ANG Seminar Reports UPDATED AGAIN

I've been eagerly waiting for folks to get back from ANG's Seminar in Columbus, OH to hear all about it but the pickings are slim so far.  Fortunately, Melita reported in on her experience.
http://melitastitches4fun.wordpress.com/2010/10/10/ang-seminar-2010-trip-report/


Melita won a first place and the Princess Grace Award (given for an all basketweave piece) for one of her original designs.
http://melitastitches4fun.wordpress.com/2010/10/10/beautiful-ohio/

She also showed another original piece that was almost as highly rated by the judges.  Both are described on her blog.  Congratulations!
http://melitastitches4fun.wordpress.com/2010/10/14/madam-carina/

UPDATE:  Melita has added the third piece she showed to her blog.  It's great fun to read how this design evolved.
http://melitastitches4fun.wordpress.com/2010/10/20/points-of-tranquility-sky-earth-and-sea/

Jan is also back from Seminar and has two photos of the events in her write up.  Sounds like a great time, doesn't it?
http://stitchlady.wordpress.com/2010/10/13/back-from-seminar/

I hope more information appears as folks get home, unpack, and are finally over whatever bugs they picked up after not enough sleep, too much excitement and the rigors of air travel.

UPDATE: Kelly has posted about her seminar experiences, including classes and the goodies she bought.
http://sweetneedleofmine.blogspot.com/2010/10/small-packing-tragedy-strikes.html

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

CanvasWorks and More

Today I don't have access to my bookmarks and can't post any progress photos since Beloved is downloading an update to World of Warcraft.  It's been almost 12 hours since he started the download and since WOW claims they have 12 million subscribers, all of whom are trying to download the same things, the computer is tied up for another couple of hours still.

So why don't we go look at the CanvasWorks trunk show that Nimble Needle has posted on their blog?  Canvasworks doesn't have a website so this is a rare glimpse of their work.  The top blog entry is a plea for help finding beading ribbon, but four of the next five postings are all CanvasWorks canvases.  These are lovely classic designs, perfect for all basketweave in your most favorite thread in the world.
http://thenimbleneedle.blogspot.com/

The mathematically inclinded might like to check out this posting.  I have no idea what a Hilbert curve is, but it makes great NP!
http://thenimbleneedle.blogspot.com/2010/09/math-monday-mathematical-needlepoint.html

On another topic entirely, thanks to Kathy's Unbroken Thread blog (crewel embroidery mostly), I discovered Map Muse.  It tells you where to find embroidery, needlepoint and cross stitch shops when you travel.  If you are going anywhere, check it out.  (There is also a way to add shops that they have missed, so if your favorites aren't in the system, add them to help out your fellow stitchers.)  Kathy used it to find a lot of fun places on her last trip but I'd love more feedback about whether this is useful for all parts of the U.S.  The site itself is very cluttered and full of ads but if it works, we can overlook that.
http://find.mapmuse.com/interest/stitch-shops

Gay Ann Roger's e-Week sale has started.  Time to stock up on her patterns because e-Week is just once a year and what is offered changes.  Some of the designs are brand new, some have been seen but never offered.  If you are a counted thread person, this is a Must Visit sale.  Make sure you read the E-Week News & Views section if you plan to buy anything, or if your favorite GAR design isn't pictured.
http://www.gayannrogers.com/site_2/Home_Page.html

Because it is Halloween, how about a monster scissors fob?  The growling bead cracks me up but there is a more traditional Halloween fob at her Etsy store.
http://mymarkdesigns.wordpress.com/2010/10/12/rarw-monster-fobs/

Finally, Stitcher's Workshop is having a big sale this weekend, starting Friday.  If you are in Arkansas, please visit.  If not, an Internet visit will do.
http://www.stitchersworkshop.com/blog/?p=407


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

Luna Grounded

Luna Unstitched

No, Luna the Vampire has not been sent to her room.  I'm sure she has been a very bad girl indeed, but I'm not about to go there.  Passing judgement on a needlepoint canvas character is a sign of something that isn't really healthy, right?

I'm talking about how to stitch a ground for Luna to stand on.  I mentioned earlier that the canvas design already reads "ground" when you look at it.  Check out the bare unstitched canvas above.  See what I mean?

But I still wanted something there, something solid.  You may want to look at Rachel's posting about how she handled this same problem with a Paddington Bear she stitched.  She cleverly changed the color of her background stitch to indicate ground.
http://www.blog.virtuosewadventures.co.uk/wordpress/2010/10/12/a-bear-called-paddington/

However, I'm not going to stitch Luna's background. I think I probably will leave the custom gray canvas with the speckles unstitched.  So that solution won't work for me.  Ok, what kinds of things do you find on the ground in graveyards?

Bad Tombstone Stitch!

Paving stones!  So I stitched block stitches.  I think they look very much like ground in an unobtrusive way.  I used a ply from the six ply Planet Earth Fibers line of silk floss.  I like how it turned out.  However, I am not happy with the stitch on the cracked tombstone.  It's too prominent.  A friend pointed out that I have two tombstones and a bird in that area to deal with and I might want to make at least one of them very muted.  So out came the tombstone stitches and I have something else in mind.  I also decided to add one more paving stone to the ground.  Here's what I ended up with.

Final Ground Treatment

What do you think?  Note that I have not added rows of compensated stitches around Luna's hem or at the very bottom of the canvas.  I decided that would not look as good as what we have here.

A suggestion of ground is sometimes enough.  But now I'm wondering if I should take that last paving stone out again....

