A Bluestocking Knits

As a consolation for David being gone so long this past spring, I had treated myself to two petit-point cushion kits from Frances Peterson, whose miniature carpets I have long admired, even before I joined the Petitpointers list and discovered that she is a member.  I was a bit daunted by the thought of working at 40 stitches per inch — since the finest I have done before this is 28-count! — but they are so beautiful that I thought I'd try a cushion, to get my feet wet, as it were.  And since I blocked my Shirvan carpet Wednesday, I felt entirely justified yesterday in starting one of these!

This design is "Repeating Diamonds" and as it happens it was a good choice for a novice, as the pattern is quite logical and I could just concentrate on the itti-bittiness of it.  I had to take out my contacts and use my Super-Microscopic Up-Close Vision^TM, but aside from feeling like the needle was the size of a telephone pole, it went very smoothly.  (I will say, though, to anyone who is tempted to work at this gauge in cross-stitch, well, as Jeeves would say gently, I couldn't advise it.  It's partly the gauge itself, and partly the way the twists in the silk lie nicely in one direction, and not-so-nicely in another I suspect — it just didn't work, and then it took me twice as long to pick out the two strands I did in cross-stitch as it did to work them in the first place.  And as it turned out, at this scale the funny dashed 45-deg. lines read much better than they logically should.)

I worked the needlepoint all in one day, despite having to stop for boring things like getting dressed and going to the market — which is not so much a compliment to my stitching as it is to Frances's design, which is a happy blend of detail and simplicity.

Here's the back, if you're interested —

but my focus was more on security than on neatness, since it would be a cushion after all, and no chance of flipping it over to look at the back, after it was sewn up.  I actually don't really know if this is considered messy or not, but I have seen some photos on the list that you can hardly tell back from front, they are so meticulous!

The only modifications I made were to add two extra lines of plain border all around, since I wanted a rather bigger cushion than one inch — though to be honest, at 40 stitches per inch, four stitches don't increase it that much — and to sew on the "piping" (which is perle cotton) instead of gluing it, as I trusted my sewing skills more than my gluing ones.  As you can see in the first in-progress photo, I decided to be clever and sew on the perle cotton before I even removed the worked canvas from the frame, which to my pleasant surprise turned out to be a good idea.  The ultrasuede backing was a bit of a challenge, and I might use linen next time just for ease of handling, especially around the corners — my cushion ended up a bit wobbly, though that might just have been me.  I didn't fill mine very full (I used size 16 beads), since these are for my Elizabethan house-to-be, and I have the notion from somewhere that Elizabethans used cushions more for sitting on than for leaning against, so I think they'd be a bit flatter than what we like today.

I highly recommend Frances's kits, which have literally everything you need to make a cushion except stuffing! 

Ebay is kind of like the lottery — you can't win if you don't play! — but frankly, Ebay gives me the heebie-jeebies.  The second auction I ever tried my hand at, I lost at the last minute (by about two dollars), and was crushed to find in my inbox, only seconds later, an e-mail from Ebay taunting me with having LET IT GET AWAY.  Ever since then, my heart starts palpitating even as I'm logging in.  I've done a number of auctions since then, but really I just don't have the nerves of steel required for Ebay, so usually I just don't even look, willing to pay more on Etsy for not having to deal with the stress.  But last week for some reason, I found myself poking around to see what was there, and there were not one but two auctions I was interested in, both for pieces of miniature furniture, and bargains with it, certainly to my eye.

I won both, the only bidder each time.

The first is this charming bureau, a little wonky at the upper-right corner but with charming lines and a wonderful patina.

I was won over by those long spade-foot legs on the front, I must say.

The second arrived today — with each leg carefully swathed in bubble wrap! —

a half-moon table with exceptionally pleasing lines and the most wonderfully delicate Hepplewhitey/Shakery legs.

I would have really liked this piece anyway, but this was a real bonus —

The maker? or the owner?  I don't know.  It just pleases me very much that it's there.

As for the "yarn" part of this post's title —

a skein of Blue Moon's Gaea yarn in "Say Nevermore" for the Baker Street Scarf from Knitty ..