Desert Diamonds

Finally back to Desert Diamonds. I've now finished all those French knots. I don't normally mind French knots, but this time I was doing them in Ombre, and it wasn't the most peaceful of past-times.

And another of those arty shots to get the colour and knots better. Note, I said better, not perfect.

Owen Davies Knotwork Garden Course

Thought I would post my progress on this. I've made it my new swimming project. Half an hour a week is about all I can stand of those loops. Still it's getting done and soon I'll be up to the fun part of giving it a haircut.

A gift

I haven't posted lately as I've been working on a gift. What's more it's knitted. Yes, I know - the dark side. Well one of them anyway. But it's not socks. I can't ever see myself knitting socks - so you're safe from those. But anyway - this is a Christmas gift and now it's finished and I can go back to my regularly scheduled program. Or something like that anyway.

Desert Diamonds

I haven't managed to stitch much lately, so I'm still only on lesson two, and lesson four is due out next week. Oh well, I'm not too far behind so there is still hope.

The first panel of French Knots didn't go so well - I couldn't decide which direction to do them in, so they look a bit untidy. But they were a right pain to do, so it's unlikely that I'll take them out. However, you never know, I might really dislike them when I get to the end and redo them. For now though I'll keep working on the rest - the second panel is much smoother as I've figured out the best direction to do them in.

Bug Collector

Yet another post about Bug Collector - but this time not to ask more opinions about finishing it. I have finally got around to writing up the caterpillar chart. I couldn't figure out how to make it a picture I could just put in my post - I'm sure I could, but my brain didn't want to spend the time doing it today - so I've made it a PDF file and you can find it here. You can probably ignore most of the writing, but I figured putting it in looked better and more like I knew what I was doing that just having the chart on an otherwise blank sheet of paper.

Desert Diamonds

I finished lesson 1 just in time. The very next day I got lesson 2 - and here's my progress so far.

I love these type of projects because the progress is so easy to see.

Bug Collector

I found some blue fabric, so I've got some more photos. I think the blue (either blue) is brighter, and probably goes with the pink fabric better than the green, but somehow I still like the green. I guess either would work, cos green can be grass and blue can be sky. But I'm still sitting on the fence over it.

I almost think the blue is too bright and overpowers the design - if I did use blue it would probably have to be the paler one, even though that isn't my favourite. I think I may be leaning towards the green as it's more background than the blue would be. What do you think?

Desert Diamonds

And band one finished - all caught up with the lessons now:

Bug Collector

I had got my framer to get some samples of brightly coloured frames for Bug Collector last time I was in there. But when they came none of them were right, so I've been thinking of other options to finish it off.

So when I went to town the other day I popped into the fabric shop to see what they had. I came away with this:

I thought I'd use the black as the backing, possibly folded around to the front for an outer frame - not sure if I'd only want it thin, or wide enough so that whole butterflies could be seen. And the green would be my 'mat'. But now I'm second guessing myself and wondering if a blue would be better. What do you think? And how wide would you make the black if you folded it around to the front?

PS. The caterpillar chart is still on my list of things to do - I haven't forgotten yet.

Desert Diamonds

Another update on this. I was hoping to finish off lesson one (the tie-down stitches) tonight, but it looks like I'm rapidly running out of time to get off this machine and over to the stitching.

And here's me trying to be clever and get one of those wonderful arty shots. This is the best I came up with - most of the rest were barely fit to be seen in public (lol) It does show off the colour and the gold better though.