WIPocalypse February 2019

Good morning:)
Welcome to the (always late) WIPocalypse post of January February 2019!
To participate, here is the Info Page :)

Since i missed the January deadline, i'm gonna put the two month together !

This was 2 very big months for me. I attended a University conference in Miami in the beginning of January (One week of vacation in the sun !! ), and was chosen to be lecturer (assistant professor) for an undergrad class in quantitative analysis. Lots of hours of preparation every week, but i am delighted to have this teaching opportunity, since it was my favorite class when i was an undergrad student. Also, i have to take more hours on my part time job to accommodate a colleague, while being in a lot of committees at University !! I feel very tired but i would be bored if i wasn't that much implicated in my community.

Even if I didn’t have a lot of time to stitch, I managed to find some ! I am very happy to report progress on my wips!! Canadian weather helped a lot, with the coldest winter storm in January in Montreal since 1920. We were freezing like crazy !! Also, we received another 40cm of snow in mid-february. Nothing better than stay home and stitch all day long! The sad part of this stormy winter is that my Japanese Embroidery group meeting for February was canceled. Good news : we will have 2 meetings in March ( and i hope no snow storm this time !)

Two big news this months :
1. A friend gifted me the long lost Charlotte pattern. I almost cried I was so happy ! I think it was lost in my last moving because i never found it in my new apartment. I will be able to continue my favorite Mirabilia !! But now that i have a new pattern, i predict that i will find the old one in two months. Just because (you know.. ) I did some work on this piece but forgot to take pictures.

2. I ordered a OTTlamp and just got its this morning ! (Thanks to Dima and her sister for bringing it to me !) I have very bad lighting in my apartment, and the only lamp i can work with is yellow and not bright enough. Since sun is setting very early in winter and that i never come back home before 6 pm on weekdays, i mostly work in this environment. I hope it will improve my pictures too !



********

Japanese Embroidery

#1 Phase 2-3 Sensu 

My Sensu Project got some hours on it , i am glad the blue shippo cloud foundation is done, and the red cloud is coming well . I did a little bit (almost half) of the purple sayagata cloud too.

At this point, I have done around 22 hours of work.

Normally, the right part is not brownish but more mauve lilas . I try to remove some of the yellow taint from the light with instagram picture tools, but i can't do anything for absence of light xD Now that i received my OTTlamp, everything should go better :)

Unfortunately, no time for the bouquet this month! All my time on JE is devoted to finish my preparation for the April class. I am behind in my progress on this blog, i will maybe post new pictures while i am working on Sensu. If i have time.

*****

Cross stitch

#1 Villa Mirabilia

I did a lot of work on this project (If we compare to the amont of crosstitching i did in the last year) ! My frame is small and easy to carry so i bring it when i leave home for a few days. Now that airports have less severe rules these days, i can bring everything it in my cabin luggage. Some years ago, airport security threw away my scissors... hemmmm do i look like i will attack the pilots with my smol embroidery scissors in a bag full of cross stitch threads ? I was so frustrated!

So here are pictures before and after :

I don't know if i will continue this piece. Lastly it was a distraction from the fact that i lost my Charlotte pattern. I dont really like working on 28 counts : coverage is not the same as 32 and i won't use 3 strands for a big piece like that.
Only time will tell!

******

Question of the month

Each month, we have to answer a question.

For January :

What SAL’s are you participating in this year?

This year, i participate in two SAL : WIPocalypse and Stitch from Stash (if this is a SAL xD ) . Having to do a regular SAL is giving me a lot of anxiety because i already have a lot of deadlines in my professional life. Having to set deadlines in my personnal/hobbies life would be killing me, because i see cross stitch and embroidery as a pleasure and distraction from my stressful daily life as graduate student and part time worker in a government agency. There are times in the year when i don't get much sleep  (grant submissions, exams, etc), and embroidery helps me a lot in those hard times. It feels like meditation, a moment for me alone where i can put all my problems aside and concentrate one something i love and which i have no obligations.

