A Bluestocking Knits

"Margaret Ann Klinedienst" sampler by Queenstown Designs.  This was certainly a challenging piece.  Some of the inconsistencies are mine, such as the slightly-yellowed flower in the top border, when I must have picked up the wrong bobbin and didn't notice until quite some time afterwards, but most of them are Margaret's — the occasional pale leaf in the border, the wobbly corners, the not-quite-centered basket patterns.  The border motif looks like it repeats, but in fact many are just slightly different from the previous one, which I suspect means that Margaret was not working from a chart or sample, but by looking at what she'd done previously — or not looking carefully (!).  And of course the delightfully wacky flowers hardly ever go where you'd expect them to.  These require constant reference to the chart, of course — always time-consuming.  My re-color of the chart I've already talked about; the revised colors can be found in the Needlework album on the sidebar.  I did also find the chart difficult to read because it doesn't have an overlap — and trimming and taping together the twelve pages as the designer suggested is an unappealingly cumbersome alternative.

But there it is.  What drew me to it in the first place — the quirkiness, the extravagance, the pale-yellow sawtooth border around the inscription — is all still there.

I did make a few changes from Margaret's original.  That chopped-off leaf in the border bothered me no end, so I added a row of five stitches near the outside point to make it a bit less so, and the bottom-left corner of the border was so awkward, once I came to it, that I ended up re-charting it, tweaking it just enough to retain the air of the original yet keep me from looking at it for the rest of my life and thinking, "uff, that bit bugs me!"

I can't deny that I got a bit tired of it now and then — there is a lot of border, and I mentally kicked myself more than once for leaving most of it to the end!  But that is all behind me, and I am very pleased with the finished piece!

I am still knitting, though there is little sign of it here, as there isn't much progress visible, I'm afraid — the "Camptown Races" cowl is still making a grandmother's-footsteps advance towards the finish line, five rows forward, one back, seven forward, two back — the ski balaclava for David was far too big, ripped back to the beginning, slightly too big, ripped back to the neck, and is heading upwards yet again — the "Rae" slipover for Julia got abandoned in summer heat and my utter dread of purling with two colors, but I have now decided to throw my period-knitting technique (partial technique, to be honest, as said dread already made me work the bottom half in the round …), and after double-checking by blocking it still on the needles and making sure that it fits, I've decided to steek the armholes and neck opening.

And I have a post nearly ready to put up about my second 1:12 shop but am puzzled and confused by the sudden enormity of the images in my last post — TypePad or me, I don't know.  Certainly I am still struggling with the new-to-me photo-editing program — but I thought I had made them all the same size as previously.

(I did, by the way, realize that I mis-read the "Margaret Ann Klinedienst" chart, and I was supposed to interlace the satin stitches on the large diamonds along the basket, not butt them up against each other down the middle of each diamond as I'd tried to do earlier.  They are all actually the same thread, but those two that look dark are worked horizontally, while the others are vertical, and the light catches them very differently here!)

But, yes, I am still deep into my fascination with historical samplers and reproductions thereof, and I admit freely that they are absorbing much of my time, though I am also making an effort to read more, and am about halfway through my third re-read this year of the "Swallows and Amazons" series — just closed the cover at the end of Coot Club this morning, with a great deal of satisfaction at how everything turns out!  (How did I never know of these?!)

More anon —

I was dismayed for more than one reason recently to find that my local needlework shop — who had a wonderful assortment of threads — closed its doors with a thwack of finality and no notice whatsoever.  I had been hoping to go and compare in person the threads I’d bought for the “Floral Sampler” with some alternatives — but, obviously, no joy.  I extended my sphere by quite a few miles, but nobody seems to carry Gentle Arts or Weeks Dye Works, and so I ended up choosing a selection from online photos in order to have them in my hands.  Since choosing colors online can be something of a gamble, and because I really appreciate those Etsy sellers who photograph not just a specific color but a selection of shades together, so that we can at least tell, for example, which red is darker or lighter than another, I decided to photograph everything I have and post it here in case it’s helpful to others trying to make a similar decision.  Some of these are the original ones for the “Floral” (so are partially used skeins!), some are the selection I bought as potential replacements, and some are from my stash that are similar shades, though not actually in contention for this particular piece.

With any of these threads, of course — Gentle Arts, Weeks Dye Works, Crescent Colors, and Classic Colorworks — any given color may vary considerably from dye lot to dye lot.  And they can all look noticeably different when stitched than they do in the skein.

In the photo at the top is Gentle Art’s “Victorian Pink” (the original for the “Floral”), Weeks Dye Works’ “Charlotte’s Pink”, and Gentle Art’s Simply Shaker “Tea Rose.”  The “Victorian” is by far the most vivid and clear of the three.

GA Simply Shaker’s “Ruby Slipper,” Gentle Art’s  “Red Grape,” Simply Shaker’s “Briar Rose,” “Claret” (the original), and below, Weeks Dye Works’ “Lancaster Red” and “Williamsburg Red.”  “Williamsburg” has more purple in it than “Lancaster”.  “Claret” seems more of a blood-red than “Ruby Slipper”.

