It's Never Too Late To Start . . .

a project, be it a blog, a book, or a needlepoint. These pictures you see below? They are taken of a needlepoint I bought from the famous Needlewoman's Shop in London in 1979. When I was 14 and had saved up all my house-cleaning and baby-sitting and oddment-earning monies one year and went with my school's drill team and band to Newcastle, England, in the first-ever Friendship Force exchange program. Yup, that's when it all started. The Friendship Force, that is, and I'm proud to say I was a part of it.

So at the tender young age of 14, being a sophisticated needlepointer, I ventured into this big shop. Full of screen-printed needlepoints from floor to ceiling. I wanted to buy something for me and my mother, who had taught me all the needle arts, so I looked. And looked. And perhaps caught some of the salesladies' eyes who thought perhaps I was up to no good, I was looking so long. And you know, choosing a piece to stitch was hard! It really was. The European/British pieces were different in style from the American pieces I had seen, and I was a bit intimidated by the enormous selection.

I finally settled on 2 pieces, canvases complete with yarn and instructions, that came folded in a box. I was so proud of my grown-up decisions and ability to withstand the teasing from my fellow students about the amount of shopping I had done with my saved up monies, and I managed to bring these boxes all the way back to the States, ready to show my mother what I had bought for the two of us. That moment was a typical moment for us, really, and has been one of the examples I use to show my friends how unthinking and quite unkind my mother could be. Her response when I brought these two boxes to show her? "Well, I don't really like either one of them. I guess you bought the swans for yourself, so I'll just take the other one."

But this is not a post about my difficult relationship with my mother; it's about stitching projects like the swan piece, entitled "Sunrise," no matter how much time has elapsed since buying them. I found the companion piece to "Sunrise," entitled "Sunset" when cleaning out Mom's home after her death, and both pieces are in my "to be stitched stash" even 30 years later. In one way, I'm glad I waited as long as I did, when I have a bit more skill and a few more resources and a lot more experience with kits. Like, they never have enough yarn.

Heck, for that matter, even the canvases that call for "x" number of skeins of DMC wool (which you can't find in Atlanta any more - I've tried) or Persian or Appleton are often wrong. 'Member that piece I posted about buying in Quimper, France, in 1997 and stitching during the evenings of spring and summer 2008 before I closed the shop?? I ran out of one of the colors of DMC wool earlier this year, short 75 stitches from completing it. 75 stitches! That's all! (Webmaster Bill counted the empty holes one evening, that's how I know.) And then began the mad dash calling all of the needlepoint stores in town, none of whom carry DMC wool. I finally had to buy a skein on-line, but at least I finished it, and here are the pictures of the tiny little bit of stitching I had to do before it was all over. Note to former customers: yes, yes, I really did feel your pain when you were in this position.

The part I hadn't finished was underneath the handle of the copper pot.

Here's another picture that will show the un-stitched area better:

The picture is a little dark, I know, but the holes are more pronounced.

So, on to the Sunrise swans. I used the Rolaframe frame from the above piece of needlepoint so that it would stay square and be more manageable to work on. It's a BIG piece of needlepoint, and working on a frame keeps the edges of the canvas tucked away so you don't have to mess with them or wo-man handle them. And learning the lessons from the still-life above, I'm stitching the entire thing in tent stitch (where the back goes up and down) rather than continental stitch (where the back is slanted like the front) to conserve wool. The shades of Anchor wool are 30 years old, and I really don't want to have to stitch large sections of this piece with borrowed colors or go hunting on e-Bay for one color out of a huge stash.

I did find one flaw in the colors that came with this piece, though: one of the color numbers had two numerals switched, so the wrong color of wool got put into the box. Had I not had the experience of customers running to my shop with a panic-stricken look on their face I would probably not have known what to do. But I did! I ran (well, drove) to my storage unit armed with some Anchor-to-Paternayan conversion sheets from the internet, and still made my own decision about which color I was going to use, based on the color-scheme in the piece itself.

So here are some pictures of the WIP, a work I stitch on in the mornings on weekends before I get going with my days:


The part that is rolled beneath the swan shows more early-morning water with the swan's cygnets around her. You can see the highest one to her left (your right).