This is why those 2 SAL are perfect for me. The WIPocalypse wants us to post when we have time, and skip one month or two.. or a complete year if needed ! There is no pressure from the community and i love it.
Stitch from Stash is a community who encourage people to finish their already started WIP instead of buying and accumulating new projects, and putting the old ones in the UFO basket. When you are done with a project, you can reward yourself with buying new stuff. I really love this idea that we already have enough projects for a whole lifetime and we don't need to buy more to be happy !! I try to apply this with my own cross stitch, and also with Japanese Embroidery. Even if I would love to buy all the projects, i have to be reasonable and stick with what i have. With my two projects on the go, i have for 2-3 years worth of stitching.

For Feburary :

What do you listen to while stitching?

The answer is : it depends what i am doing !! When i'm working on cross stitch, i love to listen to Netflix or an Anime Manga. Doing small x's doesn't require a lot of concentration so it's a good time to catch up on tv shows. 

When i am doing Japanese Embroidery, i have to concentrate very hard on my work. No TV at the same time ! But i enjoy listening to music. I heard or read somewhere that we should not listen to music while doing embroidery, only hear the sounds of nature. But living in downtown of a big city, my apartment is noisy all day, and it's small ! I'm living with another person and i can't impose total silence while i am doing embroidery xD So music in my ears, and i am good for hours of stitching ! 

So, this is it for February, i enjoy in advance to read about your own progress this month !!

Sensu - Shippo Foundation (1)

Sensu - Shippo Foundation (1)

Japanese Embroidery / Phase 2-3

Hi everyone ,

I am enjoying my new Phase 2-3 a lot ! I have become a little bit tired of working on my bouquet because this Phase 1 is way harder than the other phase 1, and the learning curve is very important. As a beginner of embroidery, this big bouquet with a lot of techniques is challenging.

On the Sensu, the homework before April class is to do foundations of the 3 clouds on the fan. We learned the techniques in phase 1, so it should be pretty easy (that's what i thought at first).

What i need to work on first, is the blue cloud that will have shippo on top, the geometrical pattern of ellipses that create a circle with a diamond in the middle

Shippo Pattern

I broke this post in 2 parts because it would be too long ( I write too much I know. )

When doing foundation, our first teacher told us to put guidelines along the weft to make sure we have straight and parallel lines on all the covered area. I could not put them anymore since the fabric has a very visible weft, but I have a problem of distortion in my eyes, and I have difficulty to see straight lines. I prefer taking more time for preparation than realize half way that my lines are not parallel.

And then, we can start putting some color inside.... or twist a lot of thread before, i should say.

I have been told to prepare a lot of threads before, so all of them will have the same twist. A difference of twist will become noticeable on the foundation. Here we have 4-1T , 4 threads into 1 twisted.

After twisting a bunch of threads, time to fill in the space, staying inside the white couching.

(Yes, i have to skip a line after ending each thread. I got 10 people telling me this, i will never forget anymore !! )

Tada !
Around 8h30 of work on this cloud up to this point.

And yes, I used a complete spool for this foundation. Did i had too much twisted thread ? Absolutely not ! After finishing my last stitch, i had one twisted thread remaining !!! This is why we have to buy 2 spools of 502 blue !

The amount of silk used for this foundation is unbelievable. 4-1T uses 4 strands to produce one. Also, the longest line from this cloud is 11 cm. Even if i did very long threads, sometimes i couldn't put more than 3 lines before having to finish it. It was very frustrating as i felt i was going very slowly. This piece is not about being easy (because putting straight lines of twisted thread along the weft is very easy), but about patience. On the Phase 1 Bouquet, i only had one big foundation on the bag (much more smaller than what i just did). On the Phase 2-3 Sensu, i have to fill 3 clouds that will use almost all of my silk spool.

Now i get a better perspective about the crazy hours needed to do a big piece like the Phase 9 Sake Box, and why we have to buy so much silk spools !! Pfiou ! The road ahead is gonna be very long ! But sure i wont let this stop me. I am ready to put the time needed into this to achieve my goals (Even if it takes 15 years xD )

____

Next step on the shippo cloud is holding lattice. It is the same technique as used on the valerian flowers of the phase 1 (which i didnt post pictures here... i am a bit behind with my progression on this blog... sorry !! )

On the next group meeting, i hope to receive the Ott light i ordered with Dima. The light in my appartment is not very good. I only have big lamp to work, and it uses special bulb that comes only in a yellow-ish colour. This is bad for working at night, especially when i need good light. Also, pictures appears yellow sometimes and i hate it ! I try to put some instagram filters but i would prefer to have the real color !