A Victory

This week my victory is mastering the needleweaving for sepals on my Frosted Berries stumpwork piece. I put a scrap piece of fabric in a hoop and found that by using the magic pink hair tape to hold the thread instead of my hand, I could manage to stitch these and adjust the tension. I will post a photo when I get all the sepals stitched. 

But right after mastering this, I moved on to starting Luan Callery's "Summer Dream" as the little group of us stitching this meet tomorrow. I managed to stitch all the stems. I think the hardest part was trying to organize the many pages. Check the page for info about what needle to use with the Appleton Crewel wool. Check the stitch diagram. Check the page with instructions. Check the diagram. Check the photo. I started to make myself dizzy. Don't stitch the part of the stems that is circled. That comes later. I can see this process may involve lots of flipping through pages. But I feel comfortable with it now and wanted to keep going, but it was getting late and I hadn't found my crewel needles. That took about 1/2 an hour to locate my little black bag with my crewel supplies and though there were some needles in it, they were not the needles I was searching for. 

I have rediscovered my love of surface work, not that I will ever leave counted thread behind. But it is glorious to pick up a piece of fabric and start stitching away without having to follow a chart. 

At this point I have identified a true needle for a needlebook with many pages and good identification. I mean I have tapestry needles in sizes from 20 - 28. I have tapestry needles without and with points. I have chenille needles, milliner's needles, generic embroidery needles, crewel needles. All in various sizes. And frequently when I am in a needlework store I will buy more needles. Because I can take the finish off a regular needle with just hours of stitching. Takes me about a week with a gold needle, and maybe a month with a platinum needle. 

And I'm still searching for a proper container for the "dead" needles. Maybe I'll look at Michael's for something I can decorate. 

So while this week is becoming all about surface work, I've got counted stuff percolating in the back of my brain. I did correct my error on "Little Green Acorns" and have continued with the bargello design and should be able to start stitching it within the week. I just need one quick trip to a shop to check the colors I pulled from my stash against what other pearl #5 exists.