Head of the Dog, Swedish Ornaments and More

Holi has a halo now, as well as ear, nose and eye touches. The black eye and nose are a few plies of Splendor in straight stitches while the pink inner ear is a few straight stitches in dark pink Designer's Dream. Note how much darker the pink is than the white fur of the ear. I had pale pink Designer's Dream but it didn't show up against the white. I had to remove those stitches and use a much darker pink before the inner ear section showed up. Remember, two light shades often are not distinct enough for the eye to separate them. Ditto two dark and two medium shades. Usually you need to mix light with medium or dark with light, etc.

The #16 braid of gold 002 Kreinik is also a long stitch that was couched down with a little gold Accentuate metallic to make it bend like a halo. I have started the background around Holi's head also. I have continued to add diagonal rows of hearts on the inner skirt. Today I'll start work on the outer skirt.

In other news, I discovered photos of two of Leigh's Swedish Dynasty ornaments which are not on her website. These are the newest ornaments in the Dynasty series, which take motifs from various cultures and use them as ornaments. Here are the official Swedish Dynasty ornaments.
http://www.leighdesigns.com/Grp826x.html

At the January trade show Leigh also offered shops two limited edition Swedish ornaments. I saw them both at Waste Knot when I visited after the Woodlawn show. I love the painted roses pattern, but I know fans of Dalish animals will love the chicken. They both are pictured in the second row of designs here. The deal was shops could buy these at the show but when Leigh ran out, they were gone. I think a shop that got the limited edition ornaments can re-order but you can't get them any other place. So if you are a fan of these, order from Playful Needle where they apparently have both or call Waste Knot which had them both last week. I know, I drooled over the painted roses!
http://www.the-playful-needle.com/Index_new.html

http://wasteknotblog.com/index.php?option=com_dfcontact&Itemid=82

You can see the other Dynasty ornament sets here.
http://www.leighdesigns.com/ImgIdx2f.html

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

Beautiful Bargello

If you are a bargello fan, you must look at the website of Joyce Petschek, author of Beautiful Bargello, artist and tour guide to Italy and London and bargello.
http://www.bargelloarts.com/?page=10

Not all the links work for me at first. Explore and click on everything and you won't be sorry you did. Ms. Petschek does awe-inspiring and gorgeous work. Here's a bit about her book, which is worth seeking out for the lovely charted bargello designs she created.
http://www.amazon.com/Beautiful-Bargello-Charted-Needlepoint-Designs/dp/1570760934

Here's an old interview on the Caron website. The second link is the free project that accompanied the interview.
http://www.caron-net.com/may02files/may02des.html

http://www.caron-net.com/july02files/jul02cla.html

Note to Self: When we win the lottery, we really need to go on the London and the Tuscany bargello tours!

P.S. Liz Morrow has posted corrections to her bargello projects in Needlepoint Now on her blog. If you are stitching with Liz, make sure you print this out and put it with your copy of the magazine.
http://lizartblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/needlepoint-now.html

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

Hearts, Eyebrow Brush, Fur--But Still No Flowers

Holi got fur last night. In the photo above you see the card of white Wisper I used (one strand in a simple brick stitch over two threads) and also my eyebrow brush. The brush was a gift from my friend Mimi to use to make fuzzy threads fuzzier. It is perfect to brush up the delicate Wisper to turn it from somewhat lumpy-looking brick stitch into soft and touchable "fur."

Here is Rainbow Gallery's information about Wisper. Compare the diameter of it in the photo to the purple thread you see. The purple is four plies of Splendor. Please note that RG says to double the strand on 18 count but in brick stitch, it looked too heavy so I only used one strand.
http://www.rainbowgallery.com/jaystips.htm#35

http://www.rainbowgallery.com/detail.cfm?ID=79

I took before and after photos but since the thread is white, you really couldn't see the difference. In person, it is very obvious how much improved the Wisper is once it is brushed left, right, up, down, etc.

I need to add the nose and eye, then sttich a bit of background around Holi's head. The reason I will do this next (as well as another row of diagonal hearts which I added to last night) is to do with the flowers I keep mentioning but not stitching....

Stay tuned!

P.S. If you have the broad Revlon eyebrow tweezers, you might want to see how they are used in gold metal embroicery.
http://thistle-threads.com.mytempweb.com/blog/index.php/2009/03/tweezers/

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

Kristen from Carolina

I got a note via the Yahoo 360 system from Kristen asking for help identifying the stand up Santa in this portrait of Sue Jennings I took at Woodlawn. Since the default when you send a message this way is that anyone getting such a message can't reply, I'm posting my answer here so Kristen will see it.

I am not sure if she means the Santa on the far right (KS Designs) or the Santa head (Shelly Tribbey) on the pole, but here are the two websites for Kristen to browse and find the canvases.

Kristen, the right hand corner Santa you can barely see in the image most resembles the Naturalist Santa here but without the stuffed animal or the tree. Go to Gallery, then browse the Christmas and Stand Up sections plus What's New for a good look at many Kathy Schenkel designs.
http://www.kathyschenkel.com/Gallery/Christmas/13/Large-Stand-up-Santas/26.html

I think the Washington, D.C. Shelly Tribbey Santa face is a limited edition. Check with shops in the D.C. area to see if you can find it. Shelly's website has a lot of similar Santa heads and can probably point you to a place to pick up the D.C. Santa.
http://www.shellytribbey.com/christmas/santas/index.html

If Sue sees this, she'll let me know exactly who the designers and which canvases these are. By the way, the patriotic angel stand up on the left is from Mile High Princess (distributed by The Artists Collection). Here are their latest patriotic designs.
http://www.a-z-needlepoint.com/products-s/artistscoll-mhp2213.shtml

http://www.needlenookoflajolla.com/designers/artist_collection/index.html

The latest Mile High Princess canvases can be browsed here.
http://www.artistscollection.net/Artists_Collection/Design_Gallery.html

Thanks for your kind words about Blog, Kristen. Hope this is what you needed!


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

More Hearts, Still No Flowers

I didn't mention yesterday how I went about putting so many colors in such a small area. Basically, I choose a light color (yellow) for the background and then picked very bright (lime green) or strong (the reds) shades, usually picking two versions of a color. There's the red silk Trebizond and the red nylon Patina, for example. They are slightly different in shine and depth of color, which I thought would allow me to do two reds in a row but they'd not be too much because they'd be identical.

I tried to get enough variety (two blues, a blue teal, two reds, one orange because a lighter orange would not stand out on the yellow background, pink, two purples, three greens, etc.) so that Holi's underskirt would look like a flower bed planted in all colors of the rainbow.

Also, if you ever tried to color all the states in third grade like I did with only three colors, you know you need at least five or Kentucky will be the same color as Tennessee. In other words, you need 5 colors at least to mix so that you don't have rows where two colors touch or touch the same color on the diagonal row above or below the one you are working.

Other than that, just eyeball it and put navy where you haven't had any in a while. Very scientific, no? LOL

By the way, you might find what Kelly has written on her blog about her background color struggle interesting. Background color is important and hard!
http://kellysorts.blogspot.com/2009/03/background-choices.html

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