finished fish

Our second "Zoomshop" with Becky happened on Saturday so we twelve stitchers joined her to find out how to finish our little fishy.

Again, her teaching was easy to follow - a combination of pre recorded video and demonstrations, and of course she was there to answer any questions we might have. I so admired the way she managed to balance chatting to us and getting on with things on her own while we were stitching. It is easy if you are in the same physical space; the tutor can see how folk are getting on, and often there is a bit of chatter around the table as the next part of the project is completed. With Zoom it is all quite different. We tend to run the sessions (Christine's as well) with everyone on mute to avoid distracting noises. Folk can unmute themselves to ask questions, but the sense of being able to just throw in a little comment, or whisper a query to your neighbour isn't there. I'm sure as tutor it must at times feel as though you should be filling the silence with "something", but Becky allowed a silence at times, and talked to us at others, in between her videos and demonstrations and the afternoon passed incredibly quickly. Making the mackerel stripes with incredibly delicate black purl, which seems almost to fine to be true, was a tremulous operation, but very effective over the metallic silk organza.

I had the bulk of the stitching done by the end of the afternoon, but the scariest part was then having to cut out the fish so it can be mounted on a little piece of silver fish shaped wood to give it some rigidity and allow it to exist independent of the background fabric. I managed, but still had to go back and add in some extra couching to ensure the silver pearl purl border didn't just fall off - having carefully cut through a couple of the couching stitches!

I'm very pleased with him, and glad I re-stitched the main couching on the body. Even though the stitching is not as regular as I'd like, the balance between the two halves is much better. He will be tucked away now and come out each year as a suitably coastal Christmas Tree ornament to add to the little collection of "danglies" we use each year, not being the sort of folk who have to have a themed tree and new set of ornaments each Christmas - just the old ones with the occasional happy addition.

So, a finished something - that in itself is a small miracle. Best I get on with another something now - I am sorely tempted by her badger, which has been sitting in a box upstairs since the original woodpecker workshop we did with Becky back in 2016!

Layers developing

As well as the lovely Becky Hogg stitching, I have been doing some needle musing with the Mesopotamian layers sample, just to see what if?

It is hard to photograph, because the layers catch the light in differing ways. In reality the lightest area, that of deepest excavation, is not quite so contrasting. Stitching is sparse there, because treasure is as much about the shadow of a wall in the soil as it is about gold and artefacts

I have carried some water around the base of the ruin, to provide moisture for the crops in the fields

There is the merest hint of buried sparkle here, something worth digging for perhaps

There might be another hint within those ruins to the north; a regularity under the layers, a glimmer in the shadows? 

I have irrigated and planted the pleasure gardens at the base of the North wall - some more obvious treasure here

And then, of course, there is the inscription, carved on rock on the way out of town, where all the tracks and trails lead who knows where?

Sennacherib, King of the world

Fishy business

We who are Sussex Stitchers had a lovely Zoom workshop on Saturday afternoon with Becky Hogg who lives just down the coast in Hastings. We all worked on the same project, a kit by her called Hastings Mackerel. My good man bought me mine for Christmas. It is a delightful design, as are all of hers, and presented in lovely packaging - I still have two awaiting my attention from the last workshop we did with her - the woodpecker which took me so long to complete.

Becky is a generous and charming tutor and, making the most of social technology, she set up a WhatsApp group so we can communicate in between sessions, sharing pictures of our work and asking her questions where advice is needed.

So, after a Sunday morning’s gardening, I spent the afternoon completing the first stage of the project. On Saturday Becky talked us through applying the felt, the organza for his back, and his silver fishy face and beginning the couching on on his silky silver belly.

Using the giraffe as a table frame was really helpful

The back seems to be inadvertently rather fishy in texture as well

I completed the couching on Sunday. I felt it had, perhaps, encroached rather too far into the other half of the body, the stitching was far from regular and that I had squished the felt a bit by being slightly too firm with my stitching, but it made me smile, and reminded me of a squid.

Then I decided that perhaps it did look a bit flat, and really was too far across the middle line. Mindful of Rachel's patient unpicking in pursuit of perfection, the scissors came out and all but the first two rows were taken out.

Lining up the away knots and setting in the next row - more on, rather than over the central line and with a bigger interval between each starting point

I come to the conclusion that the central line is perhaps, not quite central, but the belly is more rounded, the stitching is more even and, interestingly, I found I had space for one more row of silver. There is a little bit more space for the mackerel stripes too, which I'm looking forward to.

I love the way the moiré pattern of the folded organza gives my fish some water to swim through 

Next time we will be finishing; plunging the thread, if there are any left to plunge, adding the mackerel stripes to the back, the pearl purl outlines and giving him an eye to see with and a tail to swish as he swims about on the Hastings shoreline.