Deadlines and Last Minutes

My column deadline approaches -- not on little cats feet like the fog, but with steady tread. I've been steadily stitching on the goldwork piece. The Or Nue section looks pretty good. It was interesting discovering the need to really accomodate the thickness of the couching thread. It isn't so obvious when you do regular or pattern couching as you can do some compensation. With the Or Nue you have so many stitches in a line that you need to leave space. Of course it looks like a lot of space when you are doing the stitching -- all up close and personal like, but it fades to very little when you look at the piece overall at 2 or even 3 feet. It doesn't have the same density as the regular or pattern couching, but it is only noticeable if you know what you are looking for when you view the piece.

The 2 remaining areas will be a diaper pattern that reminds me of leopard spots and diamonds. It won't be done on time, but will be done within the next week or so.

I really dislike stitching to a deadline especially when something else comes along. The EGA meeting program was on things for Halloween. We did spiders, bats, brooms, witches hair, and talked about all the variety of thread that can be used in odd ways for various effects. FUN!!!! The teacher gave us a smattering of threads for pumpkin colors. Think I'll do a bargello pumpkin to try out the different bits.

Also wrote the article for the upcoming newsletter for the West Kingdom Needleworkers Guild. The column is on Pattern Darning. Took a different approach than the Needlepoint Now column so they are completely different pieces. Also charted another pattern from Ellis for the project. It is a neat band of "S" and "Z". When I redo my website I'll add the webbed version of the article.

Between running fast (or at least typing fast), we have had some wonderful weather here. It finally cooled back down. The high has been in the 60/70's and low in the 50's. We have had fog, but also some beautiful days. We have one major anomally in our garden. There is this one orchid that is definately blooming out of season. Normally we get orchids November to March (this year was May). We saw it coming, ever so slowly at the end of the regular season and then it kept on growing slowly. It really is a beautiful spray of 12 orchids. I'll leave you with this different type of eye candy for now. We are off this weekend to an invitational tournament in the Sierra Foothills. The people are interesting and it promises to have some very good medieval feasts for the dinners.