Here's the box it came in. Can you say "70's packaging??" (Sorry about the flash - it was too dark a shot without it.)


This is some detail of the swan herself. She's not entirely white, as my 14-year-old mind couldn't understand, because of the light source coming from her other side. Something my artist friends have taught me. The blues and greens that are her darker shades give her an outline and some definition.



Sooo many shades of yellow in the sunrise-on-the-water section. It was a bit hard to distinguish one shade from the others on rainy or cloudy days, when the sunlight was less.

She's still coming along quite nicely and I'm enjoying stitching her. Immensely. I feel so glad that she is out and showing the world her stitched self, instead of sitting in a box, languishing away, for another 3 decades.

Next on my stitching agenda for my weekend mornings stitching sessions is a Hardanger ring box I bought at market years ago. The kit came with the fabric, thread, and instructions, and a pretty cut-glass ring box to go on top of the stitched piece. The store-bought lace on my dressing table is ready for the yard sale bin, and I'm excited to have both a current stitching project AND a piece ready for stitching, too.

Have a great new year, and will post more early in the new year!

Website Updates

That's right, my website has more stuff on it. That's one thing I'll say about this long, dry summer waiting for temp assignments to come in - I've gotten a lot of work done on Nease's Needlework.com! Let's see, what have I done recently?

• Added some Featured Products to coincide with the school year (including samplers and a constellation in honor of my friend Sirona who teaches science for gifted kids and knows sooo much about planets and stuff!)
• ALL the shades of Persian yarn that I currently have in stock. There are over 300 shades on my website, and about another 50 that are out of stock (i.e., I didn't re-order after I closed up shop so as not to overstock the storage unit and its budget), so if anyone is looking to match a color of yarn or add to what they already have they can do so via my website. Or call me and I'll see about getting it in for you.
  
• A good quantity of DMC thread, that necessity for cross-stitching, is also on-line. I've inventoried the second third of DMC threads in the storage unit and the list is quietly sitting there, waiting for me to run out of things to do that are more exciting than coming up with creative ways to say, "bright green with some yellow shades." Some call it procrastinating, I call it creativity.
  
• All of the Teenie Tweenie designs by The Sweetheart Tree are now on-line! There's a bunch of them, and as I added the scissor fob Teenie Tweenies I could just feel my head hitting the desk *headdesk* when I thought "What a great stitch-along these little scissor fobs could have been!" They are great little projects, and for you non-stitchers out there, these are tiny stitched pieces that have a front and a back. You stitch both the front and the back, sew them together, add some cording, and voila - instant thingie to hold onto your scissors! You'll never lose your scissors again (unless the cat gets frisky and decides that your beautiful, hand-stitched scissor fob is just the right shmoo to attack and it must be done at all costs). The best part about stitching these is that they are designed to use scraps of fabric (mostly the small counts, like linen). Think "de-stashing exercise."
  
• All of the reproduction samplers currently in stock designed by Handwork Samplers. I had carried her designs as an auto customer for several years, until the cost became too prohibitive and the sales were not what my "market research" indicated. I came to realize after a while that they seem to be more a culturally Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic form of needlework. On the other hand, the stitchers who did enjoy stitching this type of needlework are totally enraptured by this form. And it was always nice to take out the folder full of samplers and show customers how so many of these large pieces were stitched by young girls at the age of 8 and 9 and 10. By firelight and candlelight. About 250 years ago. It still amazes me.
• FABRIC! FINALLY some fabric (besides Aida 11 count) is on-line. I had stressed and pondered how to show the colors and changes of the hand-dyed fabrics which I knew I would have to photograph, and I finally realized that I could include a skein of DMC white in the picture, to give a stitcher a frame of reference. Every stitcher knows what DMC white looks like, so no matter how different your monitor shows from the picture I've taken, you can use the skein of white as your touchstone. Pretty clever, eh? I also came to realize that one of the hand-dyed fabric companies, Picture this Plus, already had a website that showed their lovely fabrics on-line, so they had already done the hard part of the photography. Yay! So while I still have a list of R&R Reproduction fabrics to download from my camera, I've been able to enter all of the fabrics by Picture this Plus and some of the Jobelan fabrics currently in stock. Which also involved measuring each piece on the front porch table when the weather wasn't rainy (like today) or too incredibly hot (it was anyway) or the sun wasn't shining too directly on the fabric, thus washing out any picture taking I attempted to do. So if you go to the "Fabric" section of the Cross Stitch pages, you'll see the different sizes of pieces I have, such as 8 x 13 or 17 x 38 and their price.
  

