The crochet continues, we are now onto week 2, I was a bit late starting.
I am finding lots of odd balls of wool around the house now that I am looking for them.
A bit of Kogin. Because of 'habit' I always write an evaluation of each class I teach with the aim of improving it. I think I have another project here.
The quilt is finished,
and I made a bag to put it in.
I am ready to start the new knitting as I have finished my test square and I am still sampling tapestry stitches.
Now I have to think about the next quilt.
The canvas work book I ordered has still not arrived but my friend, Allana, gave me one of her books and I am adding stitches to my canvas. I had no idea there were so many stitches in this genre. At the moment I am concentrating on sampling stitches for texture. Adding a couple of stitches each day.
I have some of the fabric for the next quilt up on my design board. Still thinking about this one.
And the wool has arrived so it is swatching time.
And I having a terrible time trying to decide on a seam embellishment for the latest work bag I have sewn.
And I still have to put the binding on the last quilt.
I have got that quilt top together ready to quilt but no time to quilt it at the moment. (I will be so glad when this is finished.)
I found some scrap fabric at my patchwork group and am making this into another soft bag and got a terrible shock at the price of Aida fabric when I went to get some to practise the stitch I wanted to decorate the seams with. (I am now looking in Op shops for this.)
And I am working on my practise canvas work bookcover.I think one of the most important things I have learnt from trying to find the skills I had in my hands again is that you just have to keep trying, knowing that you will fail, but you might find something else or learn a new way to do something. I now have conquered the mechanics of being able to do canvas stitches again. Not as perfectly as I did them before but still passable and I am allowing myself to NOT freak out when my stitching isn't perfect. I can see from looking at my practise piece that my skills are improving. This makes me think that I might even return to my piano again and see what is possible.
I read a great blog post about this on the "the make light journal" of Karen Walrond. (If you don't have time to read she has audio.)
I think this is the most depressing quilt I have ever made but I also know that some teenage boy will love it.
The backing is pieced with left over fabric.
And main red fabric has animals all over it.
Now I have to quilt it. I think I will use a fractured diamond pattern like that in the skull print.
I keep unpicking my knitting. I have to concentrate so hard I keep forgetting where I am in the pattern.
And it is a slow ponderous process learning how to relearn how to do canvas work.
I set myself 5 rows a day and at the end of this my wrist aches. But I am not giving up. I have all these designs I want to stitch and the more I think about this type of stitching the more designs I invent! There is so much that has changed in canvas and thread since the 1970's and I think some of the colours I want I will have to dye myself.
The March sonnet piece will just have to be ongoing and get finished when I can do it. So now I have turned to April's sonnets. This has been delayed because of the cyclone, no internet connection. This time I am going to reduce the size of the piece. (I should have done that for the March piece.)
I don't know if this post will load as I am still having trouble with the connection. Telstra says that they will be here the first week in April but that doesn't mean we will get a fix. I am still having to travel to the mainland to get my Emails. I will just have to 'soldier on'.
I have had to take quiet a few 'steps backwards' with my work this week. I have no hope of getting my sonnet piece finished. Instead I decided to concentrate on practising my stitching on the sampler. My stitching technique is so rough! This is because of the limited use I have with my right wrist. It is made worse by the fact that before this I had a good to high level of skill. Now I am back as a beginner. I know how the stitching should look, it's getting that look that is the problem.
So I have decided to just do all the sections that are in tent stitch and concentrate on getting the technique right. My mantra goes;
"Position the needle with the right hand, pull the thread through with the left hand."
I can do my stitching with little pain this way. To aid this I stitch with a playlist of Baroque Music. Research from neuroscience and psychology suggests that this music can positively impact my capacity to focus and learn so I am going to keep practising and the music is enjoyable but I have a long way to go.
The other step backwards is with my knitting. I think I will have to write the pattern out in long hand. I have it on my Ipad but I keep losing it and I can't print it out as this isn't working either.
I had to unpull everything I had done and start again as I made a mistake, now I can't remember where I was!
And that quilt is still up on the wall. No progress there.
I finished three tea cosy's.
I am now knitting the matching booties and I'm trying a new pattern for yet another tea cosy.
Whilst at the Guild I found an old frame that will suit the sampler better and this one I can carry around. I have to pick up my grand daughter and drop her off to go to camp and I need to get up to town for the electrician to do work on the town house. I can now sit and stitch while I wait.
