12.31.10

Year End Round up

Posted in General at 7:00 am by deRomilly

2010 has NOT been easy. 2009 ended with me being laid off from my day job, and before that even had a chance to register, spending two weeks running back and forth to the vet and the emergency vet while we ascertained that our youngest cat — my Dora — had gone into total kidney failure. The wonderful vets at our Animal Hospital got her stabilized, and now after a year we’re falling into the routine of sticking her with a needle every other day and pumping her with sub-cutaneous fluids. Kind of like kitty dialysis. She and my Dad (who’s on human dialysis 3 times a week) commisserate whenever he visits.

Then, as I focused on rebuilding the needlework line, the EO spent more than 6 months fighting health issues. We finally got an inconclusive diagnosis in October just in time for him to miss our planned getaway to Beach Blanket Beledi and the romantic beach weekend that was supposed to go with it.  (Our dance troupe did well, though, and we got lots of compliments, thank you!) And the treatments for the health issues are improving life dramatically for both of us now.

October was my first online needlework show, and despite a couple of errors that I’m horrified about now, it went pretty well for a first trade show. I’ll be back next year.

My secret knitting project (that I didn’t post about earlier this week because of NEXT paragraph) was received well, and I’m finding myself designing sweaters as well as knitting them (eek!). Note: The secret project is NOT one of mine.

Then we had snow after Christmas. Yay snow! Pretty. White. Deep on Sunday and icy on Monday. And Tuesday we started the day with the panicked call that said recipient of pretty new knitted sweater was on his way to the hospital. He had missed dialysis on Monday because of the snow, they didn’t reschedule him immediately, and he landed in the ER and then the ICU with potassium poisoning. Not fun at all – for any of us.  He’s much better now, and happy to be home with HIS cat, Martini (that’s Martini up there at the top of the post, trying to steal some of his namesake, the lush!)

All in all, this was a tough year. I’ve found myself facing (and hiding from) my self-confidence around business matters, and there have been some errors that I wish I could have a do-over on, but I’m finding a stride, if not my final one, and I’ve grown in ways I didn’t think I could (that thud you hear is the EO banging his head o the wall because much of what I am finally learning {I hope} are things he has been telling me for the 10 years I’ve known him…)

What I want from next year -

Ease. I want to continue learning, but I’d like more of the lessons to be a little lot less painful, please. I’m feeling, at this moment, like I’m finally beginning to be ready to move ahead, and maybe more importantly, that I can handle moving forward. So. Lightly on the gas pedal, and let’s get this car rolling slowly at first. But forward movement is imperative. And I want to share my love of needlework and dance  and the many various styles of both that I’ve learned over the years with others, y’all first on the list.

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12.10.10

Jacobean Design – Ivory Embroidery Step 2

Posted in Free Patterns at 6:09 pm by deRomilly

Wow. Friday already. I didn’t realize that it was so late in the week! Where does the time go?

Note: You might be interested in the first post in this series.

Step 2 – Filling the Large Petals

Last week I stitched the larger petals with geometric stitch patterns from Weldon’s.  I used two different patterns, alternating them between the petals.

They are as follows:

Pattern 1: Star and Lattice Filling

This is created by stitching the lattice pattern first. It’s stitched over THREE threads of the linen, using backstitch to make the squares.

Then the little star shapes are stitched over one thread at each intersection.  Use the same color floss for all stitches. I used different colors in the chart for ease of reading.

Pattern 2: Cross and Lattice Filling

This is created by again stitching the lattice pattern first. Again, over three threads (three over, three up) I stitched it with backstitch a well, although Weldon’s suggests stitching little “V” shapes and going row by row, horizontally left to right, then returning right to left. I haven’t tried it that way.

Then the crosses are added in the middle of the lattice work, crossing over two threads (two over, two up).

On both of these patterns, you will need to compensate the pattern slightly at the edge of the design. It’s not difficult, and there are closeups in the Gallery below.

As usual, click on any of the images for a larger view.

Enjoy! This is becoming a fun excercise for me. I’m going to move on this weekend, so I should have new filling stitches for you next Friday.

