Important Announcement

With Yahoo 360 closing their blog system, I've tested several options yesterday and today.

1) I've moved all the original Yahoo 360 postings to the new Yahoo Profile page. However, this is not really functional as a blog. It is not searchable, there are no keywords left, some of the photos were lost in the transition in blog entries that had multiple photos, and it is not easy to navigate to older postings. There doesn't seem to be a way to get straight to the blog either. I will leave everything here as an archive but I will not post new blog entries here.
http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

2) Yahoo 360 allows one to move the 360 blog to other systems. I tried Wordpress but it doesn't allow me to move all the old posts. I have too much old information so I can't move everything. I'm also having trouble with the download/upload which isn't working properly. I will delete the Wordpress blog I started. It has nice features but it isn't going to be a good replacement for Yahoo 360 due to the size limits. So that's not an option.

3) I'm going to try to download the old Yahoo 360 material to Blogspot. So far I'm not having any luck with this. I uploaded to Yahoo Profile ok but it looks as if Blogspot only will upload .xml files and Yahoo 360 downloads material as txt files. The incompatable formats are a problem, but I'll continue to attempt this.

4) It looks like the best option for now is to just have one blog at Blogspot. So effective tomorrow I will no longer post messages to Yahoo 360 and my only blog will be the one located at http://chillyhollownp.blogspot.com

I am very sorry for the problems this will cause Blog readers but I can't make anything else work except Blogspot. We'll have the old material archived at Yahoo Profiles but Blogspot will be the only blog from now on.

Jane/Chilly Hollow

Old Yahoo 360 blog archived at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

While I'm Busy Switching Blogs

I'm wrestling with Wordpress this morning, trying to see if I can import the Yahoo 360 blog material into it. If I can make that work, I may consolidate everything there and abandon both Yahoo and Blogspot. Stay tuned....

While I tear out all my hair, I do have some things for you to enjoy. No need for all of us to go nuts, right?

The Needlepointer has their monthly clubs for 2009 up on their website. I can't believe I didn't notice the candy cane, lollypops, sheep and tree/wreath clubs before now!
http://www.theneedlepointer.com/needlepoint-clubs.htm

The French Knot has their late spring newsletter up. It announces several fun classes and that they have added a "blog" link to their home page.
http://www.thefrenchknot.com/newsletter.html

http://www.thefrenchknot.com/blog.html

Have fun browsing. I'm off to wrestle with templates and downloads/uploads. Sigh.

Jane/Chilly Hollow
Main blog at http://blog.360.yahoo.com/chillyhollow
New Yahoo blog at http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow and second new one at
http://chillyhollowneedlepoint.wordpress.com/

Transfer from Yahoo 360 to Yahoo Profile

This seems to be the new address of my Chillyhollow Needlepoint Yahoo Profile. This doesn't take you straight to the blog--you have to click on a link on the right side of the page. Sorry, I can't find a direct URL for the blog yet. Everything has transferred except keywords (HOW THE HECK CAN WE FIND ANYTHING WITHOUT KEYWORDS??!!!?!?!?!) and the slide shows (but I think if you click View All you can still see them) and second photos in blog entries that had more than one photo.
http://profiles.yahoo.com/chillyhollow

Could some folks test this please? Thanks!
Jane, exasperated in CH

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

The Wisteria Teapot Is Done

Last night I finished laying 4 plies of white Gloriana silk across the cotton perle padding to make the latticework and finish the wisteria teapot. I am not 100% happy with how it looks as the white painted area varies a bit from area to area and that is noticable, making the latticework a bit uneven. But since there is nothing I can do about it, I will let it alone. I don't think anyone but me will notice this. I'm quite pleased with it otherwise, although I think now the little bit of brown Accentuate I added here and there on the wisteria vine stem was unnecessary.

Now it goes into the pile of finishing! Which somehow is getting larger, not smaller!

In totally unrelated news, I got a note from Yahoo this morning that Yahoo 360 is shutting down the second week of July. I will have to move the blog contents from here to their new "social networking" site. I'm going to do this because there are more visitors to the Yahoo 360 blog than the Blogspot one, and I know many of you can't see Blogspot. But there will be changes. You'll have to go to a new address and I think some things (like the keyword tags) will disappear. Bear with me while I try and figure out how to do this. I'll keep everyone informed and once all the settings are done, I'll copy/paste the Yahoo 360 blog over and we'll see how it works.

Stay tuned! But if you hate change, you might want to try out the Blogspot blog. At least I know it works. I always post the Blogspot address at the end of each message.

