Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Oyster Shmoyster

Well, I made a discovery with this week's Take A Stitch Tuesday challenge - I suck at Oyster stitch! :-)
I just can't get it, either the central crossed threads are the wrong way round, or the loops that are supposed to form flip over or simply disappear before my eyes! And each sample stitch I do looks different. Ah well, it's ok. Even though the execution of the stitches is very very bad, I don't mind how the final sample has turned out, at least the colours look pretty! :-)


I decided to continue on with the garden scene I've been stitching, and added an autumn tree to the right hand side. The leaves are oyster stitch (well, sort of), and the trunk and branches are couched wool.

Now, the couching I got a bit excited about! It was an experiment - I used some nice chunky, earthy coloured yarn and just laid it out and gradually unwrapped the fibres as I moved up the tree, couching with a whip stitch. I liked the gnarled effect this produced and the way it thinned the trunk and branches out gradually, sort of like nature does it. I didn't worry too much about the base of the trunk as I intend embroidering over that bottom section with another shrub at a later date.


I put in an order at Amazon last week - I had birthday money just burning a hole in my pocket! :-) Amongst a couple of knitting books I also bought a comprehensive embroidery stitch book. I like owning reference books, I find the Internet absolutely brilliant for just about everything in the whole wide world but it's also nice to be able to plonk into a comfy chair with a book too. Do you all know about Sharon's fabulous online Stitch Dictionary? I think this woman is a legend for giving this to the Internet world as a free resource, thanks Sharon!

The new stitch for this week is Palestrina stitch - doesn't that sound exotic, I'm intrigued to find out what it looks like...

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Have you noticed the dark monster looking over your fence? It's about in the center of the piece.

Which is beautiful, btw...*S*

Dy said...

LOL, you're right Sequana, I hadn't noticed, he looks a bit like a monster fox to me. That central piece will eventually be cut out to fit the shape of the serviette holder, but I'll have to keep that little piece of monster for something else...

Anonymous said...

Beautiful, Dy!! Just gorgeous.
And who need oysters - they're slimy and give you food-poisoning.

Grangry said...

I do like the way you did that tree trunk - I will 'borrow' that! I know just what you mean about the oyster stitches, but the way you have used them, yours look fine.

arlee said...

I like the fact that you used something different for the background----very very effective. And maybe your oyster stitch is now a
Dy version :}

Peticelul Romanesc said...

Your landscape gets more and more color and spirit.Corina

Anonymous said...

I really like your colour scheme on this , and the fence is really effective.

Julia said...

Love the tree..
From another Cqer in Perth.