Shop News

It must be something in the air because two of my favorite shops are moving in July.

Needle in a Haystack in Alameda, CA is moving to slightly smaller digs with better parking.  Here are the details.  Click on "Our Move Week Is July 12" to read even more as exact moving day plans are made.
http://needlestack.typepad.com/whats_new/2010/06/were-moving-in-july.html

Needle Works in Austin is moving right now.  They hope to reopen at the new location July 1st.  The second link is to their June newsletter which has photos of the new interior and a map for visitors.
http://www.theneedleworks.com/

http://www.theneedleworks.com/newsletter/201006newsletter.pdf

Good luck on the move!  I'm sure it'll turn out as well as Exclamation Point's new revamped website did.  They have two great videos now, one on the home page and one on the Canvases page.  Fun to watch and I'm told this is a very very nice shop to visit if you are ever in Saratoga, CA.
http://exclamationpoint.org/

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Cha's Wild Grapes and Seed Pod

The last two pieces of fruit the parrot is eating are the cluster of wild grapes and the seed pod they rest on.  I decided to completely bead the grape area using Sundance's size 14 clear hex beads and the three shades of purple from the plum.  I also used a bit of white thread to attach beads in the grape highlights.  It seemed to take forever and the beads look more like sequins than grapes but I like the look.

The next thing to tackle was the seed pod. It gave me a lot more trouble than I expected.  The pod is painted silver-gray and blue-gray--matching those colors was harder than I expected.  I started with two silk flosses and satin stitches that I padded but I didn't really care for the look or the colors.  So out it came and I tried simple straight stitches using my silks.  Didn't like that either. I rummaged around in my stash a bit more and found two spools of Trebizond silk that seemed to match the painted colors very well and two skeins of silk/wool Impressions that weren't as good a match but which seemed to have the right rough texture for a seed pod if I used something along the line of interlocking Gobelin.

Here's a nice diagram on the About.com site about interlocking Gobelin.
http://needlepoint.about.com/od/longstitches/ss/EncroachInterlockGobelin_2.htm

I've always used interlocking Gobelin for animal fur, never for plants, so I wasn't sure how this would work.  I've always used rough threads for this stitch as well, which is reasonable for a fur look.  But some imp prompted me to try the Trebizond in this stitch because the colors matched the paint so well.  Above you can see me starting the tip of the pod and the first row of the full pod length.

Cha's Cluster of Fruit Finished

I really like how the seed pod turned out.  I used an unexpected thread and stitch and got exactly the result I was looking for.

Sunday night I stitched 2 1/2 more leaves and most of the leaf veins, leaving me 2 1/2 leaves to go before I have to start working background again.

Written by Jane/Chilly Hollow Blogging at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com Archived Yahoo 360 postings at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow