February TUSAL

A bit more color in this month's TUSAL. I've been trying to work regularly on my mermaid. Still holding hope I will finish in time for my sister's birthday in June.

Special Weather Report

Over the weekend we had a slew of weather alerts. This meant that my monthly Japanese embroidery meeting was rescheduled due to bad weather. We got a mix of snow and freezing rain on Sunday which made driving a little hazardous. I was disappointed as I hadn't seen my group in a month, but it meant I didn't have to leave my warm house to do some stitching.

I'm still working hard on my cloud. I put in 12 more strands. Another session and it should be all covered.

Here's an overall view of the piece. Not long now.

Another special weather report, it will be sunny and 30 degrees weather for me for the rest of the week. I'm flying down south on Tuesday for a well deserved vacation, so no embroidery updates for this week. I did write my TUSAL post thought so that will be published on Thursday.

I made a little something for my trip, which I finished on Saturday. I will be posting the reveal on Instagram on Tuesday if you want to see what it is. Once I get back, I will publish a post showing you how I made it.

Itty Bitty Progress

I had a very busy weekend so I didn't have much time to spend on my pieces. I was determined to at least put in some progress on Hiogi.

In the picture above, the blue line marks where I continued on from. It amounts to 4 strands of twisted thread. It took about an hour to twist the thread and use it. So it will take, maybe, another 4-5 hours to cover the rest of the cloud? I guess we'll see.

This Sunday is my monthly Japanese embroidery meeting, so I'm hoping to catch up the time I missed on the weekend.

Weekend Stitching

This weekend I finished the first mermaid on my Mirabilia piece. I unrolled the frame a little so I can take a picture. She's still missing beads but I'm leaving those till the end. There is a lot of Kreinik in this piece. I'm finding that I'm not having as much difficulty stitching with it as I used to. It might come down to my having more stitching experience now.

On Sunday, I worked on getting my lattice done. I didn't have any trouble undoing it, but I was still having trouble with the measurement. Despite my being careful I still started off measuring 1.8 cm but after wards started measuring 0.8 cm again. Not sure what was wrong with me. I had to undo it again a second time, but it worked on my third attempt. My second cloud is officially done. 

Now I just need to get that third one done. It's the biggest one yet, so it will take some time to finish as I'm limited with how long my twisted strand can be. Since we're incorporating a strand of gold, our silk can only be as long as our gold strand, which is about 18-19 inches long. I can twist 4 strands in about 30 minutes and then use them up in half that time. So very slow going.

Japanese Embroidery Phase 2-3 - Homework part 2

This Sunday, I worked on the blue cloud called shippo. This one is covered with twisted silk. Very simple, but that small area eats up a lot of silk. I always twist at least 6 strands at a time, stitch until all of them are used and then repeat. With this cloud, I would sometimes be able to put in two stitches before the strand became too short to continue.

I can't remember how many strands I needed but I did finish an entire spool of thread. Each spool contains 60 meter of thread. So a lot of silk.

One side effect of dry skin (the curses of winter) and constant twisting, is that your palm starts to hurt. I couldn't figure out why my right hand palm hurt and was overly warm until I looked at them. Luckily, I had just twisted my last thread for the day and could take a break.

The last step on the cloud is putting in a lattice on the cloud. I think I might have been tired by this point, because straight off I could tell something was wrong but couldn't figure out why. There were too many lines.

It's only after emailing my group and taking a step back to think about it that I realized what the issue is. First off I wasn't doing the lattice the right way, I was putting it in the way the lattice was put on the wrapping paper from phase 1. They should be done the way the valerians are done. Second, the distance between lines is supposed to be 1.8 cm, I've put them in 0.8 cm apart. Lesson learned, never stitch when you're tired. Especially something as complex as Japanese embroidery.

So the goal this weekend is to get this fixed and finished. If there is still time, I'll continue the last cloud. This one has twisted thread, so I'll need to make sure to moisturize my hands this week so they're ready to work on Sunday.

January TUSAL

The first TUSAL report of the year. The jar has bits and pieces from a project that I started after the new year but hadn't shared yet, but the majority is from the Mirabilia piece that I'm working on, Mermaids of the Deep Blue. I haven't taken a progress picture of that piece in a while. I really should, as I'm almost done with the first mermaid.

My stitching time is still limited, but I did finish restitching the purple cloud on my phase 2 piece last Sunday. This Sunday, I'll be working on the blue shippo cloud.