I wonder if I should take the dog with me?
We are waiting for this cyclone to hit in about 12 hours from now. Rather unnerving. I still have the last of the pot plant to move under the house and some furniture to remove from the verandahs. We are now isolated and thank goodness for my stitching. It takes your mind off what might be ahead. I'm not sure if I am glad that I know what is coming or if ignorance would be bliss?
I have the design for my Sonnet Project for this month, but first I have to rediscover how to stitch it. To this end I am stitching a cover for my journal in which I keep my drawings and ideas. I have pulled out that old piece that I finished off to be the centre of the front cover. There was serious problems where the moths had got into the wool but I unpulled all the problem areas and restitched them. Not with the original colours, I'd forgotten what they were, but it will do the job.
I will insert this into my practise canvas. Oh, how the memories come back. The difference between tent stitch and continental tent stitch. Back then it had to be tent stitch because continental tent stitch took twice the amount of thread and I just didn't have the money even though continental tent stitch was a better option.
I dug out my old stitching frame that I had carefully stored and found I was missing one wing nut. Not bad seeing it has been packed away since the 1970's! I have drawn the pattern onto the canvas and then laced this in place ready to be stitched but first I have to work out what stitches I will use! That's the role of the practise canvas. A bit more needs to be done there but I have made a start only the find I underestimated the thread needed, by one line.
And in my spare time I am knitting flowers and leaves for the tea cosies which are back on the agenda. They will go back to the Op shop to be sold to raise money for organisations on the island. The friends I was knitting them for have decided we will no longer give each other presents at Xmas.
I will probably be my last post for a while but I intend to keep stitching.
The bookcover is now finished and assembled.
I'm moderately pleased with the result. I think that I used a wadding that was just a tad too thick but I also think I needed this to support the beadwork.
I am playing around with patterns for knitted flowers. There are lots on the internet but I am having a play with my own designs.
Another big job has been getting my Patchwork Groups Library Catalague in order. This is slow and tedious work.
And I spent a whole day with the 12 sonnets for March. I now have come up with a design process to select the theme for the design. This includes;
This is far more complex than I thought it would be and I have to also consider that I only have about 3 weeks to develop and stitch the design I select, so the best design may have to be put aside for another that can be finished in the time frame. I am finding that I would like to stitch far more than I have time for so have decided to extend this project for at least another year, maybe longer.
I have 4 sonnets short listed for March and it was really hard getting it down to 4! But I think my design will be a minimalist one about the sunrise. Inspired by paintings from that genre and it will be a small tapestry but it might be something else!
I have started on the Issie Dolls again.
And I am still stitching that book-cover, although all I have to do is to make it up now. I thought about beading the eyes of the turtle but I think they might "follow you around" so all the embroidery is finished.
(Exercising every day is eating into my stitching time.)
And because I have limits to what I can do with my right hand I have been working on a 'mantra' of
"position the needle with the right hand, pull through with the left".
I did this with the gold stitching around the turtle on the book cover and found that I was able to sew for longer without too much pain. So, the next step is applying this to some needle point. I did a lot of this in my 20's and then said I was finished with that, but this kind of stitching will suit my disability so I'm going back to it again, and, after all this time I have decided to make myself a 'new student'. That means I will stitch a sampler or a kind of a sampler.
I am thinking about next months Shakespeare Sonnet piece.
I have come to a halt on my book cover stitching because I have run out of gold thread and am waiting for some to be delivered.
I think I will do some more of the beading on the turtle while I am waiting for that delivery.
But wait, there is the post man. (What? I couldn't just order one reel of thread!)
I find that I am no longer able to cut lino blocks, the arthritis in my wrist is just a bit too much. I did try but the results ended up in the bin and I still have to clean up the mess. (I think I will need to dump some of the dyes etc I have in my stash. Too old!). So I used a block that I carved a number of years ago and some dyed fabric I had left over from something else. Now I have to stitch it.
There have been three classes on Stitch Club since I joined a month ago. I am just going to have to be behind. The two classes I haven't started are Jelly Print printing on fabric and Applique and Machine Embroidery. I have watched both of them and have all the requirements for the Jelly Printing one. I could use a stash of printed pieces of fabric so I will get to that one first. The second one, Applique and Machine Embroidery will have to be for the future as I just don't have the requirements to hand and I know, from bitter experience, all the pitfalls of free-motion machine embroidery. I need to get mastery of this skill. This is the year!!