Teach yourself stuff in 5 minutes Wednesday, May 31 2006

Yesterday evening while having nothing to do (or rather having nothing to do that is worth it), I've decided to mutilate the remaining parts of the fabric the Drake is on, and do some excersizes. No worry, these parts are intended to be cut out anyway.

Having 3 new speciality stitches on the Celtic Cross (diamond eyelet, lazy dazy and satin), I went to search for some graphic examples on the net, as seemingly I am too dumb to figure it out from the examples given on the chart. This esp. RE the eyelet. It just didn't worked. I tried following several more examples and abused the fabric further, then gave up and went to search for a different example. This one worked perfectly from the first try:

I'd recommend this one for beginners, because it is easy to count your steps. I had difficulty with his type below because it is not very visible how many "overs" you have to go through.

But suppose it's a matter of growing experience, once you managed to understand the principle and do the counting correctly.

The lazy daisy gave me some headaches, not from being unable to do it but because of the thought that such loosely standing stitch WILL be squashed during framing. The framers hardly have an idea that there are some stitches which need to be paid attention to and are usually unable to tell the difference if they squash something. But as I am not planning to frame the celtic cross yet, this issue will be postponed.

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My little monster is finished :) Tuesday, May 30 2006

The area which I’d call “difficult” was the one with the left steam cloud. But this areas are small enough and after going through the left one, it went a lot more smoothly with the right one.  

The purpose of the legs in different color also became seen, but I don’t want to bring spoilers to those who have yet to stitch it.

Overally, the “journey into TW designing style” is a very pleasant and very useful experience. And the Drake’s look, is something amazing. I already wonder how such design can be a freebie, but it also makes me glad to be able to do it and for so many peope to also be able to do it.

The conversion details together with the data of my own modifications, I will be keeping those in the incoming “Materials” page.

After I finish admiring the little monster and take him to framers, I will start Celtic Cross. 

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Drake update Sunday, May 28 2006

Drakie! (well, by now only the neck, tail and toes).

I am very surprised how fast this one goes. Also I don't encounter any major difficulties with it, except that working with ordinary DMC is far more pleasant than with E5200. No matter how twisted are some areas, I still prefer them to the plain ones that had to be done with E5200. But it looks good, so it’s worth it.  

As you can see I am adding the backstitching now, for the curious (mainly myself). I am very much eager to see how each area will look. Some of the backstitch instructions are vague to me. For example “all gold on dragon”. I spent some time pondering what it meant. It would be more understandable if said “all spikes on the tail and head”, because the colors are not exactly gold but greasy yellow. Anyway, “all gold” borders the green/blue areas very often (greens and blues in my conversion, reds on the original), and I decided to rather think which part should be filled with backstitch for the greens and which for the yellows, than throw all the backstitching as directed in the instructions. Example – outer (spiked) border and inner border of the tail must be done in different backstitch colors. For the main part of the wings it has again to be decided which bs color will be used exactly and why. It is not very visible on the original design photo (http://twdesignworks.com/Free/tempest_l.html) and so might not matter much, but at mine is very visible and I think here it matters a lot. 

RE the question of which type of stitch – I noticed that it’s generally the same if there are two ¼ or a combination. That is in regards to the final look. So I am doing two ¼ to save myself time. 

Also encountered something interesting – in the chart it’s prompted that some of the symbols are stitched with the bottom leg as the color(s) listed, and are crossed (top leg) using two strands DMC 762. Have yet to get to there, but is interesting whether this will bring any visible effect on the stitches’ look.  

I am doing a lot of chart marking, and this takes away at least 50% of the time that I’d rather spend struggling to find my way.  I've also added more modifications to some of the colors, but that will be written in a separate page.

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First TW Friday, May 26 2006

*drum roll* here comes the start of a major epoch called "She battles TW designs and will produce masterpieces". I don't suffer from being shy :P Actually it took me a lot of courage gathering to start something hers. Mainly because I was influenced by people talking how difficult her designs are (or perhaps the most difficult among all). But with age (err, stitching) comes experience. After the Oriental Grace epoch /my left arm still hurts!/ I've felt a bit more mature and ready for accomplishing of more serious projects.

So, Tempest. I don't like this name, so will omit it in the design. Also I still feel kinda pondering what is the exact idea of it. A small drake in a teacup. Makes little sense, but perhaps this is a kind of "tea-spirit" or "tea-drake" that suddenly emerges on the table and startles the cackling and gossipping ladies.