So yay! My website is becoming more well-rounded (and I'm still heading to the gym at least twice a week so I won't be!), with more products, more offerings, and using some extra features to make it more dynamic for visitors. My next step is to change around the pictures on some of the individual pages (like Accessories and Tools), and maybe even help redesign the banner ad on Hoffman's website. You can visit their website where they have a ton of banners rotating on their home page, and mine does show up during the on-line rotation. It takes the stitcher right to my website, and Hoffman was where I referred sooo many customers if they needed a particular pattern and I didn't have it, or if they wanted to look at all the baby birth samplers or wedding samplers or graduation announcements out there (not many for the latter, I'm sad to say). While I certainly have Google AdWords as an advertising medium, I'm also planning to get myself onto Kudzu.com and etsy.com, though those will have to wait until I've gotten some more steady temp work.

And the temp orders are coming in hot and heavy (thank goodness!). I had the opportunity to spend time on a mock jury for a case, where the lawyers were trying out their arguments with some strangers to see how their case would stand up in court. It was really, really fun and I had a chance to use my brain, something I really love doing.

Speaking of brain, I really need to get working now on my third of three talks for DragonCon. I was asked a couple of years ago to present a talk on the Tolkien Track about Frodo, the Reluctant Hero, and this year I'm serving on a panel of 3 talking about Music in Middle Earth, and I'm also presenting a talk on Sam as the Companion. My tendency is to read everything I can that I think pertains to the subject (since I'm doing this in tandem with my volunteer work with Mythic Journeys), and when a phrase or an idea just suddenly hits me, I write the talk at a frantic pace. This rainy day is definitely lending itself to a reading and writing day, so I'll end this blog entry now and wish you all a great weekend!

My Summer Vacation

It's been a wonderful summer and I've thoroughly enjoyed myself. We started with a road trip heading up to Vermont for our youngest niece's wedding (looove that Neon!) and Triple AAA's TripTik became, as always, my new best friend for road trips. We took no road trip pictures, alas, because we were really pressed for time on our journey. It was cool and rainy but oh, so very, very green.

But wait - there was more! Since we knew we would be camping once we arrived, and we had a little extra cash, we bought ourselves a real, live camping TENT in which to live. And what's more, Webmaster Bill had stayed in KOA Kampgrounds before and I never had even though I had wanted to during our looong roadtrips to Princeton in the summers when I was a kid.

So that's what we did - one Sunday morning that became Sunday afternoon, Webmaster Bill took the planned route from AAA's TripTiks, our desired Points of Interest on the way up, and lo and behold, we were booked at KOA Kampgrounds with our new tent! I will admit, I had poo-poohed the idea after my Wilderness Trip in college, but life changes you and KOA is such a community of its members, with playgrounds, ponds, stars at night, your own private spot with a picnic table and grill that I came to realize camping at 44 is different than hiking at 17. Not to say that I hiking is out of the question, it's just not where I am right now.

We traveled the highways and some lesser-known by-ways up to cool, wet Vermont, and I stopped at one point when we saw a Knit Shop to buy yarn for a hat because the weather was cool and wet and I sooo needed a hat to stay warm (in June, no less). Which I knitted in the car while traveling up US 7 and seeing some beautiful Connecticut countryside.

The wedding was beautiful - outdoors with a huge tent, a beautiful bride and her handsome man, a day without rain, and lots of folks from both families who came to celebrate. The ties to family and the land in Vermont were very strong, and I was so glad to see some untouched areas of trees and old family farms. The winters are very hard, though, and it must be rough to rise long before the sun to tend to the elements of farming life.

