Blackwork Hexagons

 The Facebook group Snarky & Modern Embroidery and Cross Stitch is hosting a blackwork stitch-along in conjunction with blackwork experts The Steady Thread. I've always wanted to do a sampler, so this was perfect.

Behold, the first seven hexagons:

The SAL is 49 weeks long, but I won't be doing all 49 hexies -- I'm already behind by several weeks, and my fabric isn't big enough. Instead I'll see how many I can do before I run out of space.

That fabric, by the way, is a basic cotton evenweave, and I hate it -- stiff, unravelly, and too easy to stain. But this will use up the last of it! You can't tell from the picture (I've yet to take one with perfect lighting), but the thread is a variegated Waterlilies from the Caron Collection, in very deep purples and teals. 

Behold, a big old error in hexie no. 8!

 I think I'll keep it. It's kind of fun,  testing others to see if they can see it. Can you? 😛

Christmas Sampler

This sampler was the ninth of my stitch9challenge, and I finished it on the second to last day of the year. It was by far the most fun to stitch:

The Christmas pudding, and Nativity were inspired by other designs, modified by me to fit the 14x14 stitch squares. The Charlie Brown Christmas tree, regular Christmas tree (made from fly stitches), and winterberry bush were my own design. The cross stitched gift was a Stitchy Box design, the one over one cookies were Brooke's Books designs, and and the blackwork was from ... somewhere. The beaded candy cane was a reject from a pair I made for earrings. I made a beaded snowflake, stitched a woven rose, and embroidered an ornament-shaped piece of felt. Lace, charms, buttons, and a tiny crystal cross round out the squares.

I love inchie samplers, and I'm sure I'll be doing more.

It's a Marshmallow World in the Winter ...

So it turns out, there aren't any Christmas songs with the word "gingerbread" in them. But the "icing" on this gingerbread woman is sweet, if I do say so myself:

This was originally a Victoria Sampler pattern, "Gingerbread Cookies," but if you go to that link you'll see I made a lot of changes -- I got rid of the Santa hat and omitted the buttons and beaded necklace, instead filling in her dress with a blackwork pattern accented with the necklace "pearls." I did use two of the white buttons for eyes, and added a few white seed beads for the mouth. She's backed with a brown batik fabric and lightly stuffed. The picture is not great, but I'm really pleased with it.

A Couple of Royal Ornaments

To add to my Magi collection.  This is from 2009's Just Cross Stitch Christmas Ornaments, by The Cat's Whiskers Design Studio.  I used cotton floss instead of wool, changed the colors a bit, and added crystals to the crowns rather than Algerian eye stitches.

This is my own design, so to speak:

I wanted a stitchy representation of one of my favorite poems.  The crown charm is tied to the hoop because I haven't decided if I want to keep it on.

I also made an authentic King Cake for the day, Northern French variety.  I neglected to take a picture, but you can find the recipe here (the chocolate version), and boy was it good.  And easy.  I even put in a little French feve, of the baby Jesus, in the center.  It turns out the antique French mini-creche set I bought years and years ago is actually a set of feves for Epiphany cakes.  Kismet!

More Space Filling Curves

A Moore curve, related to the Hilbert curve:

A Gosper curve (adjusted for a linen weave, which is not hexagonal):

I think I'm going to turn this into a math sampler.

A Different Kind of Blackwork

Reading this article introduced me to the terrible and beautiful lightning tree:
Which reminded me of fractals:
Which led me to space-filling curves, like a dragon curve:

and the Moore curve:

Perfect for blackwork, no?

A Peano curve:

A Hilbert curve:
What's really neat is the back of this square looks like an earlier iteration of the curve:

I have to do more of this.

Summer Stitching

Between the heat waves, changes in Beadboy1's schedule, and house guests, I haven't spent much time in my craft room or working on any of the projects I should be finishing. Instead, I've been doing some small cross stitch projects.

The first is an unusual take on Halloween, done in ecrus and browns which give it an elegant look. The design:
My stitching so far:
The other project is a Christmas ornament, from the Just Cross Stitch Ornament Preview. The sooner in the year I start these ornaments, the more likely one of them will actually be done by Christmas. The design (Cool Christmas by Lynda Watkins and Angie Williams of Fresh Threads Studio):
So far:
I also found time to do a little blackwork stitching for the twelfth square of my 36 Squares. Blackwork uses the back stitch and a Holbein stitch (like a double running stitch) to create repeating geometric designs, which are great for filling in areas. Different patterns create darker or lighter looks, to imitate shading. For this square I used a tile flower pattern:
It took about three tries before I got the spacing right, though.