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!