Finished Temari!

First in a month! But there are two more I want to get to now, so I think my stitching energy is back. I do have to come up with more overall energy, though, we've been way too busy.

Here it is. I compared it to the original one from Nana Akua and noticed a couple of differences, one on purpose, and one not. The difference I don't like is that my Kiku stitches do not start nearly as close to the center of the shapes as the original. I found it hard to get as close as I did, but to get the centers even closer is amazing. It adds a degree of elegance mine does not have.



The change I made on purpose was the stitching over the centers of the metallic thread. On the picture I was working from the centers were bright primary colors: blue and red. I decided I would rather use pink. It neatens up my centers considerably (not that they needed it, or anything, you will notice there were no pictures of the centers that were not obscured by my numbered tags). The color blends in, and adds a nice little touch of sparkle. DH calls this one my confetti temari, I like the name, it's a party!

I'm ready to start 2 more temari, so I think the stitching energy is back.

Kittens & Temari

Look who came to live at our house! We estimate they are about 4 weeks old. They are being fostered (DD is doing the heavy lifting) until they are big enough to be on their own. I promise we won't keep more than 2 of them(!) Do you see the little one down on the right with her mouth open? I can't believe how loud 4 little kittens are.



We are making slow progress on the SAL temari. This is what the surface looked like at the end of the 6th round. The shapes the white thread makes are very interesting, and there was plenty of room for it.



I'm having a little more of a challenge with the 7th and final round. I'm very pleased to be able to get the pins out, and I'm hoping I can roll this one on a hard surface and get some of the threads to hunker down a little more. It still won't be done after this round, though, I want to tack all the centers. Right now I'm planning on using a pink metallic for that... but that is still subject to change.




It won't look exactly like the object ball, but I think it will be striking.

SAL and Secret Stitcher gift

This is a picture after 4 rounds on the Stitch-Along temari. There are two layers of pink, and two of yellow. This ball is looking very busy. The final layer will be dark pink, so a lot of the yellow will be covered up. I'm working on the 5th round now, and have 2 more to go after that, but I'm afraid I will need a shoehorn to get the last pink round in.



Right now it doesn't look like much.

On Tuesday at guild meeting I received an envelope with silk floss in my favorite colors.



Plus a little needle threader. The silk threads are so luscious, they make me want to start a new project with them Right Now! Thank you so much!

Memorial Day Stitching

I'm working away on my Stitch-along temari, and it's coming along well. I'm working on the fourth of what I expect will be 7 rounds, so I'm not quite 1/2 way. I am getting into a nice rhythm of stitching, though.

I do have a couple of finishes to share. C was bustling around on Monday, and asked me to help her cut out this paper flower (for a present for mama). I offered to help her and asked if she wanted to make that flower with material for mom; that sounded really good to her. So I cut out the flower, pinned it to 2 layers of felt, and used it for a pattern to cut out the felt. (Red for the flower, and green for the back of the flower.) Then I drew (with ball-point pen) a circle on the flower, and we picked out some red thread to sew the circle. She did really good on the red side, going down, but it was a lot harder to get in the right place from the green side, going up. She also was a little sad that the red thread showed up on the green material. She was hoping for red on the red side, and green on the green side, but soon became reconciled.

She was very proud when we got done, and very happily presented this to her mom.



Her brother was being a pest while this was going on. He kept on saying "It's a flower! It's a flower!" loudly, spoiling the surprise for mom (who was sitting across the room). C was very sad that the surprise was spoiled, but kept going.

I finally asked P "Do you want to do it too?" I was surprised by how quickly he jumped on the band wagon. I guess he had been feeling neglected. I suggested he make "a guy" so he quickly drew the pattern and cut it out. (Playing with superhero and Lego guys is one of his favorite things to do.) We worked things a little differently. I traced the outline of the guy on the felt (red and green were fine with him too). P picked black for the outline. He stood near me to do the stitching, but turned away from me, so he could be sure to do it himself.



He did an excellent job! When he was done with the stitching we cut out the outline, and he immediately put the product away with his treasures.

I'm hoping they had so much fun they will want to do it again! I sure did.

Decision Portrait

In March I read a blog post here talking about an art project Susan Lenz was working on about decisions people make in their lives. She had a wish list of decisions she wanted to illustrate, so I contacted her and after corresponding sent her this picture of myself.


She used it to make this portrait:

(copyright Sue Lenz)

You can read what she says about 2 breast cancer decisions here:

Decision Portraits

I am very honored to have my decision (made over 18 years ago) included in this series.

Stitch-along

All my pentagons and hexagons are labeled...



And I have started stitching the pink stars.



(Do you like the action shot?) The pink layer goes from the center to just past the outline of the pentagon into the adjoining shape on the short lines. As they grow, the overlap will get larger and more diamond shaped. The white/yellow layer is on the long lines, also overlapping into the adjoining shapes, but 3 legs cross over at the same spot. I think there will be some build-up of thread at that spot, so we will have to see how that works out.

Debi suggested using a continuous stroke method; that way you would not have to use the tags and pins (at least on the pink layer). When we had our HHG stitch-along I didn't make the cross-overs right, so I want to practice that before I mess up a 32 face. There would also have to be some tricky work at the cross-overs for the white/yellow layer as well. I'm thinking of doing this pattern on a c10 to work out those issues. That would give me a chance to play with more colors too.

Rebecca asked about the size and the metallic centers. This ball is about 28 cm. It could stand to be a lot bigger to be able to see all the detail in this pattern. I did see the different colors of metallic in the centers of the kiku. It looked to me like the marking threads at the center of each were tacked down with different colors. I am going to tack mine down, but I haven't decided yet whether I am going to go with all gold, or go with a different color or colors. Alternating gold, pink, and yellow might be interesting...

My friend from Moonsilk Stitches came over to play last night. We did show and tell, and worked on coordinating a project for a guild program. Then she helped me tear the rest of my cotton fabric for the rug I'm going to make. Here it is all organized by color.



We both got our aerobic workout in by the time we were done, but we had a lot of fun. Thank you for your help, Marj!

Have a nice Memorial Day weekend. We have a house project slated for Saturday, and then hope to rest on Sunday and Monday.

Temari Stitch-along

Here's the picture I promised of my bracelet next to the thimbles. I let the thimbles hang together so they wouldn't feel intimidated by the bracelet looming over them.



I was looking at "Nana Akua's" temari on Flickr (here) and I found a temari I really liked. Several people expressed an interest in stitching it along with me, so here we go.

It is a 32 face temari. Here's my marked mari. I have to number the pentagons and hexagons with tags pinned in each space. Unfortunately, the thread catches on the pins when you are stitching, but you have to keep the order straight to have the pattern turn out right.



The next step is to start stitching. The light pink is threaded, but I am going to start stitching Kikus with the dark pink (5 layers of pink in all) on the short lines of the pentagons and hexagons. There are 4 layers of the yellow/white star stitched on the long lines, and the two color families alternate. The example is stitched with 2 strands held together, but my mari is smaller and wouldn't fit that much stitching, so I will stitch with one strand at a time, even though I may need more rounds. We shall have to see how things fit.

Next time I will talk about where the points of the kiku land for each color family.



We went to the Carole King and James Taylor concert last night. It was fantastic! Unfortunately, with the parking and traffic we didn't get home until after midnight. I'm going to have trouble staying awake in meetings today.