To be or not to be…

Dear stitchers and artists,

I managed to spend three hours, on and off in single-minded pursuit of stitch mechanics on about 5 stitches I had been working on for the last two summers.  I had my notes to hand and, my by now, very cramped doodle cloth, and away I went.

Because reality was close on my heels, I had to really go into ‘the zone’ with regard to working out, noting down, photographing and testing hypotheses.  I was so desperate to get to the bottom of certain areas of ambiguity I was almost in a parallel universe of concentration and one-ness.  It felt really good!

It worked!  I mean it paid off, I got my answers.  Feeling encouraged to battle on, I tackled all 5 and wrote up my notes.  

The notes are not tidy, yet, but at least they are all there and have been improved, tested and ticked.  

Ok, so Danish Stitch is actually the basis of a stitch that I think I’ve invented? That sounds weird but it’s true.

I was desperately looking for a knot stitch that would end with 4 spokes, I thought I found it with Danish stitch, but I now see in the second ‘flipped’ stage of the stitch, I had actually introduced something quite different that changes the symmetry and weight of the stitch.  The end result is a stitch that has a circular centre with 4 anchor points.  These anchors offer up huge range of possibilities for spokes into which you can weave, or stitch extra design elements to mimic natural forms more convincingly.

How I got there is another story altogether and one that involves a video on YouTube that I cannot for the life of me find, that was produced in another language.   I often watch videos that are not in English because I don’t actually need to hear them but to watch them.  In fact for most of my technical learning, I will turn off the sound and play music instead, as I find the speech in videos os often very distracting and even frustrating..

Result is, I found a stitch that provides a basis for many, many possibilities with regard to miniature flowers, especially.  Oh what fun lies ahead ppl…..

Here is a photo of Barbados that is my favourite.  Just look at that jade water just calling you to dive in and float without any effort with a Daiquiri in your hand resting on your tummy…..hahah!