Stitched Examples

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12.06.10

Fun and Games

Posted in General at 7:00 am by deRomilly

There was a time when our bellydance troupe was just starting in its new incarnation when we just wanted to improve. Perfect what we could do, do more,  and do it the best we could. This is still part of our philosophy- we all want to improve. But there came a time when we realized that we weren’t having fun any more. And hey, we started learning this dance form for fun, didn’t we? It was an issue of taking ourselves too seriously.

So we changed. We changed our format to “raks wacky” from traditional raks sharki, and since have done routines like The Disney Princesses Compete on So you Think You Can Dance…. We teamed up with another local  troupe and became the bellydancing Elvii to Everyone’s got a little Elvis in Them. (There’s a photo HERE although we haven’t bothered with the blog at all… oops). We’ve done a version of the Evolution of Dance, and yes, even a bellydance strip tease to You can Leave your Hat On from the Full Monty, (down to thermal underwear with pasties!) which prompted a “name” in the industry to tell us “you’ve set bellydance back 20 years. And it was hilarious.”  Our goal was to bring the fun back to our performances. Now, I still perform and teach traditional sets – and you have to know the foundations well to do something like this. But I’m seeing yet another crossover with needlework, and I don’t like it.

What I mean is this – I talk to younger people that I see stitching, and ask them why they don’t go into the needlework shops. The answer is quite often the same. not that they don’t carry supplies they could use, or new techniques they’d like to learn. It’s rather because the people who have been stitching for ages all either don’t offer suggestions, OR, and I think this might be an important key – we tend to have definite ideas about how things should be done. There is One right way. um… no. It goes back to my experience as a young stitcher who was exploring medieval techniques back in college. The store – which specialized in cross stitch, wanted me to be stitching on aïda, with no thought that I might be doing a technique that required something else… or that I might be experimenting. Or that experimenting was good. After all, you just followed the chart and it all worked out, right? (Note: People in modern fabric stores don’t like to be told that they didn’t have modern interfacing in the Middle Ages, either…)

SO. How do we move past the “this is serious art and we must be serious” stage and back into the “this is fun and experimentation and shouldn’t be tedious” stage. Yeah, stitching a 22 inch Victorian doily completely in silk shading can get tedious. But what about that ipod cozy? Or the pocket on that denim jacket you’ve had forever?  I want to encourage kids and young adults to have fun with this art form. To find their own way, whether it’s learning the techniques of the past or taking it in a direction that it’s never been before.  I have a tendency to start big, complicated projects and take years and years to finish them (Part of that is that there are always MULTIPLE big, complicated projects in progress.) This coming year I’m going to try to infuse more fun into my stitching, over the top of the meditative quality I tend to have, and that comes from the big, monotonous complicated projects. The shower curtain is a start to that. It’s hard to be a complete perfectionist when the small stitches are almost a quarter inch long!

Someone said about the troupe’s last performance, “Just what we’ve come to expect from you ladies – clean dancing with a fun and innovative theme. Very entertaining.”

Clean, fun and entertaining. I can’t think of a better compliment to receive. On my dancing, on my stitching, my teaching, on the designs I present for other people to stitch.

Be creative.

I hope that my free 5 part e-course has helped some of you use cross stitch charts in a new and fun way.  If you  don’t know what I’m talking about, you can sign up for the course and my sporadic newsletter here.

Remember to Have Fun.

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12.03.10

OK… Pseudo Ivory for Winter

Posted in Free Patterns at 6:42 pm by deRomilly

I still wanted to be stitching, even though I don’ thave the gold yet, and really can’t afford to order it until after the first of the year.  Ah, budgets.

But then I thought. You know, I’ve got this stash. And there’s this thing called “Ivory Embroidery” that I’ve talked about before in my Weldon’s.  Since I still haven’t’ been able to find an extant piece to look at, I figured I’d just try following some of the instructions and see what happened.

Still using the Jacobean Flower pattern. I’m stitching it on a pale rose 32 count linen, using DMC  #12 perle cotton in #233 (a bit darker rose). I’m thinking I should probably have used embroidery floss in the same color, as it’s coming out a bit heavy on the embroidery, but it’s still pretty.

So.

Supplies

Linen or Evenweave (I’m using 32 count. You could use 28 count, enlarge the pattern slightly)

#12 perle cotton in the same color or close to it as your linen (If you’re using 32 count linen, you might want to use embroidery floss or floche instead. )

6″ embroidery hoop

Step One

Transfer your design to your linen.

I will start diagramming stitches for you next week.

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