I am really loving this pattern.  I made one for George and he posed for me wearing it.  He can be really silly.  I love that about him.

And he has great legs!

I found this wonderful pattern on MagKnits called Fake Isle Hat.  I love it!  Watching the colours change in the Noro Kureyon yarn is fascinating.  I plan to make lots more!  I gave this hat to Raven.

I'm 10 days late getting these photos up.  I have no excuse except laziness.  I like the Hungarian Ground stitch which is often used as a background stitch to help a basketweave tent stitch design stand out.  It can also be used to create a lace effect in a design.

My first bock, as usual, according to the directions in the book:

My zigzagged stitches aren't very good here, but I like the colour combination.

My second block uses all 5 colours and is much better:

My third block was done is one colour so I could see how it would look as a background stitch:

I need to get neater with my stitches if I want to see a crisp delimination between the zigzag columns and the Hungarian Points.  Practice, practice, practice.

I also started the background for the sampler.  It's simple basketweave tent stitch in the main colour (in other words, the colour I have the most of):

I've done a lot more in the past week.  I've told myself I can't do the 3rd block of my next stitch until I've put background around at least 4 squares.

When I did my first two Brick stitch squares, my canvas looked like this:

I had drawn my 25 squares and the surrounding borders and, other than leaving the center and one corner squares for last (per Ms. Slater's directions), my canvas was open to me.  It was also still flat.

My wrinkled canvas now looks like this:

I've filled in 14 of the 25 squares and I'm having to plan where I place my stitch samples and what colours I use.  My next stitch is the Hungarian Ground stitch so I want to make sure the three squares don't end up next to the Hungarian Point squares.  I also need a least one multiple colour square in the lower half to balance out the 3 in the upper half, but I also don't want to put a multi-colour square next to a multi-colour square.  If you count from left-to-right top-to-bottom, I think I'll be do multi-colour in square 18.  Stay tuned to how I work it out.

As part of my burst of energy for needlepoint, I completed all three squares of split gobelin on Sunday.  My wrist was a little sore by the time I finished, but it was worth it.

My first square, done according to directions, is kind of dull.  I don't particularly like this stitch.

Adding additional colours in my second square made this stitch a little more interesting.  Ms. Slater says in the book that this is a good stitch for the gradations in a sunset.

I decided to get adventurous with my third square.  It's colourful and full of movement.  This stitch really shows if one messes it up and if one doesn't catch it right away, it's nearly impossible to fix.  You can see in the far right column, 4th from bottom (dark orange) where I didn't split a stitch with the dark green above it.  By the time I realized how obvious this was, I would have had to remove a few rows.  With this stitch, one can't just cut a thread or two around the error and restitch, everything above must be pulled out.  Not wanting to remove the entire far right column, I decided to leave it as-is.

Overall, as I stated above, I don't really like this stitch.  I will use it on a few more samplers to see if it grows on me.  Maybe if I try a sunset.

I had a burst of energy this weekend and finished six squares.  I did the Hungarian Point squares on Friday and Saturday.  I really like this stitch.

My first block, following directions, makes me think of Renaissance details:

My second square was an attempt to show how the stitch works for a background.  I didn't want it to be just one colour so I added the cross.

My third square is my favorite for the sense of movement in the different coloured diagonals.  I don't know where I would use this many colours together... maybe in a purse flap?  Any suggestions?  As you can probably tell, this square was done vertically rather than horizontally.

I look forward to using this stitch as a background in a design someday.

I finished my 3 squares of Parisian stitch.  The first one came out pretty good:

I turned it a quarter-turn to work and spent a lot of time pulling each thread in the 3-thread strand after making each stitch so the threads would lay flat and even.

My second square is my own design based on various samples I saw:

I really like how this one came out.  I centered it exactly and had to do fill-in stitches on each edge.  I think it came out great.

My third square is a copy of one of the samples in the book done in my own colors:

This is George's favorite.  I like it too.  I finished the square and then noticed that I had mixed up  some of the colors on stitches in the ribbon so I had to cut it out and re-do in the correct colors for the pattern.  The front looks great, but I won't be showing off the back of this square to anyone.

