Melitastitches4fun's Blog

The four center areas in Razzle Dazzle by Ann Strite-Kurz, Ribbon Borders are done. Nothing too difficult because she charted the blackwork. Except for the side trips on the sides, it never felt intuitive. I guess that’s something!

Ready for the next area. Or am I? The colorway isn’t popping for me. What is a stitcher to do!?!

I had recently found 2 pairs of 21″ bars in the basement. Thinking I might switch to another colorway and that I could shop for it at the last EGA Stitch-in at Fireside, I calculated how many cards of Elegance (a silk pearl #8) I would need in place of 2 balls of DMC Pearl cotton #8 (since Fireside doesn’t carry it). It turned out to be 9 cards but I thought it might be brighter and I wanted as much pop as I could get (so, worth the extra cost). Fireside’s website had indicated they didn’t have any colored 18 count canvas left. So, I didn’t think I’d be shopping for a new colorway and didn’t bring the instructions. However, when I arrived, they did have the aquamarine canvas that I wanted. So, I found Watercolours 068 Mediterranean that looked great with the canvas. There was a fantastic color available in Elegance E880 Teal and I found 2 colors of Kreinik #8 Braid (033 and 044). I couldn’t remember what other threads I needed except for Petite Very Velvet. More about that next time.

It was much easier stitching this the second time around. It took 10 days to get this done and I worked on 2 other projects to break up working on all those Smyrnas! I still needed to look at the blackwork diagram frequently. I’m very happy with this one. And I will continue with both colorways for now.