Playing Catch Up

Three(!) weeks work of

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Chevron stitch, Detached Chain stitch and Chain stitch. Only Chevron was new to me. I had no idea what to do with the chain stitch. So it's just randomly there.

28ct Golden Honey Cashel, Dinky Dyes Aquamarine
I have no idea how I fell so far behind. I'm also behind on The Great Escape.

Something Fishy

This week on

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The Herringbone Stitch. I've done a Triple Herringbone Stitch once, but never the actual stitch itself.

28ct Golden Honey Cashel, Dinky Dyes Aquamarine
The Herringbone Ladder was lots of fun, even if I had to be extra careful not to pull too tight. And the Closed Herringbone is incredibly high.

Apparently the herringbone stitch is so named because it looks like the backbone of a herring. You learn something new every day.

Creative Juices Stagnated

Two weeks worth of

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Last week was the feather stitch. This one's really a linear stitch, and I couldn't think of any way to make it a standalone. I was also convinced that I'd stitched it before so I went straight for the variations, but now I think maybe I haven't...

This week was the Cretan stitch, for which I have done a variation but not the original. This one's somewhat uncreative because I couldn't figure out how to do it in a circle.

28ct Golden Honey Cashel, Dinky Dyes Aquamarine
I've also realized that I'm much better at following a chart and making tiny modifications than doing something like this from scratch, because I worry about things like "Is this enough stitches?", "Does this look balanced?", "Am I leaving too much space?" etc. And then I remember that I do this for fun and that this is essentially a giant doodle. I have gained an even deeper respect for designers.

Old Hat

I'm a day behind on TAST and plan on being so. I like to see what others have done (and there is some gorgeous work) before I try my hand at the stitches.

Buttonhole/blanket stitch. I've stitched this endlessly for hardanger and went straight to the variations this time. I'm in love with the right flower and I have no idea what that weird square thing is, but now I have space for some fancy standalone stitch...

28ct Golden Honey Cashel, Dinky Dyes Aquamarine
I spent about two minutes wondering if I should be doing more of these stitches (some people are doing entire samplers per stitch), but then I thought unprintable words and decided that it's my random sampler.

On that note can anyone come up with a good name for this? I belong to the Leonard of Quirm School of Naming. I also tried labeling the stitches. Should I continue with that or skip the words and leave only the stitches?

Leonard of Quirm, for those of you who haven't read Sir Terry Pratchett (and why not?) is the fantasy equivalent of Leonardo da Vinci from the Discworld series. He's known for making incredible inventions and giving them horrible names. My personal favourite is The-Going-Under-The-Water-Safely-Device for a submarine.

And So Begins Loophole Exploitation

5 days in and I'm already using my loophole in permissible starts. Remember that bit about new starts as long as I have the fabric and floss?

I've decided to participate in Take-A-Stitch-Tuesday hosted by Sharon of Pintangle. More info here.

28ct Golden Honey Cashel, Dinky Dyes Aquamarine
This week's stitch is the Fly Stitch, which I've done several times, so I played around with it a bit: various sizes, upside down, but my favourite is actually the square.