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

Thread Review: Empress

Empress merino/cashmere/silk thread by Pure Palette/Dreamhouse Ventures

Now that I've been blogging regularly since 2006, folks have started sending me products to review.  I have mixed feelings about this.  I am happy to have access to things that my local shops don't carry or that I haven't talked myself into spending money to mail order, but I am a bit worried about not presenting things fairly to you, Blog's readers.  It is all too easy to give a good review of things sent by friends or by small business owners that you know are struggling to make it in a harsh economy.  I want to be fair to all involved, so any time I am sent things to review, I'll mention they were sent to be reviewed and will cover all aspects of the items, the good and the bad points.  Just because something doesn't work well for me doesn't mean it is bad in general.  Needlepointers have a huge range of interests and stitching styles.  I don't use a lot of perle cotton, for example, but that doesn't mean that it's a bad thread.  I just happen to not use it very much.   I want to explain enough about anything I review so you know as much as possible and can decide for yourself whether you want to seek it out.

Empress Color #8454 Dry Martini

With all the above in mind, I'm going to do a short review of Empress, a new 100% merino cashmere silk blend from The Pure Palette, which also  carries Soy Luster (a floss made of soybeans) and Baroque Silk (a three ply silk floss).  Empress is brand new.  It was just introduced this year and luckily Needlewoman East has a nice selection of colors.  I bought a skein of olive green this summer to play with.  In the photo below are the test samples I played around with.

Empress feels great when you hold the skein or stitch with it.  A strand is about the size of a strand of Appleton crewel wool, and it looks just like crewel wool when you pull out a loose end to cut off a stitching length.  Above you see tent stitches and then rows of cashmere stitch on 18 count.  One strand covers well and looks very much like any wool thread except for the soft feel when you touch the stitches.  I am allergic to wool, particularly Paternayan, and avoid stitching with it in the summertime but I had no trouble stitching with Empress, even though it was 85 degrees in Chilly Hollow when I stitched the above.  I didn't think to test vertical stitches with Empress but I think one strand would also cover pretty well on 18 count in upright stitches, which usually need more thread to cover the NP canvas completely.  You are going to need to use two strands on 13 or 14 count to cover.

The Pure Palette's website hasn't been updated in quite a while, so only Soy Luster is listed there.  They also have a silk thread called Baroque Silk.
http://www.thepurepalette.com/index.html

Fortunately, Needle in a Haystack has photos of most of the colors of Soy Luster and of Baroque Silk on their website.  Here're the links, Soy Luster first. and Baroque Silk second.
http://www.needlestack.com/WebStore/Thread/TPP_SoyLuster.html

http://www.needlestack.com/WebStore/Thread/TPP_BaroqueSilk.html

As far as I can find out, no one has posted photographs of Empress on their websites yet so when Dreamhouse Ventures sent me a selection of their Empress that might work on Luna, I laid them all out and took a photograph for you to see.  The colors are, from left to right:

Cabernet 8178, Vintage Linen 8490. Gravity 8248, Heliotrope 1168, Iris 8204, Big Sky 8240, Santa Fe 8242, Old Men 8564, Dusty Miller 8562, Soot 8566, Twister 8582, and Witching Hour 8600.  The dark gray skein above the row of the others is Tarnish 8596.  I opened it so you could see the thread texture.  The olive green Dry Martini 8454 is pictured separately above.  The colors are generally soft and muted, which is pretty much what I remember of the display of these threads at Needlewoman East which had about 30-40 colors my last visit.

It's a lovely thread, and one I will enjoy using because it feels so good when you stitch with it.

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

Luna: Choosing a Background

Leigh Designs' Ladies of the Night:  Luna

I've posted a photo of Luna again so we can look at the background.  I've already written that I decided to do some stitches around her feet and around the tombstones that looked like paving stones to "ground" the design somewhat.  But I don't have to do that.  The design itself reads that area as ground.  Our brains look at the sprigs of grass and her feet and think "ground."

I could do a background stitch.  But what stitch?  Do I want to cover up the gray splotches that remind me of fog?

I've seen a great many terrific Halloween themed backgrounds recently.  Stitch Niche's e-newsletter for August has a great photo of a witch in a fancy hat with a skull patterned background.
http://www.needlepointyaya.com/Newsletter_files/AugustNewsletter.pdf

Here is the same piece framed from their September newsletter--in a frame with skulls!  How great is that?!
http://www.needlepointyaya.com/Newsletter_files/SeptemberNewsletter.pdf

In the October Amy Bunger newsletter, Robin King shares a graphed version of the words Eek and Boo which she has used for backgrounds.  They would also make a great border.  While you are there, check out the background behind the werewolf from the Kelly Clark Halloweenies series Amy is stitching.
http://www.amybunger.com/f/Amy_s_e-newsletter_October_2010.pdf

All these are terrific background ideas.  But are they right for Luna?   I just can't see her walking among floating skulls or words or even big Xs.  These things are not right for a more realistic canvas.  There isn't that much room on a tall, narrow canvas that has tree limbs in the background anyway.  I'd be compensating constantly, trying to squeeze in full skulls or Xs or words.   I don't even think a border of such things would look good.  They'd detract from the solitary figure.  So Luna gets boring flagstones.

The moral is don't fall in love with an idea.  Go with what is right for your canvas, not what is a clever idea.  I have a hard time with that lesson.

By the way, yesterday's Canvas of the Day is by Needle Deeva.  Thanks, Vicky!
http://www.needlepointcouture.com/season39s-greetings-dearie-needlepoint-canv39.html

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