I now have 8 of the 25 squares filled in and have to start paying closer attention to the overall appearance of the sampler.   I also need to decide how I'm going to fill in the lines between the squares - one color, multiple colors in patterns, etc.

I've been working on my sampler very slowly.  Here's the first block I did in Old Florentine Stitch following the directions in Ms. Slater's book:

My edges are very messy and some of my contrast color (dark orange) is pulled too tight and looks buried in the main color (dark green).

My second attempt was only slightly better:

I'm having real trouble getting my fill in stitches on the left side looking as full as the regular stitches.  I put off doing the third block for quite awhile because I was disappointed with my efforts on the first two blocks.

My third, however, went like a dream when I finally worked it:

I moved the canvas a quarter-turn so I was still doing the stitching horizontally, but having it appear vertical on the canvas.  I paid more attention to keeping my 3 strands of wool flat and my stitching smooth.  I'm still having some trouble with my fill in stitches as seen at the top of this photo, but I'll keep working at it.

I'm now starting the first of 3 blocks done in Parisian stitch.  I'll update when I have them completed.

 

Updated 20070227: Replaced 2nd photo with a better one.

Back in 2005 my office in the basement looked like this:

North-end

Middle

South-end

These metal racks were filled with books in plastic file boxes.  We had had a flood in the basement the year before.  Fortunately none of our books were damaged and we got the leaks repaired - by having the west and south foundations sealed, but I didn't want to risk any damage and also didn't have enough bookcases to put everything out.  I put all our books in a ReaderWare database and indicated which box they're in.

In the fall of 2005, we decided to upgrade this part of the basement (approx. 13' x 30') to house refugees from Hurricane Katrina.  We never actually got any refugees despite putting our house availability up on numerous websites, but we did improve the basement to this:

South end with new escape window

Middle

North end

We used the yellow paint because we have gallons of it left over from painting the living room (we were oversold at the paint store).  The coral paint in the north end photo is the color we have in our dining room.  The room seemed way too yellow until I put that stripe in.

It's been a over a year since we painted/carpeted/rewalled/rewindowed this space and it now looks like this:

South end

Middle

North end

It's a mess, but a more organized mess.  I've been working on getting it sorted and cleaned out on and off.  Someday I'll be done, I think.  I definitely need to find the right storage solutions to store my knitting supplies, needlepoint supplies and weaving supplies.  I also need to get more books moved back in.  Our books have been in the garage for the past year and a half.  We can still find them using the database (and a thousand or so are in bookcases on the second floor), but I'd like to be able to just see them again.

George says that in a few more years he'd like to completely gut the basement and get it set up right.  Such as right now we have a corner room with east and south facing windows which is a very poorly set-up laundry room with lots of wasted space.  We had to install our washer and dryer where the pipes and outlets were, which are on opposite sides of the room.  This would be a perfect location to set up a loom.

I was sitting in the living room on Monday night and my fingers were freezing.  I thought "I need a pair of fingerless gloves."  So I checked out various patterns online and on Tuesday started this pattern:

This is the "Fetching" pattern from Knitty.com.  I knitted them in Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran that I had left over from the scarf I knitted George back in December 2005.  The color number is 300506 and I would describe it as Fir Green.  With this pattern, I cabled without a needle for the first time and picked up my first thumbs.  I had to re-do the thumb on the first glove because I had big holes.  Now they're done and I'll leave them next to my chair in the living room for the next time my fingers are freezing while I knit, needlepoint or read.

Thoughts

I've been reading the Knitting Curmudgeon's archives lately.  She writes a lot about people being afraid to try new things in knitting.  I realized that I can often be one of those people.  It takes me a lot of time to work up my nerve to try something new -  a technique, a pattern, a substitute yarn, etc.  I tend to doubt my abilities.  Some of my fear is left over from when I couldn't afford much yarn so I was afraid of messing up and destroying the yarn I did have. 

But some of it is a fear of losing/wasting time.  I don't know where this fear comes from, but it has a big hold on my mind.  I fear losing time to having to reknit an item, to surfing the web and getting nothing substantial done, to just wasting time.  And I waste a lot of time, often doing nothing.  And then I beat up on myself for wasting all that time.  I often fear that my life will just disappear into "wasting" time.  I need to work through that and actually get somethings done.