The Teeth Creep Me Out UPDATED

Ok, I admit it---I am not a fan of nutcracker canvases. I will admit that I own a nutcracker canvas, though. I have the Danji Robin Hood nutcracker canvas (complete with Amy Bunger stitch guide and all the threads) in my stash. Someday....

If you aren't like me and you have $1100 USD burning a hole in your pocket, you will want to check out this eBay auction for a set of 13 nutcrackers designed by Susan Roberts with canvas, threads and stitch guides from Needle Works in Austin. They are offering a monthly nutcracker set this year but the auction is for a different set from 2006. This link is long, so if it doesn't work for you, click on the post title at my Blogspot blog. (Sorry, Yahoo 360 doesn't offer this clicking option.)

http://cgi.ebay.com/13-Nutcrackers-Complete-Kits-SUSAN-ROBERTS_W0QQitemZ130298747565QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item130298747565&_trksid=p3911.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1205%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1308%7C301%3A1%7C293%3A1%7C294%3A50

There's a king, cowboy and cowgirl, and many more in the set. Fun to look at, even if stitching these would give me nightmares!

UPDATE: This Buy Me Now auction ended without any bidders.

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Faking Holi's Greensleeves

Yesterday I talked about Holi's sleeve and how I planned to add the fresh greens from her over-skirt to the sleeve to make the reds and oranges Pop. I didn't mention that I was out of the Gloriana perle silk I used in the skirt. In order to recreate the overdye on the sleeve I'm going to have to fake it.

Overdyes are easy to fake. I pull as many of the shades in the original overdye as I can find (in this case I used DMC cotton floss for the three shades of green). If you look at the picture you can see I got awfully close to the original colors. I will do diagonal rows of green, switching from the darker green to the medium apple green and then to the lime green just like I did on the skirt. I'll switch the colors after about the same length of thread, too. When I'm done, you guys can vote on how close I got to mimicing the original Gloriana thread.

It is hard to get the subtle shading of some overdyes just right but if you have only a few colors, you can do pretty well. Some of you may remember the Sundance woman in a cloak piece I did oer two years ago. The designer used 8 colors of Watercolours for the clothes. I substituted DMC floss for all 8 skeins and spent 1/3 of what I would have spent on Watercolours, ending up with a pretty good approximation of the model. You can see this piece on the Yahoo 360 blog. Go to the link below if you are at Blogspot, then look for Sundance in the "tag cloud" on the left side column. Click and then scroll down to find "Sundance Beginner's Lesson-The End" to see what DMC can do to imitate Watercolours, or any other overdye, for that matter.

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow