Incoherent Scribblings

First Hardanger Heart

I finished my first Hardanger piece today!

One of my New Year’s stitching resolutions was to learn some new stitches and techniques. I have been a regular visitor to the Victoria Sampler Website for quite a few months and have downloaded just about all of the free patterns there. For those of you unfamiliar with the site and Thea’s designs, she uses lots of Hardanger, one of the specialty techniques that I have been itching to try.

Yesterday I bought some Pearl Cotton and after doing quite a bit of research on the web and printing off about two dozen pages with various suggestions for Hardanger beginners, I decided to jump right in.

I used one of Thea’s free designs, the Heart Sweet Bag, but only did the Hardanger heart. It seemed fairly easy and included the main stitches; kloster blocks, eyelets, satin stitch hearts, and weaving. I counted carefully, stitched slowly, and I think everything turned out pretty well.

Most of the instructions I read suggested doing Hardanger without a hoop and so I tried that at first. Since I always stitch with a hoop though, I found it rather cumbersome and couldn’t keep good tension, so after about 10 minutes I gave up and put it in my hoop. After that the stitching went smoothly. The kloster blocks were fun and I really enjoyed doing the eyelets. I did have a little trouble figuring out exactly how to tack down my thread though. In the end, I tacked it down like I do with regular cross stitch, but I am not sure I am 100% happy with that.

Once I came to the cutting I was really nervous. Sure, the piece was small and only for “practice,” but I had already spent a couple of hours doing all the stitching and I didn’t want to have to throw it away if I messed up the cutting. Overall, I did OK with the cutting, though in one corner I cut one thread too many and so instead of having four threads to weave around, I only had three. If I look closely the weaving doesn’t look quite as balanced there, but I doubt many people will notice. I think cutting is something that definitely will take some practice!

The weaving was easy, but after I was finished with it I found out it called for dove’s eyes and they are to be done in conjunction with the weaving. By that time I was almost done, so I decided to leave them out this time. I finished it off by adding four little satin stitch hearts.

I love the way the variegated thread works with Hardanger and am very proud of my first piece. I can’t wait to do some more!

Stranded on the Balcony

Germans sure do love their balconies. They are proudly mentioned in apartment advertisements, are counted in the total square meters of your apartment, and can easily drive the price of an apartment up quite a few Euros.

Many balconies are secretively wrapped in bamboo so that the lady of the house can sunbathe in the nude while smoking cigarettes and relaxing in her lawn chair. Other balconies are decorated with a plethora of flowers and a barbeque grill in order to make those without balconies jealous of the good times and food that is being had by those with balconies. Still others are not decorated at all and are merely used as a place to dry the laundry or store those odds and ends that just don’t fit into the apartment.

We have a balcony, and while I try and grow flowers in window boxes in the spring and we have a couple of lawn chairs so we can sit outside if we want, the view is not spectacular and so I mostly just use our balcony to occasionally dry my laundry.

Obviously, in order to get out onto our balcony, you must go through a typical German door. Now, for those of you not familiar with German doors and windows, they typically have three stages: closed, wide open, or tilted. One handle and a bunch of mechanisms around the edges of the door (or window) regulate all three stages. If the door or window is closed, the handle points downward at “6 o’clock.” If the door or widow is wide open, the handle points to the left at “9 o’clock.”

However, what is different about German windows and doors is this “tilting” phenomenon. The door (or window) handle is moved upward to “12 o’clock” and when you pull on the handle instead of opening, the bottom stays put and the top of the window (or door) literally tilts inward (I am told some windows and doors tilt outward too).

Since windows typically don’t have screens on them here and I have never seen a screen door, tilting can be a very handy way to let air in while preventing kitties (or children, I suppose) from falling or jumping out of the window.

This morning, I was up fairly early and though it was cool, it promised to be a sunny spring day and so I decided to do a very typical German domestic task; air out my bedding by placing it on the balcony.

I got everything set up on the balcony and as I pulled the door shut behind me, I tried to simultaneously get the comforter out while keeping the cat in. It was then that I heard a strange crack. I hastily put the comforter on the laundry rack, turned around, and was greeted by a door that seemed strangely out of whack. Earlier I had had the door tilted, but I moved it to its “wide open” position so that I could get out onto the balcony with my comforter. However, apparently when I closed the door behind me the mechanisms failed and it tried to go back into tilt position.

I immediately grabbed onto the frame because in its odd position, it looked very precarious. I then called out A., but just as I heard the “crack” that came from the door, I also heard the water to the shower turn on. The end result was that the balcony door was tilted but the bottom was not in place, A. was in the shower, and I was stranded on the balcony!

I kept saying his name louder and louder, finally adding “help” and “fire” to my pleas, but he didn’t hear me. As soon as I heard the water shut off about 20 minutes later, I called out, “Help! I broke the door and I’m stranded on the balcony!”

He heard me, but didn’t exactly believe me, and so he took his own sweet time sauntering into the living room. When he saw that I was desperately holding onto the door trying to prevent it from falling (I wasn’t sure if it would or not, but I didn’t want to take any chances) he exclaimed, “What did you do now?!” (Like it was my fault…)

A. was able to get the door moved enough so that I could come in from the balcony and while I supported the door, A. called the landlord. Apparently, A. got the landlord’s wife on the phone and after he explained that we had an urgent problem, she tried to tell A. that her husband wasn’t our landlord! After some discussion, A. finally established that her husband was indeed our landlord and got his handy number.

The landlord sent one of his acquaintances over to check out our balcony door, he confirmed it was kaput, temporarily stabilized it, removed the handle, and will be back sometime next week to fix it! Until then we can’t open (or tilt) the door or go out on the balcony.

Oh well, as A. keeps reminding me, I should be glad that he was still home when I got stranded out on the balcony or I might still be there now!

Stitching Evolution

A few weeks ago, I celebrated my stitching anniversary. Thanks to my best friend, (who taught me to cross stitch over spring break) I have technically been stitching for six years. I say “technically” because while I learned to stitch back in 1999, I only stitched for about six months that year. I then took a “break” and didn’t start stitching again until the fall of 2003.

Anyway, the other day when I was sorting in the patterns I recently bought, I also took the opportunity to look through my other patterns and finished pieces that are still waiting to be completed. I must say, I found it very interesting to examine how my stitching has evolved over that period of time.

The first thing I noticed is that all of the patterns I bought in the beginning have clearance stickers on them! I distinctly remember only buying the cheap patterns in case my stitching hobby didn’t last. Nowadays, I still look at the price tag on the charts, but unless it is an exorbitant amount it is not the determining factor.

When I first started stitching, I stuck with simplistic and rather “cartoony” designs. I was afraid of anything larger than 5″x7″, mostly did animals, and always on Aida cloth. I hated back stitching, avoided French Knots because I didn’t know how to do them, and I carried my floss a little too far more than once.

Now, while I still like animals and “cartoony” designs, I have started buying more and more patterns of people that remind me of the painted works of art I might see in a museum. I am still a little bit intimidated by large designs, but not nearly as much as I used to be. I am an Evenweave convert, I can almost whip French Knots up with my eyes closed, I try very hard not to carry my floss anymore than 7 stitches, and I’m getting ready to dabble in Hardanger.

And that just scratches the surface! Of course I could go on and on about how my stitching has evolved, but right now I want to hear from you! So, of course, this brings me to the Stitching Blogger’s Question, which is:

How has your stitching evolved since you first started stitching?

P.S. Sorry the question is a little late this week… the long weekend and daylight savings time messed up my schedule!

Sucker for Sandals

I like shoes, but I LOVE sandals!

When I first graduated from undergraduate school, in addition to waiting tables three nights a week I had a temp job in an office in downtown Des Moines. Almost every day I spent at least half of my lunch break shopping at Younkers and it was in that department store that I discovered a weakness I never knew I had: Sandals.

Unlike some girls, I had never really been that into shoes. Of course, I had more than one pair of shoes: I usually had a least one pair of tennis shoes, a pair or two of boots, a pair of loafers, a pair of the little white Keds, a pair of black and a pair of white dress shoes, and maybe a couple pairs of sandals or flip flops (which I always called “thongs”) and that was it.

But in 1996, I had money and that summer’s style was chunky high-heeled sandals. Early in the spring I found such a pair in black. They only had a heel of an inch or so, but when I saw them in the mirror with my pretty little red-polished toes peeking out, I was in love. Soon I had sandals in every color and coupled with a short skirt or pair of shorts, they made my legs look a mile long.

Before when I had tried heels I always felt clumsy and unbalanced, but with the chunky heels I didn’t even wobble! As my confidence grew, so did the heels on my sandals until I finally “invested” in one particular pair that made my above-average height of 5′7″ tower close to 6′!

Alas, though such sandals were sexy, they weren’t extremely practical. I found that I could wear them as long as I didn’t have to walk too far or for too long. They made my legs tired when I tried to dance the night away and gave me blisters if I tried to wear them when I went for a walk. Luckily, that summer I did a great deal of sitting around so I didn’t suffer in my sexy sandals too often.

As the years passed, I got rid of the high-heeled sandals of 1996 and replaced them with more practical and comfortable models, but I am still a sucker for sandals.

I have one pair in particular that I am quite fond of; they are flat, casual, and very comfortable. Unfortunately, I realized last summer that they are also nearly worn out. I spent all last summer looking for a similar pair and while I found many other adorable sandals that were nearly as impractical as the ones I bought in 1996, I found nothing that fit my summer walking needs. Finally, I resorted to getting yet another pair of Birkenstocks.

But today, while not even looking for sandals, I stumbled upon a cute, practical pair. Is it the only pair I will buy or am I just warming up for another frenzied sandal-buying summer? I guess we will have to wait and see…

Cross Stitch Holiday

Not only was my anniversary this weekend, it was a long Easter weekend, and here in Europe Daylight Savings Time began. And so, what did I do to celebrate this long weekend? Cross stitched of course!
Actually, I took a break on Saturday and didn’t stitch at all. But Sunday I was ready to go again. I decided it was time to work on something in my rotation and though I looked at “Passing Admirers,” I remembered that I was thinking of maybe giving “Girl’s Time Out” to my mom for Mother’s Day and wasn’t even close to being finished with it! So I pulled it out and worked on it.

I only stitched for about an hour on Sunday because before I began stitching I decided I needed to sort in all of the stash I bought last week. While organizing my stash, I came to the conclusion that I really need to make myself a needle case. Thanks to kits I never have to buy needles and in fact, I have so many that the little piece of Aida the currently holds them just isn’t enough anymore.

In the process of doing that, I lost my favorite pencil and tore apart my whole stash looking for it! I finally found it buried in between the seat and arm of my stitching chair. As luck would have it, I also found my favorite fabric-cutting scissors in my chair (they too mysteriously disappeared a couple of months ago) because I poked my hand on them while I was fishing around for my pencil.

After I got that all put away I started stitching, but then the housework (laundry and dinner) called. After dinner I surfed the web until bedtime; first looking for a needle case pattern and then looking for information on Hardanger because the needle case pattern I found uses Hardanger.

So after all that, today I was organized when I sat down and pulled out “Girl’s Time Out.” I managed to put almost 4 hours into it and have really made some progress! The little girl’s dress is finished and so it the doll she is holding. Once the little girl is complete, the only other things that call for full cross stitches are the kitty and the scissors. The background is made up of half stitches so I imagine it should go really fast.

I don’t know if I will get her done in this rotation or not, but if I decide to give her to my mom for Mother’s Day I will go ahead and finish her because Mother’s Day is only about a month away and last time I finished working on “Girl’s Time Out” I didn’t get back to her for about two months! (See progress pics of “Girl’s Time Out” here!)