Gentle Art’s “Midnight” (the original dark blue for the “Floral”) and “Blueberry,” Simply Shaker’s “Brethren Blue,” Weeks Dye Works’ “Williamsburg Blue,” Gentle Art’s “Blue Jay” (the original medium-blue), Classic Colorworks’ “Milady’s Teal,” Weeks Dye Works’ “Blue Jeans” and “Shepard’s Blue,” and Crescent Colors’ “Deep Blue Sea.”   “Shepard’s Blue” is quite on the grey side of blue; “Milady’s Teal” has very little green in it to be called teal.  “Blueberry,” perhaps unsurprisingly, has a touch of purple in it.  “Midnight” is not a blackish-blue, but a very deep but clear blue.

Gentle Art’s “Gold Leaf” (the original darker golden-brown), Weeks Dye Works’ “Schneckley,” Gentle Art’s “Brandy” (the original lighter gold/golden-brown), and GA Simply Shaker’s “Wheat Fields.”  I wondered to myself as I made out my list if I might use “Gold Leaf” for “Brandy,” and use a darker gold for “Gold Leaf” ….

Gentle Art’s “Sable” (the original lighter golden-brown), Weeks’ Dye Works’ “Schneckley” again (in contention for one or the other of O’Steen’s browns), Gentle Art’s “Walnut,” and at the bottom, Weeks’ “Mocha”.

Gentle Art’s “Dried Thyme” (the original medium-green), Weeks Dye Works’ “Collards,” GA Simply Shaker’s “Chives”, Classic Colorworks’ “Jolly Holly,” and Gentle Art’s “Evergreen” (the original light green).  “Collards” is pretty much exactly the color of boiled spinach, but don’t let that put you off as it is a gorgeous dark green with just a touch of black.

Classic Colorworks’ “Used Brick” and Gentle Art’s “Old Brick.”  “Old Brick” seems to me more of a salmon color than a brick one, but that I suppose is taking exception more to the name of the color than the color itself!

Above, these are O’Steen’s original colors for the sampler, all from The Gentle Art: “Brandy,” “Midnight,” “Blue Jay,” ” Dried Thyme,” “Victorian Pink,” “Sable,” “Gold Leaf,” “Claret,” “Old Brick,” and “Evergreen.”  And below is my tentative selection, in the same order: “Schneckley,” “Williamsburg Blue,” either “Blue Jeans” or “Shepard’s Blue,” “Collards,” “Charlotte’s Pink,” “Mocha,” “Wheat Fields,” “Ruby Slipper” or “Briar Rose,” “Used Brick,” and “Dried Thyme”.

I'm happy with my revision of the colors for "Margaret", wh. are a bit darker but look much more like the photo than what I had in my hands before.  Now I'm a bit bemused by the satin-stitch blocks on the basket, as the line across the middle of the first diamond, where the two areas of satin stitch meet, looks rather peculiarly like teeth!  I'm not sure if that's my technique — though I'm usually (surprisingly) not a tight stitcher — or just the nature of the beast, as it were.  I might re-work one doing an "encroaching" satin, and see if that is an improvement.  The photo of the finished sampler is too blurry to get much of an idea of how it's supposed to look, unfortunately — but, again, I'm liking the colors better now!

(I picked out almost everything I'd done, yes, except for the dark-green diagonals on the base of the basket, which color is the same as in the original conversion.  Needs must.  After that, it seemed safer, orientation-wise, to start there and work upwards, rather than in the actual center!  There is a beading needle near the crease in the fabric, marking where page 5 stops and the adjacent page 8 begins — I like the beading needle over a basting thread as I can shift up as I go, and don't have to worry about contrasting fibers from the basting thread sticking around.)

What with computer problems, camera software issues, phone camera difficulties*, &c. &c. &c. and the general ennui of summer in Southern California on top of post-2020 malaise, well, I have not been blogging.  This is not to say that I haven't been stitching, wh. is possibly the one thing that has kept me sane these past months, and I've clung tenaciously to it.  But I did take lots of photos, there is that! so here is a catch-up post, maybe the first of a short series ….

*I still can't get the top photo a little sharper.

An old family friend said to me, as they were packing up to move to Arizona about two years ago, "Hey, I've got this cross-stitch that I haven't been able to work on for a long time — when I find it, would you finish it for me?!"  I laughed and said yes.  She added, "It's a peacock by Teresa Wentzler."  At the time, this didn't mean anything to me, but then after I dug out my own unfinished sampler, and did some research online about it, I discovered that it, too, is by Teresa Wentzler, and I remembered J's peacock cross-stitch, as the name had stuck in my head.  I sent her the above photo and proposed a Wentzler finish-along (ha-ha!), and about half an hour later she texted back, saying, "I managed to find mine, let's do it!"  And so all of this summer, we have been texting back and forth, sending progress photos and encouraging each other.  I have much the easier project, as the cottage sampler, while some 20 sts bigger in both directions, has a lot more "white space" and no partial stitches, while J's — which is called "Peacock Tapestry" — is very dense in a lot of places, and lots of foliage (which is difficult because it is irregular and the colors are usually very closely shaded, and so can be easily confused).