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

Silk Ribbon Embroidery Supplies and Stitches

Before you do any silk ribbon embroidery (SRE) you need supplies. The photo above shows several brands of silk ribbon and also shows a packet of chenille needles. Stitching with silk ribbon needs a needle with a large eye and a sharp point, and chenille needles are perfect on both counts.

Silk ribbon for embroidery comes mostly in 4 mm widths although 2 mm and 7 mm widths are available. I don't have any 2 mm in my stash but the card of variegated yellow ribbon in the photo is 7 mm wide. For 18 count canvas like my example, 4 mm works just fine, although if I were doing a large and elaborate piece, I would want some 2 mm for buds and other small areas. I actually used a card of variegated purple Splendor Silk Ribbon from Rainbow Galley. It's not in the photo. I didn't think to take the picture until after the wisteria was all done. The card held 4 yards of ribbon and I used it all and needed to finish my wisteria with some of the Bucilla pale lavender ribbon you see in the picture. Brands of ribbons matter. Some are stiffer than others. I like the crisp curl the stiffer Bucilla ribbon gave to my wisteria blossoms, although the Splendor silk ribbon looks just as good. I haven't used the River Silks ribbon yet, although folks rave about it, and I haven't used the Gloriana silk ribbon yet, either, although I love the depth of color. Whatever brand you use, keep in mind that the two wisteria clusters which are each around 3/4 inch wide and 2 inches long, took more than 4 yards of ribbon. Make sure you buy enough ribbon. SRE does use a lot of ribbon.


Now let's talk about the stitches I used. I had taken a careful look at the Lee wisteria kimonos Ruth Dilts and Joan Lohr stitched and taught Judie at Thistle Needleworks, and already knew that they used mostly Japanese ribbon stitch. To do this stitch, you come up through your ground fabric (NP canvas in our case) and then lay your ribbon flat on the surface and plunge your needle down at the point you want your stitch to end. This is why you need a sharp needle--you use it to stitch right through the ribbon! You get a long stitch with a very pretty curl at the end. Here's a good diagram.
http://www.stitching.com/CDA/stitch/stitches/ribbon-stitch.html

I looked at various ribbon stitches and did some test stitching and decided I wanted to mostly use a lazy daisy stitch for my wisteria. If you look at the stitches on the left of the canvas you see a lazy daisy stitch done in dark purple as a sort of horseshoe shape. Instead of starting and ending my lazy daisy stitch loop in the same hole, I spaced the starting and stopping holes apart to make the horseshoe which I tied down as you normally tie down lazy daisy stitches.
http://crochet.about.com/library/weekly/aalazydaisy.htm

If you look back at photos of the teapot from yesterday with the wisteria partly stitched, you'll see the blossoms were painted as shaded ovals of various lengths and widths. Working from the bottom of the spray of flowers to the top, I made a lazy daisy horseshoe that fit an oval. If the oval was wide, I put a smaller lazy daisy horseshoe inside the first horseshoe. Then I finished the flower by doing the Japanese embroidery stitch in the middle of the horseshoe's empty shape. I always came up at the top of the horseshoe right under the tie down stitch and went down at the bottom between the horseshoe legs so that the curl of the stitch was at the bottom. In my sample on the canvas's left side, the horseshoe lazy daisy stitch is in dark purple and the Japanese embroidery stitch that fills the middle is in pale lavender. I hope you can see the little curl where I put the needle right through the ribbon at the bottom.

Occasionally I did a French knot in ribbon if I needed to fill a space that my other stitches didn't cover. I also put a few single Japanese embroidery stitches here and there in the very small oval areas. It didn't take long (although it took a lot of ribbon) and the only hard part was keeping the ribbon from twisting. It was pretty well behaved most of the time but it is easy not to pull your ribbon all the way snug if you aren't careful. I cut out the lighter areas of the overdyed Splendor silk ribbon to use mostly on the left spray of flowers and put most of the darker areas of the overdyed ribbon on the right side. I thought that looked better, but really I could have let the colors fall naturally if I wanted.

I like how this turned out and learned a great deal about SRE that I hope to put to good use on two other pieces I have in my stash that will benefit from silk ribbons. The next area is the latticework which as you see I've padded with long stitches of DMC white cotton perle that I'm overlaying with 4 plies of my white Gloriana silk. I am not sure that I have the stitches the proper length in some areas that I had to compensate so I'll be studying this and thinking it over for a while.

Meanwhile the sun is supposed to be out today and perhaps that means my finishing of the pet guardian angels can continue. Wish me luck on both projects, ok?

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