Milwaukee

Wisconsin, The Great Lakes, Miller and of course Harley Davidson. Where else might one go for a needlepoint seminar?

Milwaukee? Well why not? We like to see new places, and we like to meet new people. What we didn't expect was that all us Needlepointers would be sharing the hotel with participants in the Gay Olympics and Bikers in town for the Harley-Davidson 75th anniversary. What a great mix. We met some really nice people from the other groups, the Bikers and Olympians came to see what we were doing and many of us went to see what they were doing.

As usual, we arrived a few days early to do some sightseeing. One of the first things we noticed was how clean the streets were. I'm convinced they have a squad of people washing down the roads and pavements in the middle of the night.
We visited museums and galleries and we walked to most places. At the Pabst Mansion we admired lace and embroidery and learned about 'Pickles'. Apparently it's a Germanic thing, you have to hide a Pickle in your Christmas Tree. So we had to buy a pair of glass Pickles which get hidden in the tree every year.
Another port of call was The Milwaukee Art Museum. It was worth the walk just to see the building and watch the roof opening and closing. It's all to do with controlling the light levels to protect the exhibits, so I was told. It can go from fully open to fully closed;

It reminded me of the great white bird in "The Chronicles of Mavin Manyshaped" as it opened and closed.

One of the things I like about walking is that you get to stop and look at the street furniture and the buildings and as a designer you can pick up little gems of ideas to store away. It might be a manhole cover, a piece of ironwork or part of a building, but there's always something interesting to be seen.

 
Being there for the American Needlepoint Guild, there were classes and shopportunities.
Would I go back to Milwaukee? Why not? You can't see everything in one visit.

Young Samurai

In 2008 Jane-Beth attended Teacher Class at the Japanese Embroidery Center in Atlanta, Georgia to renew her teaching certification. "Young Samurai" was the set Teacher Class design. It is obviously a Samurai helmet, and was inspired by "Boys' Day" or Tango no Sekku, which is celebrated on May 5th. This is an ancient Japanese festival and may date back as far as 593AD.

Having done a little stitching on the piece, and worked out the 'How', Jane-Beth decided that it would give me practice if I were to finish it. Well, I know my place, and I liked the design.

Copyright Japanese Embroidery Center, Atlanta

It looks, initially, as though it is a comparatively simple piece to stitch, but it has quite a lot of superimposed work and fuzzy effect. It was fun to stitch, and although only a Phase II piece it definitely reinforced the lessons I had learned from earlier pieces.

Young Samurai is 13" by 9", I spent 90 hours working on it and the time seemed to fly by.

With Gently Smiling Jaws

This was inspired by Lewis Carroll's parody on Isaac Watt's poem, 'How doth the Little Bee', as quoted by Alice in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
The poem goes:

How doth the little crocodile

Improve his shining tail,

And pour the waters of the Nile

On every golden scale!

How cheerfully he seems to grin

How neatly spreads his claws

And welcomes little fishes in

With gently smiling jaws!

Obviously it had to be set in an Egyptian scene or a rabbit hole, and since rabbit warrens are dark and black on black would never have worked, Egypt was the obvious choice.

I decided that this should be an exercise in couching for effect and open canvas. I also decided to try a range of threads. The various elements to be included had, of course, to include a crocodile and fish, so I opted to have this in the foreground with Egyptian inspired motifs in background.

The pyramids are stitched in 4 strands of Marlitt, worked horizontally every other row. The thread was not drawn across the back, but brought diagonally up to start the next row so that it did not show through the unstitched areas. I prefer to use the 'finger-tip-to-elbow' measure for length of thread when starting, but in this case I used lengths of about 30" so that I could complete all the diagonal lines and the right hand slanted line with one length of thread. I did not want any change of thread showing. Marlitt has a tendency to keep its kinks when drawn from the skein, so I ran it over a damp sponge to remove them before I started to stitch. I couched the long stitches vertically with two strands of the same Marlitt. When couching, probably because the thread was passing through the canvas more often, I found that it tended to shred and that the optimum length to start with was about 10". I also used Marlitt for the obelisk.
The sky is CD Pastel couched with Madeira Metallic 33. The sand dunes are also CD Pastel couched with a gold machine embroidery thread. The Nile is couched with silver machine embroidery thread.
The Crocodile is cross-stitched in Kreinik metallic, as are the poor little fish that it is about to swallow. The background canvas is an 18 count, random-dyed sand colour. Because it was the right colour and had variations, I decided that the middle ground should be left unstitched.

I worked on this from December 2008 to March 2009. It took a little under 70 hours to design and stitch and measures 6" by 4".

Arrival Of Spring

I know, we're not even into the double digit days of January. Surely it's far too early to talk about Spring? Well apparently not. I took these pictures in my father's garden yesterday morning.

I have no idea what this bush is but it burst into flower sometime between Boxing Day and yesterday,

while these are a bit of a cheat. I moved them from another area of the garden in October and expected them to die back but they've kept flowering. I was impressed because where they are now gets the chill wind off the North Sea and has no shelter except the top layer of bricks.

And Snowdrops. Some of them are already showing buds, and at the front left is a solitary Daffodil making itself visible. How that got there I don't know but I love the idea that as things get moved and 'tidied' the odd volunteer bulb goes along for the ride and starts a new colony.

All of which is a lead in to "Arrival of Spring".
This was the second class I took during our visit to Houston.

"Arrival of Spring" is a Gail T Stafford design worked on Congress cloth using DMC, Gentle Art, Weeks Dye Works and Threadworx threads, Cashmere Stitch, Nobuko and many other stitches, including many, many French Knots.
This is not the style of piece I would design myself, which was one reason for taking the class. It's good to step out of your comfort zone occasionally and having taken a class with Gail a few years ago, I knew it would make me do that.
The sky is painted, not stitched, which was a 'fear' challenge - paint the sky without getting paint in the wrong places, onto your hands or (disaster) onto your kilt. It was easier than I expected, and fun.
The picture really doesn't do the design justice. The shades of green and the stitches used give a real three dimensional feel to it.

It took me 60 hours to complete this, and  I enjoyed almost every minute of it.