On our return journey, we headed through the Catskills and their twisty, windy roads (looove that Neon!) listening to the book on CD of Last of the Mohicans. We were both fans of the 1992 movie and its lush countryside, and it was very amazing to hear how the original story was written. Being in the same area with the famous cave, waterways, and remnants of the French and Indian War made the story all the more relevant. And once through the Catskills, the haul ourselves home quickly driving took over.

July started with some great friends, one set who had built their lake home by themselves after the rough-in work was completed by the experts (a 4-year long odyssey), and others who were building a Tumbleweed home near Asheville. The first set we enjoyed adult beverages, a lovely lake, the comfort of friends and their home, and the other we enjoyed camping, campfires, the community of others, and a real, live barn raising. It was so exciting, and I'm really thinking that in the next few years a modest mountain or lake home is a good goal to shoot for.

Now it's August, I've signed up with a couple of different temp agencies, and have gotten a couple of calls for some quick assignments. Which is what I've been asking for all along, but I'm narrowing my search for permanent jobs to some very real possibilities. The whole idea of SmartGrowth is very appealing to me, where you can live, work, and play all in the same area (think downtown Decatur, Paris, London, Boston, New York, and virtually any older area of a major city when most travel was by foot or on horseback) without the huge pricetag that these areas currently have for housing. Or in this new Green Jobs economy, where my desire to Save the Earth will be able to earn an income.

It's also almost time for Dragon*Con, where I'm giving three (3!) separate talks on the TolkienTrack. I'm almost glad I don't have any temp postings right now, as I'm reading in so many different areas to have a more thorough grounding on Myth and how it relates to Tolkien that the books are piling up on the living room couch for my afternoon and evening reading times. That will shortly take the place of afternoon web-site updates!

More pictures of ongoing projects soon - I promise!

Eat First, then Block

I really, really mentally drafted this piece back in January, after I became inspired to block my Seven Swans shoulder wrap made from Anne yarn following the January AKG meeting and the excellent blocking instructions from Heartstrings' Jackie Ericksson-Sweitzer. Her website is Heartstrings Fiber Arts and you can certainly see the gossamer-y, lightweight, oh-so-tempting pieces she creates out of her very own creative brain. Yummm. She writes all these lovely lacey shawl and sock and wristlet patterns that I carried with great joy and that fascinated many an adventurous knitter into seeing what could be done with all that gorgeous lace yarn.

But then many things happened after that blocking experience, such as a visit from an old friend whom I had not seen since 1982 in London who was on this side of the pond from her home in small-town France; the annual AKG knitting retreat at The Mountain where I started both a cabled sweater for ME from Blackwater Abbey yarns (it's the Brambleberry Pullover made from the color Chestnut that you can see here at the BWA site: Blackwater Abbey Yarns) as well as the long-anticipated Orrenburg Lace Shawl that I bought at TKGA in April 2004 with dear G at my side. I figured that I was a good enough knitter by now to tackle that project, and I am, though just barely. More on those projects as they progress.

Oh, and after the retreat came the temporary position with one of my temp services that lasted for about 10 days. It was great to be in the working world again, feeling like I was earning money from my own labors but someone else's pocket. Plus I had forgotten how much fun it is to listen to sales weasels make their deals!

And then more work on my website, then a 6 week assignment that started at the end of March and went all the way through April. It was so very, very odd to be waking up and knowing that I would be working in someone else's space for the time being, doing the job that they assigned me to do in the way they wanted me to do it. I've been out of the real workday loop for a decade now, literally, and it was strange to leave the rhythm that my life has had for so long in order to enter another rhythm. That said, I have forgotten how much I enjoyed temp work - you work at a different location for a period of time, long enough to feel comfortable but not so long that you're caught up in office politics. And I have learned sooooo many different softwares and seen them in all of their applications, all thanks to temp work over the years.

And then there was the Mythic Journeys movie on Saturday, May 2 at the historic Plaza Theater in downtown Atlanta that turned out to be a smashing success (you can view the trailer here at the Mythic Journeys website) but that also ate into evenings and weekends until the weekend of the showing itself.