I did, though, have a bit of a handicap, as I remembered that one of the reasons I kept putting this back in the drawer was that somehow in the intervening years between 1991 and 2013, I guess (my first "miniature" carpet), I switched from making crosses with the first stroke like this / and the second like this \, to the other way round, first this \ and then this /.  It doesn't sound that important, but if you mix the two in the same piece, it looks messy, even chaotic at times, and so it just Isn't Done.  Some time ago, I had picked out the offending bit of water horizon and fixed it, then put the piece away again, so that at least was no longer an issue, but everything I had done up to then was "right-handed crosses," and after two years of some rather intense cross-stitching "left-handed"*, I just could not make myself do it the other way.

*Which is silly, really, calling it that, as I am thoroughly right-handed, and I now make my cross-stitches the same way I write Xs, first \ and then /.  How is that "left-handed"?!  (I just polled the girls, both of whom are left-handed, and one writes her Xs "left-handed" and the other "right-handed"!  And Laura makes her cross-stitches "right"-handed.)

And so I ended up picking out almost everything that I had done so far, bar a short stretch of the outermost dark-blue border that I had only worked half-way, which I finished by (laboriously) running the thread under the first stroke in order to have them be lefties.  As you might expect, it was actually easier in the long run to pick it out and do it all over again.  Luckily for me, I hadn't actually got very far in 1991, relatively speaking, and so once I resolved to re-do it, it wasn't as much of an ordeal as I had feared.  ("There's a life lesson for you," I remarked to Laura.  "Don't be afraid to accept that something is a mistake, and to fix it.")

There are a lot of threads, and thread blends, to keep track of here!  I thought I was being fairly clever in my system of hole-punched index cards, and I was in that I only mixed up one batch of blends for the whole piece, but after a while all of the long ends of threads got handled a lot, and tangled, so I think that the next time I do a large project, I will think of something else — bobbins, probably.  (Some people use three-ring binders, with the flosses hanging from a similar kind of card, just the length that the binder is tall, but for some reason that just doesn't click with me.)

30th April: The old swans are picked out, but the frame around them is still the "righties".  I have no idea now why some of the white gingham-like bars have gold stitches here and there.  (I tweaked the lower-case z a bit from the original, which looked a bit skimpy to my eye.  The lower-case s will crop up again later.)

18th May. I decided, when I got to the upper-case alphabet, that I would leave those particular righties as they were.  The letters are far enough away from the other areas that it won't be obvious unless you look closely — so I rationalized to J — and it would be pleasing to have a little bit of the "original" 1991 stitching still intact.  It's now a Design Element.

It has been very comforting and encouraging, having a compatriot.  I felt a bit guilty, that my progress has been by leaps and bounds compared to hers, but she said that she appreciates having somebody who is having similar struggles and who understands that "progress" can be a hard-won square inch at times!  I have had the somewhat dubious "advantage" this summer, too, of unusually chronic insomnia, so that sometimes I will stitch a few hours in the evening, and then carry on for much of the night, so it's quite likely that I have at least twice the stitching time, maybe more, than she does.

Swans in progress.  I used the lazy-daisy embellishment as a bit of light relief now and then from all of the whites and greys.  (I also did a lot of "parking" of my threads, not cutting them but temporarily securing them to one side until the time came to shift the fabric up in the frame — this is a bit of a bother but saved cutting threads.  There are a lot of ends back there!)

Swans done!  I think this was one of the things that appealed to me most in 1991.  Swans on a sampler — fabulous!

7th July.  I started running out of threads at this point, to my surprise just a few colors as the kit was very generous with threads but of course picking out almost everything I'd done was going to drastically affect my thread supplies in certain areas.  A number of DMC colors were affected by the changes that the company had to make in order to comply with then-new EU environmental regulations — a number of grey shades were affected in 1994, and a number of red shades in 2017.  The 613 is not actually on the list of colors affected by the changes, but either it actually is, or the lengths of 613 were the only ones in my kit affected by thirty years in a manila envelope — regardless, for whatever reason, my old 613 was noticeably darker than my new 613, as you can see here in the mosaic stitches at the edges of the "thatch".  J made the brilliant suggestion that, instead of either a), picking out all of the old 613 and re-doing it in new 613, or b) picking out the new 613 and re-doing it in 612, which is curiously a closer match to the old 613 than the new 613 is (!), that I pick out only the old 613 on the lower edge of the main roof and re-do it in the new 613 to match the bit at the top edge.  This would make the two side roofs look as though they are more in shadow than the main roof.  "It would give it some depth," she added, convincingly.

And so I did that —

I had heard, by the way, of magnetic "needle keeps" and since there was a small stack of earth magnets in my metal gluing jig, I decided to give that a try with a pair.  Very handy!  I have also used them to keep a coil of the current floss nearby.

Now I need to go and try to convince my phone to hand over the August photos …