Last Friday the embroiderers at our April session got an unexpected treat - Mark was working in the Crafts Center making spangles. Lots of Mark’s work isn’t suitable to the Crafts Center, requiring a big fire like it does, but this work is great for that space.

Wendy and Tricia took photos and also video, I believe. Wendy sent me these photos.

Two tubes of the silver thread for the lace making arrived in the mail from Tricia this morning. Carolyn sent a note that she and Wendy will be down week after next to wind bobbins. Carolyn will finish off the wing piece that Bryce did, and start the next piece so Jill H can work when she comes in May.

Joann G’s embroidery sample arrived a couple of days ago and Kathy sent a big pile of embroidery kits out. Those of you who were waiting for kits, they’re on their way. I think that’s all the news for today.

Today, one of the sleeve pieces went “out of service”. This is a good thing, not like when that happens to your TV. I am plenty excited.

Out of service means we’ve hit a point where we can’t do anything else on it, until either we get more instructions or more materials. This is the first large piece to go out of service. Before today only the gussets were out of service. All that’s left on them is the gold work, and we’re waiting for the next iteration of that thread for Tricia to test.

Today Susan K finished the plain worms, and the only things left on this piece are 2 columbines, 2 1/2 borages, 1 1/2 birds, 3 butterfly wings, 1 “fancy worm”, and 1 1/2 roses. We’re waiting on directions from Tricia for these motifs: colors, stitches, direction of working, that sort of thing. So, OK, there’s still an awful lot to do here, not to mention the gold work and the oes. But let me enjoy the moment.

Wendy is even now working the prototype of the rose motif and taking detailed photos as she works which Tricia will magic into the awesome individual motif directions we have for the other motifs. Once we have those, we’ll bring this back to do the roses.

Did you catch that “fancy worm” comment? Most of the worms are simply done in ceylon stitch in either red or blue GST. The fancy worms are different, two colors and we haven’t quite determined the stitch yet. The term captured my imagination, though. FANCY WORMS. Is that an oxymoron or what?

I’m a little giddy, I actually worked two and a half leaves today, including one two-color leaf. Woo-hoo. I was working on the right side, which is in one of those huge, unwieldy frames. I stood to work on it, with the frame propped against the big cutting table. Tired now, but very pleased.

Bryce W was here for two days and has taken the first piece of lace as far as it can go. Turns out the 13″ piece for the wing needs 15 motifs and we strung only enough spangles for 13 motifs. Tomorrow Wendy will unwind some of the bobbins and add more spangles so when Carolyn next comes in she can finish off this piece and get the next one started. The lace is well and truly underway. No wonder I’m a little giddy.

Marilyn left a comment the other day, that when she got practiced at the trefoils she was able to do one in three hours. That is really zipping along, and part of the reason they’re called “dreaded trefoils”.

Hey, can anyone recommend a really sturdy needle threader? We keep busting the ones we have and can find. Any suggestions?

More tomorrow.

I haven’t blogged three out of the last four nights because I simply can’t think of anything to say. Nothing new has happened since about 10 days ago when Carolyn and Robbin worked on the real lace. I’ve been taking this project one bite at a time for over a year (remember the old joke about how to eat an elephant? One bite at a time…) and right now there just isn’t another bite on the fork.

Don’t mistake me - there’s plenty left to do. More silk embroidery (more trefoils!) more GST embroidery, more lace (WAY more lace!). And there are more things to figure out - how to manage the gold work, how to marshall the legions who’d like to sew on sequins, and don’t even mention the whole putting-it-together part (no, really, DON’T mention it!). And then when it’s finally done, there’ll be the creating an exhibit to go with it.

But right now, this week, no decisions or choices are in the offing. We’ve got an embroidery session starting on Friday, the first one with embroiderers AND lace makers working at the same time. That’ll be exciting. And hopefully some of them will bring some show & tell that I can then share with you. But right now…..

So, if you have any wonderments, anything you wish I’d explain, anything I explained so long ago you don’t remember where we’re coming from, anything at all, let me know.

To make up for assigning you the blog for the next couple of days, I’ll leave you with a picture. This is a detail of a gorgeous 17th century raised-work embroidery which belongs to Joanna Hill, a textile conservator and friend of Tricia’s. Joanna so kindly brought this embroidery to a couple of sessions last summer and let us all get really close to it and take lots of pictures. It’s the only real 17th century artifact I can actually post pictures of here. I love that the bird has a bug in its beak. Ewww.

Mark brought us 101 spangles. After all the time and effort he and others put in, it may seem like a very small pile of result. But there was great rejoicing.

Carolyn wound bobbins. Due to a greater demand for the lace kits than we’d anticipated and a longer delivery time on the gold & silver lace threads, she had to ration the remaining thread and carefully plan how many bobbins to wind. (Don’t worry, though, more thread is on the way.)

We measured and measured the embroidery pieces to determine how long the lace pieces should be. Carolyn decided to start with the pieces that will go along the shoulder wings.

Wendy and Carolyn strung the spangles onto the lace thread and then wound the thread onto the bobbins.

Carolyn made lace. It seemed to Wendy and me that the work went really fast. Every time we peeked, there was more to see. Carolyn thought it took a very long time. It came out to about an inch per hour.

Robbin’s here today making lace and Melanie Anne is embroidering. I’ll have those pictures Monday. I also owe you one more post from Tricia.

I was planning to address some of the questions in the recent comments, but Robbin has done an admirable and really thorough job. Thanks, Robbin. I was a little swamped, with opening and then a come-to-my-house holiday in the same weekend.

The bottom line on the session schedules is - we’re flexible. I am scheduling the lacers carefully to make sure that on each lacer’s first day one of our two mentors/moderators/detail people is able to come. Robbin and Carolyn have generously offered to help us all stay on the same page and keep the lace looking as much like one lacer made it as is possible. Other than knowing what your first day will be, we’re open to people coming in early, leaving early, skipping a day, coming later, what have you. If you have specific concerns, just let me know. If you’d like to come for only part of a weekend, let me know so I can try to get another lacer to work the pillow the other days. But really, not to worry. These weekends are supposed to be a special treat for you to devote uninterrupted time to work you love to do and enjoy a community of people working together to accomplish a major goal. Be easy.

Hey, we have another toy! I mean tool. But aren’t they the same, really? Rich has set up a forum for us. Look at the top right column for the link, and register and start a conversation. Thanks to Kar who asked for this opportunity, and thanks to Rich who jumped on the idea and made it happen. I wrote to him this afternoon, that if anyone had told me last year that by now I’d be blogging and have a forum and doing all these other techno-things I’m doing I simply wouldn’t have believed it. It’s good to learn new things.

I’m looking forward to Friday and Saturday, when Carolyn and Robbin will be setting things up for beginning the lace. I should have some handsome pictures, too. The hurdles are falling one by one.