Advent, Day 11

Rahab was King David's ancestor; I always wonder if the phrase "scarlet woman" comes from this story. She used a scarlet rope to help the Israelite spies and they eventually used that rope to save her when the city was destroyed. (She was a "scarlet woman.")



This Temari went very quickly. I was going to use two shades of green, but after the first one was stitched the next one did not look good next to it. It's not a very big ball, so this little bit of work looks good on it. It has cone thread for the base, it is marked c8 with Kreinik #16 braid in the 091 color (silver and black) and has perle #5 for the stitching. It's the second time I've worked this pattern, and I really like it.



I did discover something about the making of Temaris though. All the books say "secure your marking threads." I was trying to take stitches under the base threads when I marked the balls, but a lot of them were a little "loosey-goosey" and I wasn't doing all of them. Well, I read a suggestion yesterday about using your base thread to secure the marking threads. You don't have to hide it while you are stitching, because it is the same thread you are stitching over; you can't see your travel to each intersection. So because of that hint I secured all the corners on this one, and the difference is amazing. I don't think you can see the difference, but the stitching went much more smoothly and quickly, and feels a lot more secure. I will be doing that from now on on all my balls.