come up against the old conundrum – at what point does a stitch variation stop being a variation and start being a completely different stitch? I was thinking about seperating the rows of diamonds with a row of tent stitches – would it still be Pavilion stitch I wonder, or does that variation have another name?
Another example – in the 2-tone section of my exploration, I have done diamonds over 2, 4, 6, 8, 6, 4, 2 threads, but substituted some of them with 4 small diamonds over 2, 4, 2 threads. Now they are really Hungariain stitch I guess, but in this context I think they are just tiny Pavilion stitches.

And who cares what the name is anyway!! I hadn’t taken any notice of stitch names until I joined CyberPointers – I always just used the stitch I wanted and its name was immaterial. And now I’m in with super-stitchers who throw stitch names around with gay abandon (are we still allowed to say “gay abandon”? Perhaps it should be “wild abandon”. No; I refuse to get all PC. Learning stitch names is a big enough change )

I am thinking of making this the beginning of a stitch sampler a la Sharon B, of Pintangle. Have you SEEN her sampler?!!! Over 45 feet (13.5 metres) long and still growing!!!

And if you enjoy needlepoint, and haven’t joined CyberPointers, why not do so? Our next meeting starts this Thursday (9 July). And in the following meeting (in September) yours truly will be conducting a free workshop where we will make a notebook from scratch, with a piece of needlepoint on the cover. Come and join us.

Back on my whitework sampler.
Yeah!
So often, candlewicking is seen as simply french knots outlining shapes and designs, but where is the tufting that was seen previously? Little tufts of thread, with the loops cut to produce love fluffy bits.

I used to have a candlewick bedspread back when I was a cute wee thing (it was orange, and I loved it!) and what fun it was to pull out some of the tufts. Mum was NOT pleased.

So when I decided to include candlewicking, it had, of course, to include tufts. I suspect I may have packed my tufts too much. Or maybe not – who knows? I’m thinking this section looks a little sparse so I might put a couple of eyelets into the blank V spaces. I shall think about that.

Next some Colbert embroidery. Well, to cover myself, I shall call it a variant of Colbert as there seems to be some choice over exactly what Colbert embroidery is. Some websites say it is a shape heavily outlined, and the background filled with counted embroidery; while others say the shapes should be filled with pulled thread.

Either way, it seems to be descended from the same work as Assisi embroidery, which uses cross-stitch for the background, and doesn’t outline so heavily.

I think that strictly speaking Colbert work is usually quite colourful, so I’m not sure how it ended up in my whitework sampler. Other than that I had a space to fill and I liked the sound of it.

I finished this Market Tote bag over the weekend, though it’s really an Almost Market Tote as I made several modifications to the pattern.

The pattern can be found here: Kint 1. Magazine.

- Instead of having sloping side, I made them straight.
- I lost the ties at the sides.
- I made the thin strip a bit wider, and made it go right around the bag.
- I used 2 different yarns.
- I only have one handle instead of two.
- I made it a bit smaller.

Other than that, it’s exactly like the pattern

I’ve really enjoyed knitting over the last week or so – it didn’t upset my Mouse Elbow, so that’s getting better nicely and I shall soon be able to get back into some embroidery.

I have also made some gloves and a beanie for Brynley, and some gloves for me – but as we both left them at work over the weekend, I can’t show pictures right now. They were in response to the cold weather we’re having!! Really, it’s bloody COLD. We have a ramp from our backdoor instead of steps, and I need one bucket of water to get the ice off the ramp, and another bucket of water to thaw out the car. I don’t do cold.