In the Pink

My Woodland Angel now has a face.  But before I started on the gold braid and bead work, I thought I gave the piece a spin in the delicate cycle.  I have been working on this piece since August 2012.  Although I am meticulous about hand washing while stitching, I do want to freshen the piece up a bit before embellishing and finishing.

As I near the finish of Liam's stocking, I look to the start of Piper's.  Now, my four year old granddaughter is the diva of all things pink and girly.  She has been known to well up in tears when things in her world aren't pink ... and I am talking about things like ferry boats, not dresses or headbands.   Even at this early stage, she is decidedly girly ... she accessorizes every outfit with play jewelry, prefers ruffles to plain, gravitates toward skirts that are "twirly", eschews pajamas in favor of nightgowns.  I could go on but I think you get the picture.  In short, she is a continual source of mystery to her grandmother who wouldn't be caught dead in pink and prefers clean lines to frills, comfort to fussy display, simplicity to elaborate embellishment.  

So making this little one's Christmas stocking is going to require stepping out of my comfort zone and trying to find hers.  I was gifted many years ago with a Dimensions Gold kit of a medieval maiden in the woods.   It came with Aida cloth and floss.  The person who gave it to me is a very good non-stitching friend and was trying to find the perfect gift.  I thanked her enthusiastically but, in my linen snobbery and I-have-graduated-from-kits arrogance, I buried the kit in the bottom drawer of the sewing center.  Ironically, this kit is going to be a major pain in the anatomy.  But I couldn't bring myself to discard the gift because it came from someone I care about deeply.  Several years later, Piper was born.  Still later, I decided to make stockings for the grandchildren, by then three in number.  It seems my friend's gift was positively prophetic.  This fairy tale princess-like woodland maiden will be perfect for Piper's stocking.  There are a few glitches, though.   Having finally opened up the kit, I was appalled not to find the DMC equivalents in the symbols charts.  I am not particularly impressed by the floss included: it feels very coarse.  Before I can even start.  I am going to have to pull out my DMC color chart and compare some sixty or so flosses and come up with the numbers myself.   Then, as you can see by the photo, the maiden is charted wearing a white skirt with an elaborate  blue-green overdress instead of pink clothing.  I plan to keep the blue green overdress and rework the underskirt in shades of pink with the darkest shade in the skirt being the same shade as the flowers in the over dress.  This will keep the Christmas-y green-gold-red colorway intact.  After all, I am stitching this as a Christmas stocking.  And, due to the size of the piece, I shall have to stitch the entire thing over one in order to make it fit my stocking template.  One thing I am extremely grateful for: the woodland maiden is oriented in the right direction.  So far all my stockings have toes pointing left and, thank all the angels and the saints, the train of the woodland maiden's dress points to the left as well.  I know I keep calling this piece a Woodland Maiden and the chart is actually entitled a Woodland Enchantress.  But enchantresses, or sorceresses, just don't seem very Christmas-y ... hence the name change.  That is my story and I am sticking to it.

My pink conversion is noted below.
white > 225
3753 > 224
312 > 223
334 > 152
322 > 315
3842/744 > 300

I may be refining this conversion when I get to the actual stitching.  I may even test this all out on a doodle cloth before stitching the area on the stocking.  I've done many conversions on past projects but this project is special.  I want it to be come a treasured heirloom so it's important to me to get it right.