Further Progress: Black'd Skie

Block 4

I am still very focused on this particular piece and am enjoying it thoroughly.  Here I am in the middle of Block 4.  With any luck I shall have this block finished by the end of the week and the entire piece completed by mid-July.  I have switched out a few of the colors on Block 4, using Cinnamon for the entire alphabet.  I didn't quite like the way the letters, as originally charted, mirrored and then didn't mirror the bands separating the rows of lettering.  "Consistency may be the hobgoblin of little minds" but in a sampler I prefer order and, yes, consistency.  So in my version, the lettering is all one color, Cinnamon, and contrasts with all the bands.  And the text below the alphabet is Cauldron, just like the text in Block 1, and as will be the text in Blocks 5 and 6.  Little-minded perhaps, but orderly and pleasing to my personal aesthetic.

I am using the called for silks for this piece, most of which are The Pure Palette Baroque Silk though there are also two Thread Gatherer Silk'n'Colors [Tuscan Olive and Wart Frog] used as well.  The Pure Palette Silks are new to me and I am finding them a joy to work with.  They cover and lay well, are not at all prone to knotting and twisting, and feel lovely and soft in the hand.  At $4.25 for a 15 yd skein, it's hardly outrageously expensive.  The silk separates into three plies, each of which in turn can be plied down to three plies, for a total of nine plies.  For the purpose of working on high count linens, that's 9 x 15 yds which equals 135 yds of silk which works out to approximately three cents a yard.  Compare that to the $7.29 for a 5 yard skein of 12 ply Belle Soie Silk [approximately ten cents a yard when using 1 ply on high count linen] and you have a real bargain.  Now granted, Pure Palette silks are not hand-dyed or over-dyed like Belle Soie and will never replace them in my stash.  But The Pure Palette line has a very nice range of colors and I can see my way to starting up a collection of these silks as well, especially for use on samplers.  I purchased mine by ordering from A Needle in a Haystack, a brick and mortar LNS in California.  They provide excellent phone order service with speedy delivery for those not in the immediate area [like me, 3000 miles on the other coast]