I am enjoying working (again) on Evenweave. I am also finding the conversion very successful (by now), though I decided to add something from myself. A sparkle to the teacup, so it could look like china. I am using E5200, a pearlescent effect thread instead of white. This kind of thread is great looking, very difficult to work with, and expensive. Here is costs 3 times more than the usual DMC cotton.

The fabric is Zweigart cream evenweave, count 28. Not much visible from the scan that the fabric has a creamish shade, but it's not snow-white. They had no smaller count and it's doubtful they will soon…so I had to swallow my ambitions and take on the policy "good that they have at least that". I tend to forget how impossible it was ~5 years ago to even find DMC. I should consider myself lucky with this 28. Because I really can't describe what kind of rubbish the previously available products were. And they were the only thing you could ever buy.

On to the first progress scan.

I am getting a feeling that there might be too much fuss about the "difficulty" of TW projects. While IMO they're fitting into a very different category - designs for an expert/master stitcher, and one cannot expect them to be easy and so great looking in the same time. If you stitch more simple designs all your life you cannot suddenly jump on something TW's and have it easy. That's the reason I was postponing doing it for so long, trying to gradually increase the difficulty of the projects chosen. And it's not only comparing her designs to other ones but also estimating your own level, where you actually stand.

My issue at the moment is the two half-symbol combination. Mentioned this before. Here we have quite a lot of half symbols, and by now I feel that two 1/4 is not looking good. Will have to use the method of "working a 3/4 stitch in the more prominent shade, and complete the block with a 1/4 stitch of the other shade." So, how to decide which is the "prominent" shade if it's in the middle of a figure and both symbols are important.

This is the end of tail. Lets say we have one center motif and one surrounding, so the half-symbols of the center one will be done in 3/4 and the symbols from the "more outer" motif that surround this one - in 1/4. Same is with the second "circle". The surrounding one is again surrounded by an outer motif, so its outer symbols (in relation to it) are 3/4, and the "inner symbols" of the third motif are 1/4. This is how I see it.  

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Animated Techniques Thursday, May 25 2006

Don't know what people think about this sites, perhaps they help some and some don't. There are many sites with animated "how-to"; I just found another one here:

http://www.victoriasampler.com/VS_Club/Animations/index.asp

(Review)

I've looked through the stitches that I already know, so to be able to compare my methods with the ones presented. Those I don't know yet, the animation makes little sense to me, mainly because of the fabric graphic. Hard to see your way on such "net", I am still struggling to figure out where the square is.

But lets look at the "lazy dazy" stitch example. On all graphics it seems quite easy to do, and here is shown the same method. However in practice the loop is not staying as shown on the photo - it tightens up into a straight line. If you really manage to have the loop remain looped, another issue comes - the thread is too loose. Try to frame a project with such loosely placed threads, and they will be totally misplaced from pressing the glass over the fabric.

French knot example - this thing shown here is a VERY difficult variant. Although faster than mine, try to stick the needle into the fabric while it has bended thread on TOP of it. My method is very slow and contains more steps but is relaxed enough. People, save your nerves, too.

Attaching beads - beads much sit tight and not loose, so there should be additional tightening of the thread on the back. Some people even recommend doing a full cross instead of only half cross because of that.

So generally, no matter how good the example may be, one has to be thinking about what he's doing, and whether it couldn't be better than that shown. Sometimes own thinking will be the thing to actually lead us to completing the task - because the various online instructions often lack a deeper look into things and do not reflect the idea that a type of stitch is also linked with other things and other steps of the whole needleworking process. "Seeing the bigger picture".

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Oriental Grace finished Wednesday, May 24 2006

And finally, here she is.

 

A bigger scan can be seen here: http://pics.livejournal.com/ternezia/pic/0009ktxx

Some excerpts…

And now some rant – about how difficult it is to actually finish something. Especially a big project. There are many stages through which the perhaps every needleworker (stitcher in our case) often goes when working on it. From the pleasure of starting it to the annoyance of "Gah, this has no end!". Then exactly we tend to lose interest and either force ourselves to continue or throw it aside and start something new. But I noticed that with a rotation one easily loses the focus and it's very difficult to return to the "older" projects. Better concentrate on the current one and go through all that stages, and sometimes even cursing, but move on regardless. Truth is, at some point it stops being a hobby and becomes work. Something that has to be done, once started. And something that has to be kept to, if we ever want it to be finished. So the "hobby" and "pleasure" aspects are only few among many others. In the end, going through all of them, we might start to wonder whether do we really need this and why we're doing it. But exactly if we manage to go through it all, we can feel the riches of this kind of craft. And also the moments of outgrowing yourself when you get to the finishing of a major work. 

