5 posts tagged “cross stitch”

As usual, brought to us by Renée:

For seasoned stitchers: Define a stitching term or acronym for new stitchers. For newbies: What stitching term or acronym would you like defined?

Wow. This was a tough one - I've been in the cross-stitch net culture for long enough that acronyms just kind of slide past my eyes - but I remember in the question thing that went around recently, there were two terms that confused people:

Railroading: a technique for getting threads to lie parallel on the fabric. Instead of using a tricky, expensive laying tool, when going from the front of the fabric to the back, you pass the needle between two of the strands; in theory they should kind of loop around and straighten out. (This works for any number of strands.) Some people railroad both the top and bottom leg, some do just the top, and some don't bother. Some people have also reported that the floss kind of unplies when they do this.

SABLE: Stash Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy. A condition where, given your rate of stitching and the amount of stash you've stashed, it's become physically impossible for you to completely empty your stash before you die. I might have reached this point, given the number of TW patterns I have stashed with every intention of stitching up someday.

Quick, simple, and to the point:

Do you have any pieces that you would liked passed on to future generations as family heirlooms?

Everything? Hee. In all seriousness, I'm very proud of the two traditional samplers I've done (City Stitcher's "Sampler of the Bees", and Little House Needlework's "Willow Tree Inn"), and I hope they're enjoyed by my great-great-grandchildren someday. In my stash, I have a few patterns that will probably result in heirloom-quality pieces - but I just don't see "that cutesy thing from a Dimensions kit" being passed down and cherished through the ages, y'know?

Beesampler

• I think I mentioned at some point in the past that knitting a sock always seems to go faster once you're past the heel. I'm going to stick by that statement - the individual rows on my first Jaywalker of the pair are going by zip, zip, zip. But I'm in a Knitting Black Hole or something, because the sock doesn't seem to be getting any longer. Maybe I cursed myself by trying it on? At any rate, I know the likely result of this is that tonight or tomorrow I'm going to knit one row and then discover that I should have started the toe two inches ago.

• I need to get a Spinsanity spindle of my own. Daughter picked one up at a fiber fair, and she's learning decently with it finally - but I tried it out last night, just to see what it could do. I took about 4 inches of roving from Daughter's ball of Crap Fiber, and turned it into about 6 yards of two-ply laceweight! - it came out similar in thickness to a #5 perle cotton. I do remember thinking at one point "Holy crap I'm spinning sewing thread"... I don't think I'm going to do anything with the yarn except maybe show it off, but my gosh I'm proud of it, and I'm almost tempted to cable it back on itself to see if it comes out sockweight.

• Hubby's grandparents are in the process of moving - they've sold their house to move into an "independent living facility", where Nana won't kill herself keeping up with the housework and there's assistance available to care for Boppa. So they've given the grandchildren a chance to claim any furniture or knickknacks they're interested in, and I told Nana, who also cross-stitches, "I'd like a couple of the samplers." She sent four - three she made herself (two traditional samplers and a really cool Santa piece), and one I wasn't expecting (mostly because she'd told me previously she wanted to hang onto it herself, but she'd stick my name on it for after her own eventual death): a family heirloom, worked by Hubby's great-great-great-grandmother in 1836, when she was 10. Some of the colors have faded, the linen has darkened, and little Martha A. Goldsberry didn't leave quite enough room for the motto so some of the letters are kind of jimmied in - but I appreciate the family heritage that goes with it as much as the art of the needlework. Pictures will follow as soon as we've found a good place to hang it (and the others).
  

The SBQ stands for "Stitcher's Blog Question", and is thoughtfully provided by Renée on a theoretically weekly basis - kind of like the meme I posted earlier this week, but one question at a time. :)  Regular use of Google Reader has made this much easier to keep on top of; it will hopefully appear here routinely.

This week's question:

How do you handle blended threads? Do you kit the blends up before you start a piece, or do you grab what colors you need and blend when the need arises? If you kit up the blends beforehand, how do you store them? Do you have another option for blends to share?

In general, I blend as I go - with the floss baggies I use, I generally have a loose 18" length of each color going at any one time, and it's easy as pie to just pull off one strand from each length and have at it. I'll stitch until that length is used up, even if it means (gasp) counting over to a new area to stitch.

The big exception: working on Tradewinds, and this could apply to any other "confetti" piece, I used a gizmo that consists of a piece of cardboard with slits in it, and a strip of magnet running down the center. The blended thread gets slipped into the slit, the magnet (theoretically - I've had one big accident with this) holds the needles in place, and I'll label the card with the chart symbol for the blend and the two color numbers involved. This could mean using a lot of needles - but I suppose there's nothing but the "omg what a pain" factor stopping someone from just slipping the floss into the labeled slits and rethreading the needle every time.