Heft to my weft

Greetings!  I know it's the start of the weekend, but I didn't know the month.  When I listed the anniversary offer, I hadn't yet flipped the page on the calendar so I thought Valentine's Day was this Monday.  Wrong.  The drawing will still be Valentine's Day which is not until Thursday.  Good thing the doctor's office called to verify my Monday appointment or I would still be in January.

 

I started going through the RandR charts, Essamplaire's new order, and also Scarlet Letter's.  Do you have any idea how much time I can waste reading each chart, looking for those nasty over one stitches, Queens, and counting blocks when the stitch count isn't given?  The heck with it. 

Mary was still lying there and a close by piece of linen was the right size.  This Bargello or Irish stitch is easy.  I did have difficulty with the start position of the black floss.  When you are doing a straight stitch in each hole, where do you start the adjoining cross?  I thought it would be in the next hole but then the cross was not lined up with the over two backstitch in the border.  So I magnified the sampler from SL's website and it looks like the cross enters the same hole.  That makes sense since all the crosses use the prior stitch's hole.  What a putz.

 For once, I'm using all the correct colors and the linen is the coarse heavier weave that I enjoy.  I like heft to my weft.  The pieces that I have no desire (or ability) to stitch on have very thin threads or a thinner weft and I really can't see them even with magnifiers. 

This piece is the 25 count Scarlet Letter hand dyed green from years ago.  It has a bluish green warp and a yellow green weft.  I had trouble stitching with it and dyed it to a much darker green.  Didn't work. 

You can see there are still two different shades to the threads and for some reason, this throws my eyes into a tizzy.  White fabric in my lap or a lamp setting on the floor makes it worse.  I just can't see the vertical threads, and fabrics with a sheen are even worse.   It wasn't until I really studied the pieces I'm not comfortable with that I realized the reason for my difficulty.  I can tell right away if my vision will adjust to see the over two threads for stitching.  Whether it's a particular type of linen or just my aging eyes, I don't know.  Even if the dye is exactly the same on all threads, some seem to disappear and all I can see is one direction.   So the thick thread rough and ready linens are my choice. The mystery linen I'm working on is perfect for me. Sending a small piece of the texture and colors I like to a shop would certainly help them determine what would be best for me.

 

As for this computer, I am avoiding being online because of it.  I changed my settings to Classic Windows style, got my tabs back to separate listings in the bottom bar, shut off that ridiculous screen filter, changed the log on screen, but regardless of the touchpad setting changes, this constant clicking is insane. I click away and nothing happens, I don't click and tabs appear, pages scroll, I lose my place, I highlight text and sometimes it won't delete, and I hate being online now.  My labels - what a fiasco.  The photo gallery is a mess. Small changes from Vista are huge headaches for me with photos.  Find it if you can, then click to edit, do it again, another view! And why can't I have a desktop icon instead of right clicking?  Clicking seems to be a fixation.

 

That's the start of my weekend.  Hope everyone is safe.

Thank you so much for visiting with me.

Enjoy your weekend and stitch with gratitude, for two working hands, your sight, and your ability to be productive.  I think of my cousin in CA every day and what she lost from her devastating stroke. 

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