That said, it's been a busy spring for this little knitter, and I wouldn't trade very much of it for a refund!

But down to blocking. The Saturday in January following Jackie's talk (I'm so enjoying saying "I did 'this' on Saturday!"), I decided that I would follow her instructions for blocking lace. Which entailed getting down on the clean floor with a good, big towel and some blocking pins. I wanted to make sure that the piece had all the rest of Saturday day, Saturday evening, and all of Sunday to dry properly. And it was later in the afternoon and I had spent some quality time stitching and listening to a book on tape, and I had had a late breakfast so why not block at 1:30 on a Saturday? I could always have lunch after I was done. Why give up all that drying time just for a little lunch, I ask you? After all, how long could this blocking project take??

OK, well, it took about 2 1/2 hours. Never mind that it was a rectangle, never mind that my gauge was the same throughout, never mind that there was no shaping. Nope, it all had to do with the stretching of the piece as wide and as long as it needed to go without realizing that it had a mind of its own.

This is the center of the piece. The name of the pattern is "Seven Swans" and it is from the book Traditional Knitted Lace Shawls by Martha Waterman and published by Interweave Press. It is a piece that I started at The Mountain 2 years ago with help from a Master Knitter (and a couple of glasses of wine!). You start in the center of the piece with a provisional cast-on, so that as you wear the shawl over your shoulders, the swans' wings are all descending. And part of the blocking challenge was to get the center line straight and the swans' wings lined up both side-to-side and with one another. And while you may not be able to see it, I added an extra garter stitch row when I picked up the stitches from the provisional cast-on so that I would not be picking up AND knitting in the lace pattern. What a nightmare that could turn into!

And here we have those pesky corners and that dratted edge that just won't stay straight. At least the swans' wings have finally decided to line up alongside one another! I think this was about 3:00 or so, and I was just so determined to get this piece done that I was going to ignore that rumbling noise in my tummy. Grrrr! Of course, with this piece as with all the myriad others I have blocked over the years, the corners just decide to have a mind of their own. The wings may stay straight up and down, but somehow, somewhere, is some extra give that the fabric finds and holds onto until you get onto the corners. It never fails. You have to pull the corners down as far as they will go without messing up the symmetry of the pattern, then pull the width between the corners again without messing up the symmetry of the pattern, then when you have pulled as much as you can from the edges, you then pull the corners UP so that the edges will give. Up. It's weird to type this technique out loud since it's one I discovered while blocking needlepoint and have never vocalized, but you have to account for the give in the corners by pulling the edges back up so that they are perpendicular to the lines of the design. You can especially see the need for pulling the corner up on the left-hand side of this picture - see how the colorway of the fabric on the edge looks like it bends to the left? It does, and you have to ease that portion back up so that it is at a 90 degree angle. The pattern has pulled all of the give out of its range, but you won't know that until you've spent a good half hour trying to urge the pattern down to the range of the corner. When the pattern stops giving, it's time to pull the corners and the edges back up.

And here we have the other side with the wonky bottom edge (remembering that there are two bottom edges to this piece):


But at least the center line is straight! I think by this time I had given up on the lack of sustenance and decided to eat. About 4:00 in the afternoon. The swans' wings were as opened as they could be, leaving edges that looked more like Crests of the Wave instead of edges. And of course, easing the edges back into alignment means that you run the risk of skewing the symmetry of the design elements. I thought perhaps that there was a rule that the portions of the lace pattern with more knitting on the edge would have the greatest give, but looking closely at this photo it seems that some portions pooch out more with knitting next to them, and others with an open lace stitch. There just seems to be no telling.

Finally, reinforced with sandwich and glass o' milk, I climbed up on the couch to get the overview shot of the almost-completely blocked to perfection shawl:


The centerline at the top of the shot is still off, and I adjusted the edges to a greater or lesser extent, but this was the first time I had taken a look to see what the overall effect was. Truly a stunning piece. It's nice and light and, while you can't see it from these photos, the yarn has a deep plum tone that stands out from the darker purple-black shades. It is light but warm, and I wore it with my friend Jane when we saw "Benjamin Button" in early February. A good weight for a movie sweater.