For this Oriental Lady project, the reward was a sudden uncovering of the design in the end. Like unveiling. It was an astonishing experience. If you want to have noticeable results you have to make efforts, to balance when you can, but still continue. It is worth it. 

And now yours truly will be continuing with Tempest.

 

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SBQ Wednesday, May 24 2006

(although I don't do them often).

1. Do you enjoy backstitching?
Very much. I'd rather call it "edging", if it was me. I absolutely like doing it, with the exception of a long backstitch - the free flowing lines that are met in some designs like Dimensions ones. Those are putting me off.

2. Do you do it as you go or at the very end?
Both - I like to add the backstitching to certain finished areas so to see what it will look like as final. The rest is done at the end, when I have satisfied my curiosity.

3. Does the amount of backstitching in a project influence your decision to stitch a pattern?
Absolutely. Of course it depends on the design but I like designs with a lot of backstitch. No backstitch indicated for the design, while *I* think it should be there, is enough to make me turn away from it. Not even bothering to add it from myself.

This meme is dedicated to the *cough* the very final stage of backstitching that awaits me on that thing over there. *g*

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The Dragon that switched paths Sunday, May 21 2006

As I am planning to be starting TW's "The Castle" after finishing the two small freebies, I went to browse through the board and found some design-related site.

http://www.geocities.com/staceyxstitch/CastleInfo.html

I do not plan to browse through all the stuff in there yet as I am not starting to work on it, but meanwhile had stumbled upon an interesting thing regarding this design.

"Question: why does one dragon have three toes and the other have four toes?"

TW writes: "I tried to portray the dragon as I envision dragons to be: huge, curious, and totally inscrutable. I don't see them as threatening or evil… merely mysterious. Not everyone shares that view, however! Quite a bit of controvery surrounded this design when it was first released: it was thought by some to be demonic in nature because the dragon was designed with three-toed feet. Apparently, (and I had no idea that this was the case) three toes signify a demonic dragon, four toes means the dragon is of the mythical variety, and five toes identifies it as the Chinese type. Although I did redesign my dragon to have the fourth toe visible at the proper places, and altered the chart to reflect this, the leaflet cover photography was not redone. Hence, it would appear that my dragon's reputation remains in question…"

It's also said that in the "Best of TW Fantasy" the chart is already redone. Well. Still thanks for the info, I didn't knew about this. I will have to not forget when I get to it, and keep to the three-toed variant. 

This design cover photo shows the original three-toed dragon.  

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Oriental Grace updates Saturday, May 20 2006

I decided to make my life easier and alter my "variant" of this design. There's too much of detail in it, and I don't think there's a big necessity of some of the areas (for example the ribbon at her back). So I am skipping that. I also decided to skip the aura. The thought of having some blue (nowhere else there's blue) and a lot of leaves around her head - that will make the whole look already too much "detailed".  

So I expect the final (finished) result to be scanned within a few days time. It took me too long, but suppose it's because I am not yet used to doing such large projects. Can't wait until it's finally done, duh.

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More progress and other thoughts Thursday, May 18 2006

 

Messy, isn't it. Without the backstitching one cannot figure out which is which here; but with the backstitching it might not shed more light either. The whole process now is filling and keep filling the areas. But I am already close to the main point of this design. Only some more left to do until I get there. Then it will become interesting.

I've been also thinking about the "chart-scanning" issue. It came out to me that one generally needs both, the original chart and a scanned/printed copy that he'll actually work from. This esp. goes for TW designs - perhaps the most difficult charts to read. At least from a first glance I cannot read which is which. So I'll definitely need to use additional coloring (pencils work best for me). I'll also need to set "borders" in the areas that are not outlined by the backstitching. In the mean time I'll need to constantly compare to the original next to me, as the coloring would hide other areas which will *become* difficult to read. I'm not complaining as hers is a "master-school", but will ease my work as much as possible. But I'd be crazy if I ever mark the book. Esp. if it costs me so much (nerves) to buy.

The funny thing is I saw the following statement on one of the charts:

"The designs may not be copied, scanned, shared electronically or distributed in any way. A single working copy many be made for your personal use, but not to share. The copy must be destroyed after use."

Ok, but how exactly will I make a working copy? Sit and hand draw the chart? The copy must be destroyed after use - well, who says what I should do with it? I might want to put it for the cat to vomit over. That will be a terrible destruction indeed, but they fail to specify how *exactly* I must destroy the chart! What a miss.

That all vaguely reminds me of Satelle. I don't know why

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