I wanted a brighter hat for those days I feel like standing out so I knitted a second hat for myself.  I kept the side motif this time and shortened the number of even rounds used in the top motif to make a flatter top.  I really like this shaping.  I knit this over the weekend while George & I and our friend Alan were in Victoria, B.C.  We had a great weekend and I got lots of knitting done on the ferry rides.

I so rarely knit anything for myself, but I really wanted this hat.  I have a very small hat (20.5 inches in diameter) so I changed the side motif to a wave pattern.  The usual motif takes up 13 rows, the waves motif takes only 6 rows.  This makes the hat fit just right for me.

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.