More Pet Guardian Angels Arrive

Three more pet guardian angels have arrived in Chilly Hollow for their photo shoot before heading off to the ANG Auction in Milwaukee this fall. Like their sisters, they are wonderful! I've added their pictures to the slide show of all the angels on the left side of the page. Just click on the issue of Needle Pointers with the originals on the cover to see the ones I've received to date. In alphabetical order, here are the newest pet guardians--

The first angel to arrive (and the first alphabetically) is Beth's Medieval Cat (shown above). Beth used purple on her angel on her daughter's advice paired with red (one of my favorite color combos!) to create this angel who shouts Charleston! to me every time I look at it. I am totally charmed by the purple feathery boa trim on her jacket (sorry, the scanner mashed it down a little) and I like how her skirt is one pattern instead of the original model's two. This angel has a darling fuzzy Wisper face and paw, and wings of white and gold.



Joanne's Beatrice the Renaissance Rat celebrates Joanne's love of Italy. I'm sorry the photo doesn't show the gold rays of light coming from her halo, her pink pearl nose, or the delicate wings which have white paint showing through the tiny stitches. In person she is spectacular!


Margaret's Tudor Dog is a Golden Retriever in the original colors of white and navy and gold, but the individual touches on this ornament make it totally different from its twins. The collar and sleeve are particularly beautiful and I love the dog's ear! The hearts on the underskirt are against a shimmery white opalescent background. This is a lovely angel indeed. Actually, they are all fantastic. I would have a hard time picking a favorite as each is marvelous and beautifully stitched and finished.

Many thanks to the angels who've been stitching for the Milwaukee ANG Auction. They will be sold as a set as groups of ornaments and larger pieces are the ones that bring in the big bucks and this is a fund raiser to support ANG's programs which we all enjoy.

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

Blog Changes and More News

I've been tweeking Blog a bit over the last month, trying to add various features as well as fiddling with the layout. My goal is to have something easy to read that has the tools you need to find things but that isn't cluttered.

There are two search boxes on Blog. The upper left hand corner search box looks for things on Blog (and nowhere else) that I've written. I'm aware that once blog entries are pushed off the front page to earlier pages that many folks can't find things. That's where this box comes in. Each blog entry I write is carefully keyworded with the name of the project, the designer, if it's about shop news or newsletters, about a stitching exhibit or the TNNA trade shows, whether it covers beads or is about a new thread from a certain manufacturer or a new stitch I'm trying. Search on these things and see what comes up when you can't find what you want or if you are interested in seeing what I've written (if anything) on that topic. Treat this search box as a treasure hunt and see what you can find!

The other search box is in the left hand column about halfway down the page. This is a new search tool Google (which owns Blogspot) offers. It is called a "custom search" and I had to enter common keywords in setting it up. I think it is supposed to weed out topics not related to NP in any Internet searches you do. I am not sure how well it works since the site gets a fraction of a cent any time it is used and I consider it unethical for me to test it but you might want to give it a try. I've noticed that searches on "needlepoint" using Google are less and less useful these days. I get a lot of eBay sales and a lot of results from sites that are just lists of keywords and ads which try to get you to their location where they hope you'll click on an ad and bring them revenue. I hope this special custom search box will avoid some of those problems! I'd appreciate feedback on how well this works if you test it yourself.

Microsoft has a new search engine called Bing which I've had fun using. Got to www.bing.com and enter various terms and see what you find. I like to choose Images to get pictures as my search result and then to add designer names to find stitched examples of someone's work. This morning I used "needlepoint Leigh Designs" to find all sorts of wonderful Leigh needlepoint canvases, stitched and unstitched, along with articles about folks who stitch her things.

I need to go through the blog listing again and remove blogs that don't post often and add those that do. The list is automatic and is generated from the list of blogs I follow but the system has problems. Not every blog I watch is shown (I removed the non-NP blogs manually) when it updates. Some blogs don't have RSS feeds enabled so they can't be followed on blog readers and via automated blog lists. If you have a blog about NP and post often but it doesn't show up on my list, email me at chillyhollow athot maildotcom and I'll try to add it. No guarantees, though. Blog occasionally flat refuses to do what I want it to. Hummm..... Sounds like the dogs, my husband, my boss and many other things in my life. LOL

In the Other News catagory, Amy Bunger's July e-newsletter is up and it is fabulous! Amy's written a fascinating article about how to choose the right color of thread when you are stitching with beads and there is a full report (with pictures!) of the Amy Bunger shop's visit to the Columbus trade show in June. Amy's also stitched two wonderful pieces, one a Halloween Boo! sign that you have to see and the other a fabulous donkey for the Kelly Clark Nativity set that is part of her shop's monthly club for this year.
http://www.amybunger.com/current_enewsletters.html

Have fun reading the newsletter. All of the Amy Bunger monthly newsletters are great but the beading tips in this one and the report on what the TNNA trade shows are like is a must-read. And there are pictures of some of our favorite designers! If you ever wondered what the real Maggie behind the Maggie Designs line looks like....

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

Ring Attached to Canvas (with Blackwork and Painted Canvas Lessons)

Last night I attached my ring to the top of my metallic ornament hanger. All I did was couch it down with my vintage gold Treasure Ribbon, being careful to cover the gold paint on the canvas with my stitches and by positioning the ring itself carefully. If I was going to finish this piece as an ornament, I wouldn't attach the ring at all. I'd wait until finishing and have the ring sticking out of the top of the finished ornament for hanging but since I plan to have this framed, I wanted to do it this way. There is no one "right" way to stitch things like this. You do what works for you.

