Embroidery

So, I know I’ve been gone for a couple months.  I’m sorry about that.  My first trimester was terribly hard on me; it felt like I was hung over for four months. Yes, four.  My morning sickness lasted all day and didn’t abate until well into the fourth month, after my doctor prescribed me some of the anti-nausea medicine they give cancer patients to ease the side effects of chemo. Incidentally, that stuff works. Really well.

Instead of wasting an entry listing what’s happened to me in the interim, I’m making the executive decision to just continue on as if I’d never stopped.  One of the reasons I procrastinate about picking something (blogging, corresponding, journalling) back up after I’ve paused for a bit is that I feel overwhelmed by what I should have written, and obligated to write about all that stuff before I write about new stuff.  So I’m giving myself permission to skip the old stuff.

Something I’ve been doing a lot of since I’ve gotten pregnant is embroider.  It’s too warm down here for most of the year to knit, but I don’t have the energy to do more strenuous things, either.

This is the favor I embroidered for my Champion, Richard of Essex.  The crow is done in klosterstitch (thanks, Racaire!) and the outline and keys are in stem stitch. Seeing as how he’ll be wearing it whilst fencing, I wanted something that could stand up to a bit of hard wear and washing, so I went with cotton pearl thread on a linen ground. Easy as pie.

I had embroidered that little flower motif some time back, as a little experiment, but I didn’t know what to do with it.  Racaire had made a lovely needle roll or two and I was inspired to make my own. The braid around the edge was a pain in the butt, but a pretty way to finish it.

This is a cup cover I made for myself. It’s based on a Byzantine brooch design that I happened to like.  I embroidered the motif and then appliqued it to a hemmed square of linen.  It’s still awaiting the beads at the corners to prevent it from blowing away, but I’ll get to that after we move.

Edmund said he wanted blue and green for his cup cover.  Personally, I’m not enamored of how this is coming out, but he seems to like it, so that’s fine.  The design is based on a brooch from the Andel period. The outer ring will be the same medium blue as the outer-most cross segment. It, too, will be appliqued onto a square of linen.  I’m doing it that way so the back of the embroidery isn’t visible, but I don’t know. It may just be one more fussy step that doesn’t really matter.  The last ones I did had the embroidery showing on the back and they looked fine.