Anyway, I am moving along quite nicely now that I have switched to a more substantial 28ct linen. Since I started working from the top right hand corner downward I have nearly finished Section 3 of the chart. I did stitch a little bit of Sections 1 and 2 at the top of the stocking, if only to finish out a needleful of thread here and there. What you see at present are the wingtips of the angel and a suggestion of a fir tree and the beginnings of the framework for the personalization at the top. I haven't decided whether I will back-stitch each section as I finish it. Some of the sections are so small that it just doesn't make sense to do so. This is one of the most bizarrely organized charts I have ever seen. Though adjoining chart sections clearly could have fit on the same page and are in fact printed separately on the same page, there was no attempt made to simplify the chart by unifying the sections. And the pages of the chart are printed in booklet form so it is impossible to keep the symbol chart page and the chart page currently being worked on visible at the same time. A real inconvenience in a TW chart which calls for color changes [almost always a blended needle] every dozen or so stitches. There is a lot of flipping back and forth going on. And I slow things down a bit myself by loading up only one needle at a time. With some past Wentzler pieces I have done [and I have done many], I used to keep all the blended needles loaded at a time but there are so many of them involved in her projects that it often becomes a tangled mess even when using needle organizers. The end result is a very unportable project and lots of wasted and unindentifiable thread blends. It's slower but ultimately saner to keep all flosses on bobbins in a case just large enough to hold all the colors for the project and to load one needle at a time as it is called for.
This morning I had to spend an hour's stitching time on a travel project though. In a recent post, I mentioned that I brought my car in for an inspection and routine maintenance last Thursday. Well, wouldn't you know it? When I got home, I found a postcard from the self-same auto dealership informing me that there was a recall for two items on my car. I had to go back today to have that attended to. When I asked them why they didn't identify the need to take care of the recall last Thursday, they explained that their Internet access was down for several days last week and so they had not been able to check the VIN # for any recalls. A sensible enough explanation but just my luck! However, the day wasn't a total waste. I stopped at the nearby Barnes & Nobles and bought some FBI thrillers and an Agatha Christie mystery for myself and ordered The Blue Fairy Book edited by A. Lang to be sent to my grand-daughter for her birthday [I was amazed to find that they did not have this classic in stock and that it had to be handled as a pre-paid order and that it now costs $33.95] and I stopped at the bank to make a deposit in the grandchildren's account, at my doctor's office to pick up a scrip for a mammogram [Oh joy! Oh joy!] and finally, at the post office on the way home to mail a bunch of things: a stitching RAK and a stitching exchange, some packages for my grandchildren, a dress that needed to be returned because it was too big [that almost never happens] and "... a partridge in a pear tree". I should've squeezed in a trip to the grocer and the butcher as well but I had had it. This all cut into my productive Wentzler stitching time somewhat today but I am still left with the feeling of having accomplished a great deal. When I got home today at about 2:00pm, I read my e-mail and a few blogs and then sat down to read one of my new purchases for just a bit and, after just 21 pages, promptly fell asleep till 6:00pm. The sixth decade is like that! Even my waiting room stitching, at the auto dealership, wasn't all that impressive: just a tiny bit more of the WDW charcoal on Primitive Needle's Thy Needle. I am getting dreadfully tired of black and there is still a lot of it left to stitch. Even the colors, such as they are, are not particularly color-full on this piece. I did not make enough to justify taking another photo: the light was iffy and my stitching was slow and careful. One good thing about the waiting room though was that, at first, I was the only one in it and I was able to turn off the omnipresent waiting room TV with impunity: no inane daytime television talk shows or incessant coverage of the Olympics ... just blessed quiet. Why people seem to need TV as background noise beats me. I find it so very annoying and distracting. It was terrible last Thursday when some of the waiting room denizens had small children in tow and tuned into bizarre anime cartoons. Now, my 30 something son tells me that anime is a Japanese art form but these particular cartoons were just painful. Even the most mentally challenged child deserves something more substantial by way of plot and visuals! No wonder we can document decreasing size of working vocabularies and lower literacy rates in recent generations. If they are fed a steady diet of this mindless pap, one could hardly expect anything else. Okay, end of rant by disgruntled teacher.
2 comments:
Hi there! I agree 100% with your comments on the funkyweird chart layout for this design! It was put together back when I was still doing my printing in press runs with a traditional offset lithographer...so space/cost had to be a prime consideration. I had to make it fit either in 12 pages or jump up to 16 pages, which would have been far too much. So, I apologize for the weirdness/inconvenience of it. In spite of it, I hope you'll enjoy the pattern. :-)
Yay for the return of Wentzler Wednesdays! You can tell I've been a follower for a while now.
When I stitch a TW design I make a thread sorter from cardboard just for the blended colours. I put a length of each colour in the same hole labelled with both numbers and the symbol. When I'm finally finished the design I cut up the thread sorter and put all the little bits of card into the relevant bags (I use floss-a-way bags to store my DMC).
I do agree about the poor quality of some children's TV. We tend to watch the BBC channels especially for the Small Boy as they are advert-free. I'm also training the Large Boy to critique the programmes and adverts! He's great at pointing out plot lines that don't work or ads making false claims LOL.
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