In the category of NP news, Old Wold Designs in CA is going to do a introductory class to painting your own canvas. Since a lot of folks are interested in this topic, check out the class and see if it fits your schedule if you live in the area. The wisteria window design is very pretty!
http://www.oldworlddesigns.com/classes.html

Tanja Berlin has added two new blackwork kits to her website. There are two pages of designs as one set is intended as an introduction to blackwork specifically for those used to doing cross stitch. The other page has more advanced designs. Tanja does beautiful work so even if you don't want to stitch blackwork, you can admire what she has created.
http://www.berlinembroidery.com/whatsnew.htm#relaxation

http://www.berlinembroidery.com/blackwork.htm#pheasants


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

Ring-Topped Dragon

Ch'ing has a metal ornament hanger top now! Last night I choose two other golds that look good with the vintage gold-colored Treasure Ribbon I used to outline the scales of our Chinese red dragon, then used long tent stitches to do vertical lines of various colors on the hanger top. I worked top down on row one, then bottom up on row two, etc., starting with a regular tent stitch followed by a row of elongated tent stitches over two threads instead of the normal one. The last stitch in each row was a regular tent stitch. Each row is a different shade of gold.

For the golds I used Treasure Braid TR83 for the regular gold (in 8 strand size--this thread comes in 4 strands, 8 strands or 16 strands so you can put it on any canvas count from congress cloth to 13-14 count); Treasure Braid TR81 (8 strand size) for the yellow gold; and Petite Treasure Ribbon in PR30 for the dark vintage gold. I left the ends of each gold thread on top of the canvas so you could compare the various shades of gold. The vintage gold and the yellow gold are on the left side and the regular gold on the right.

In the photo you see the finished ornament top and the ring that goes on top in its little package that came with the canvas. I think you are supposed to put the looped end on the back side of your canvas and thread the open end through a hole to the front, then come back down on the other side of the metal ornament top, go back through a hole there and then fasten the open end into the loop to close it. If you then tied down the top of the loop with a couched stitch, it would stay in position. I was a bit too tired to tackle this last night, so I put the canvas away and added a little more red lettering to the endless boring border of Cape Cod Dogs instead. I am close to half done with the border. Hopefully I will finish it before Ch'ing is completely done.

Tonight I'll attach the ring and continue work on the dragon's head. I've started the head but decided it would be better to talk about the dragon's head and fins in logical order, not in the order I stitched them.

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

Head of a Dragon, Body of a Snake

Last night was spent basketweaving the black border around Cape Cod Dogs but I finished the body of Ch'ing the red dragon from Leigh before starting Even More Basketweave and want to show this part of the design off.

The sinuous snake-like body of the dragon has red, orange and yellow scales outlined with gold. Some of the gold areas widen to become gold scales. I didn't want to lose the lovely shading and I didn't want to tent stitch the whole body, either, so it took me some time to come up with an idea that would give me the slightly wet look of snakeskin. Here in CH we get to inpect snakes fairly often (mostly the very small and very pretty tree snakes who live around us and who sport a gold ring around their necks) and all their bodies look shiny and wet. I wanted this look for Ch'ing.

I first stitched the gold lines in tent stitches using Petite Treasure Ribbon from Rainbow Gallery. This is a shiny metallic ribbon, thinner and narrower than ribbon floss, that is easy to use. Like all ribbon threads, it does twist and turn as you stitch with it but since the twists expose the vintage gold-with-black color of PR30, I didn't use a laying tool as I stitched. Please note that Treasure Ribbon comes in two widths--Petite and plain Treasure Ribbon. I used the Petite as this is an 18 count canvas. If you are curious about Petite and regular Treasure Ribbon, look at the Rainbow Gallery website.
http://www.rainbowgallery.com/colorcards.cfm

Remember I said that some of the gold lines widened to produce gold scales? When I got to these areas, I only stitched the outside edge. I left the centers unstitched. When all the gold outlines and the red or orange or yellow scales were stitched completely, I added tiny gold faceted beads from Sundance Designs to the center of the gold scales. My tube isn't labeled, but the gold shade of the beads and of the Petite Treasure Braid is similar. Matching the color is more important than using the same brand of beads.

Adding the beads were the last step. The next to last step is filing in the orange and red and yellow scales with long diagonal stitches using three colors of Water N Ice--red WT5, orange WT4 and yellow WT3. Water N Ice is a slightly transparent ribbon thread. It looks like strips of heavy Saran wrap. To see more colors, go to the Rainbow Gallery page listed above. The smaller photo on the right shows some gold outlining, a few of the red scales stitched and a cluster of gold beads in the center of a gold scale.

In most cases I used slanting diagonal stitches to fill in. I worked the two sides of each mostly oval shape first, then put a long stitch in the middle overlapping the sides slightly. In this case, I did use a laying tool to keep the thread from twisting. The look is wet and slick, just like a real reptile.

I did lose some of the beautiful shading by topping it with this thread but I did see changes in some of the orange scales especially depening on how dark the orange paint underneath was. In a few cases I mixed orange and yellow thread in one scale where the paint clearly used both colors. I am happy with the look which gives Ch'ing the Manchu dragon a solid body that stands out from the checkerboard background.

The next challenge will be to heavily pad the dragon's head so that is even more prominent but before I work on that area I'm going to stitch the metallic hanger on top of the ornament.


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