I Feel Unproductive Because I've Not Managed To Finish Anything, But Here's What I've Been Working On.

I feel unproductive because I've not managed to finish anything, but here's what I've been working on. This stitch takes so much time. The above represents about an hour and a half's work, and I'm maybe just over a quarter done on this code.

I took a day off from work today. Over the last week and a half I'd written 5000 words (this is a lot for me, I'm a slow writer) and sent it off to my supervisor last night. I figured I'd earned a break, so I spent the morning working on the Iliad, and then started this project this afternoon. This is my modern embroidery sampler. The technique hasn't changed; the alphabet has.

Added casalguidi stitch - easy, but time consuming. As with 90% of embroidery. Not sure I'm entirely happy with the colours in it, but oh well. Think next time I might try smaller stem stitches with it, too.

Added some drizzle stitches.

I can’t remember if I’ve shared these before. These are two test pieces I did before starting the Iliad, experimenting with different colours assigned to different letters. I used Blake’s poem ‘The Tyger’ from ‘Songs of Experience’ because Blake. The black lines in between each line of text are designed to give a tiger-stripe feel. The length of each black line corresponds to the length of the lines in the poem ‘The Lamb’ which is often seen as the corresponding poem to The Tyger from the Songs of Innocence.

Edit: to me, on a personal level, these two pieces make a perfect pair. The one on the left is called ‘The Tyger’ the one on the right is called ‘The Tiger’. You see, I made a spelling mistake. Amusingly and perhaps ironically, this is the exact opposite of the mistake people usually make with my own name (they write Sylvie and I’m Silvie). Perhaps I should sign my name wrongly on ‘The Tiger’. :P

your august 15 post, i have a question about. im a former crafts grad. did you crochet the piece, dip in slip then fire? i ask because someone at school was doing something similar, and I haven't seen much of this done but really interesting!

Yup! That was pretty much it.

I used a cheap acrylic yarn (because wool is expensive, and it seems a waste to just burn it), which let off a *lot* of black smoke as it burned off. I used a crochet hook a couple of sizes bigger than is recommended for the yarn, to make sure it was hole-y enough (both for aesthetic reasons, and to help air circulate in the firing). I dipped it in earthenware slip, let it dry out for a few days, did a very slow fire, and then glazed with a transparent glaze.