It’s been just over a month, and so far I’ve been able to allocate about 10 hours of sewing time to my pansy. There have been a few missteps along the way, such as:
- miscounting stitches and needing to add many more stitches due to my miscount,
- not buying enough skeins in the background color even though the pattern stated the number of yards, and I had help at the store determining how many skeins that should have translated into,
- leaving long bits of yarn hanging on the back of the canvas, which got entangled with the yarn I was actually trying to sew with,
- more miscounting, so that whole rows of stitches were in the wrong place, and
- not thinking through how I would mark out which stitches I’d completed on the pattern – when there are more than 20 colors in the pattern and a symbol being used for each color, I’ve discovered a highlighter is the best way to mark out which stitches have been completed.
I think overall, the pattern is turning out very well. I’ve just moved on to a very red color, when I’d mostly been using derivations of purple and gray, and I was a bit worried about the red fitting into the scheme. So far, so good. It doesn’t show in this picture, as the picture was taken before I introduced the red. In fact, this picture looks quite nondescript; the outline of the top of the pansy is about all that can be made out.
What I really need is more time to work on the tapestry.
As I work on my tapestries, I am listening to books on CD. It is very relaxing. I completed a Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway, this morning. And I am now listing to Eckart Tolle and a talk he gave at Findhorn. Quite funny in places. Onward!
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