Monthly Archive

After all my angst over floss choices and hours of looking at diagrams for French Knots, I finally completed part 4 yesterday:

Here is a closeup of the north-east quadrant:

First, a note not related to my stitching.  I wanna hike the Appalachian Trail!  For about 12 years I’ve had the dream of hiking across the country, but I know that would be very expensive and involves huge amounts of pre-trip planning (like caching water in the Nevada Desert).  But the AT takes less time and planning, partly because so many people do the thru-hike every year.  I made the mistake of taking Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods out of the library last week and now I want to drop everything and go.  Unfortunately, the only way I can manage a six-month leave from work and buying all the equipment would be to win the lottery.

 Sigh.  Maybe someday.

Okay, back to our regularly scheduled program.  I started working on part 4 of Chatelaine Mystery XI yesterday.  Tonight’s plan - frog some of last night’s backstitching!

Jan posted pictures of her first quarter, with all her lovely backstitching and French knots.  After seeing how the silks look, I need to rethink some of my floss conversion.

I’m still very happy with the WDW Spring Bouquet as a sub for TG Hydrangea.  The colors are much paler, but the contrast with my fabric seems to work well.  The blue of the silk would be quite boring against my blue fabric.  Spring Bouquet is actually so pale that it’s hard to see the colors in the cross-stitches, but I think they’ll look quite nice in the French knots.  Double Fudge Brownie still works well for the dark brown and Olive Branch is okay as well, though I might mix in some Williamsburg Blue (as originally planned) to mimic the color changes of the WL Winter Wheat.

Here is the big problem - while SSS Berry Smoothie:   is a great sub (better than it appears from the picture) for

TG New England Berries:  

 when it’s used all together, the colors flow very differently.  It’s really just red and green, without much of a bridge between the two.  Used seperately, they just appear to be non-variegated colors.  I started using my NN Mountain Spruce as a sub in one vine, but it’s too dark compared with the light shades of the original silk.  I really don’t want to buy more floss, so I need to pick from my current supply.

I love the two shades of pink on Jan’s French knots, so I’m going to pull out the Prickly Pear floss I bought for Mystery X and use that for the knots.  I’m hoping one of the DMC variations will work for the vine.  If not, I’ll just go ahead and use the green sections of the Berry Smoothie floss.

Of course the other issue is that some of Martina’s flosses are perles and therefore much bulkier than regular floss.  However, I think that trying to use two threads for such tiny backstitches will just look messy, so I’ll have to live with the finer thread.

 I’ll post photos when I finish this first quarter!

Added note: I decided that the lighter sections (pale yellow and green) of DMC 4060 will make a good sub for those vines!

Anther note: I’m going to try taking the darker sections of DMC 4060 (blue and yellow) and use them for the flowers in the hedges.  The more I look at my Spring Bouquet stitching, the blander it looks.  The colors are just too pale for that section.  I’ll still keep that floss for the knots, since the colors should show up better.  Never mind.  I’m sticking with Spring Bouquet, but using 3 strands to make the color show a little more.