Here are some pre-blocked pictures (I think I used them before in this blog) that show the lovely color of the yarn:








So I'll say here again, blocking is a process. A very long, involved, down-on-your-knees process, especially with the fine-ness of lace process. And so (wearing my wisdom dispensing hat as I have for lo these many years), it is best to eat first, then block.

Oh, such cute kitties

It seems in Blogosphere we all share pictures of our feline and canine friends, and these were just too cute to keep on my loyal iMac. I took these pictures the other day during a sunny day this winter (it's been raining - note that I'm not complaining about the rain!) and I had a box of baby booties and baby bibs &c. that I wanted to add to my website. The cats just had to come out and enjoy the sunlight and most of you have heard me talk about them so I decided to take these great pictures of them and post them here. The feline kids of Webmaster Bill and me:

This is our foundling kitty, Cerridwen. Those of you who know and share my interest in Celtic mythology will know that Cerridwen (many spellings, some with extra "y's" in them due to her Welsh origins) was a keeper of her Cauldron that could bring the dead back to life. So we helped a rescued little black cat find a good and loving home, and what else would be a logical name for her, I ask you?? Yes, she was about 3-4 weeks old when the construction boss brought her in a box with her siblings to a work site in the hot May sunshine and said (put your best redneck accent on here): "I got me a box of kittens, and if any of you [folks] want 'em, you kin take 'em home at the end of the day. They done been underfoot and I need to git rid of 'em." So the kind-hearted English construction worker moved the box out of the direct sunlight all day and took the box home where he and his girlfriend nursed the kittens for a week or so. She was more or less weaned when I called the girlfriend and we decided that ours would be a great home for her, but she drank Similac for a few weeks afterwards, "just in case." She's a sweet little girl who loves to make a warm spot on the bed and will meow at me in case I wake up in the middle of the night and need to pet a cat to go back to sleep. She also sings in the hallway when she is looking for us - we call her "The Singing Kitty" and meow back at her. Somehow that reassures her that we're right there (even though she can smell us 2 rooms away) and she comes trotting right over to be petted.

This is the other cat, that our friend Sue-who-knows-everybody told us about that same week we were adopting Cerridwen, and she is now our large round grey cat:

What can I say? She's large, she's round, and she's grey. She's also taken to crossing her white feet, one on top of the other, just because she can and because she's a cat. She is also the one who sleeps under the blanket on our bed during the day, and often on my head on cold (Atlanta) winter nights while she purrs me to sleep. Granted, she takes up half the pillow, but she rests her chin on whatever portion of my face she can find and purrs me and herself to sleep. One night my ear was against her body and I could hear her heart beating after she stopped purring - it was very special. We named her "Boudicca" (also many different Welsh spellings) who was a Welsh queen who was the only commander in Britannia able to win some battles with the Roman invaders/conquerors/troops. She really did - she united many of the famous Celtic fighters in the western part of the island (modern-day Wales and western England) and beat the Romans. Until the final battle when she was captured and killed. This kitty's mother was named Athena, so I figured this was a good and strong name for our large cat. I think she's not as large as she used to be, though watching her run (proceed at a fast trot, really) is rather amusing as her gait more resembles a waddle than a run. But she has a good, strong, steady walk and I can always tell when she enters a room where I am. She also sits politely below my chair and waits to be encouraged to jump onto my lap where she just stares at me until she falls asleep. She does have one discouraging habit of biting my eyelids (dangerous) or the tip of my nose (ouch!) while she's falling asleep. She doesn't realize how sharp her teeth are, and after 12 years of discouraging this habit she's more or less figured it out. She was about 12 weeks or so when we adopted her, and her human mother said that after I came out to the house to meet the feline family, mother Athena began nursing her again, so it may be a vestige of that nursing behavior.

So those are our kitties - both 12, both furry, both purr, both eat the same food, and while they don't always get along, they are wonderful warm feline friends, for as long as we have them.