A Bluestocking Knits

Not that I haven't been enjoying and appreciating the "Wisdom Sampler," but I got this far and found myself unable to stop wishing that I'd started "Laurence Briquet" instead.  I've set things temporarily aside before — I mean, started another project simultaneously in another frame or hoop (or set of needles …) — but I don't think I've ever actually taken one off the frame for another, partly because it's just a bother with having to baste a piece of linen to the stretcher bars.  But there it is — I took "Wisdom" off and put in "Laurence" instead.

And things were going pretty well, even though I realized that the threads for the water were considerably lighter than in the image, and though I usually like that faded look, I decided to pick it out and switch the three for three of my favorite Antique Blues.  I was far enough along with the water that I moved over to one of the "boulders," but after a bit of stitching thought, "wait a minute — this second brown is supposed to be shading …." and it is indeed lighter than the main brown, instead of darker.  After rather laboriously checking the Soie d'Alger colors with the DMC (by way of various online needlework shops and color charts), I suspect now that nobody at Reflets de Soie actually stitched this in the DMC conversion that is supplied with the chart, but only did the Soie d'Alger original version, as a number of other colors are noticeably different.  (As much as I would enjoy, I'm sure, stitching this in luxurious silks instead of everyday cotton floss, there are thirty-nine colors in this chart!  Thirty-nine!  That's a lot of silk.)  So it looks like I'll be paying for my fickleness by having to figure out which DMC thread will best match the image on the chart.  Sigh.

Just two pages left!

Since my camera is still hors de combat, I will instead share my short list of charts-awaiting-stitching.  This is not, mind you, all of the charts I have, as I've managed to collect any number of free charts in the three-ish years that I've been interested in samplers — and certainly more than a few of them I still hope/intend to work! — but I can definitely see that my tastes have changed a bit with my increasing experience.  It is also, I now know not only from seeing other people's photos of boxes upon boxes of charts that they would need multiple lifetimes to work, but also from my own stash, how very difficult it can be sometimes to resist temptation!  I actually try purposely to be circumspect now in my purchases. And so, until I can get my own photos, here is my list.  The first two are the ones, along with the "Quaker Virtues", that are actually in progress; the rest are in no particular order.

Above, "The Wisdom Sampler" by Donna Vermillion Giampa of Vermillion Stitchery.  This was on someone's "100 Best Samplers" Pinterest page, and I was quite intrigued by it.  It was long out-of-print at the time, after Donna Giampa's death in 2015, but recently her sister began selling the chart again.  It is in style sort of halfway between "reproduction" and "new", definitely with an antique flavor, as it were, but a sort of modernity that I can't quite pinpoint.  Charming, though, clearly!  I have just started it, at the area around the picket fence.

"Zoé Elie," a free chart from Isabelle Mazabraud-Kerlan of Reflets de Soie.  So very pretty!  I started this as a small project to take on our vacation, when we went to Tahoe for a week, and am perhaps not quite halfway along. 

"Quaker Friendship Sampler" by Becky Dorrie.  I keep passing this over for more difficult things, it seems, but that does it a disservice, for it is a classic new old-style Quaker sampler, and that really speaks to me.

"Virtue Outshines the Stars" by Darlene O'Steen.  The last of my "O'Steen Big 3", the three charts of hers that I felt I utterly must do.  Not that I would mind doing others of hers, of course — and there are no less than three band-sampler charts in the revised edition of The Proper Stitch — but the "Pomegranate," the "Floral," and this one just really speak to me.  I admit that I'm actually putting off doing this "last" one, so that I can continue to anticipate it!

"Laurence Briquet" by Reflets de Soie.  Oh, it is so difficult to choose between Mazabraud-Kerlan's beautiful reproduction samplers!  I think the little waterfall on this one won me over.  I still have "Marthe Sallé" on my wish list as well, but have restrained myself so far, though with great difficulty.  I actually have both fabric and threads for this, so it may be next in the frame.

"Ragamuffin #2" by Shakespeare's Peddler, my most-recent purchase.  I fell rather hard for this one, I admit, the moment I saw it. The muted greys and greens, the flowers, the unique border — oh my!

And "Quaker Samplings III" and "II" by Ellen Chester of With My Needle.  The last two of my quintet of "Samplings" — I have already worked I, IV, and V.  I'm leaving the dated one for last (!).  I know that Chester has released at least two more in her series since I discovered these, and it is not without difficulty that I restrain myself, but it seems to me that they should go together on a wall, and five is rather a lot, after all …

So this has been finished for a while — erm, quite a while — but my camera has been having some problems, slowly worsening, and so the other day, well into another two sampler projects, I thought, "ack, I'll just take photos with my phone!"  So I dug out my light box and took some photos, not completely satisfyingly, as the sampler is just a little too large to reach into the light box comfortably — but I was getting fed up with the problems — and then when I sat down at the computer, I remembered why I keep getting messages that my storage is full, that I can't download the photos on my phone because no matter how long my IT guy (David) spends on it, he can't get my iPhone to play nicely with my PC.  Apparently the problem is that my phone takes photos in one format, and even though he got it to convert them into ordinary JPGs the last time, it refuses to do more than about a half-dozen now (and those it just throws any-old-where onto my computer — directories, schmerectories).  My IT's assistant (Laura, no mean whiz with an iPhone herself) spent an hour or so on it the other day, and gave up in frustration.  She had to air-drop these from my phone to hers, then e-mail them to me.  And I'm not even that happy with them!  Gaahhh!

Sigh.

Anyway, I was much happier with my new colors for what I will now call the Lady Floral Brittany sampler, as it's very nearly a mash-up of the two, as far as I can tell — having the chart for the Floral but only a picture of the Lady Brittany.  I modified the Floral (the one on the left in the image below) quite a lot, starting with switching out the long signature for a motto and a short signature,

and the alphabet, though I think that was mostly because I disliked the Victorian Pink so much in the numbers line, and the amount of contrast between the Midnight and Brandy in the alphabet.  After deciding to revise that, things kind of snowballed.  I had to revise the date line, as "2023" literally wouldn't fit (!), so I thought I might as well add in another pair of those Algerian-eye flowers.  And I liked the Tudoresque flowers of Lady Brittany (on the right) so much that … might as well!

Yes, picking out so very much of it was a pain, but it was a pleasure working the new colors, so I came out ahead.  The photos aren't quite true-to-life, unfortunately … but, well, it isn't that I don't want to do them over, but I just can't face it right now (see Issues, above).  The Gold Leaf, especially, looks more reserved and stately in real life.

I think I got a bit tired of referring to both the stitch instructions and the chart, and forgot to look at the former for the roses band, as there is supposed to be some rice stitch in there somewhere — I think in the little green leaves — but I just blithely did crosses, and there are some other wobbles that I'm just going to gloss over now (innocent smile).  That Weeks Dye Works "Collards" has rapidly become my favorite green, possibly one of my favorites of any floss color, and so I'm just going to admire it happily.  I do like the way the satin-stitch petals came out! —

(Not sure why there is so much difference in the color of the linen between the photo above and the one below — same phone camera, same lighting, seconds apart!  Go figure!  It is a bit in between the two, not a bright white, but not quite "yellow" either.)

But — this has been one of my sine qua non samplers for some time now, so I'm very happy to have worked it, and really did enjoy the process more than enough to win out over the annoyances!