Making miles and still smiling

Today is a cold, grey and grim day, even rain came this afternoon. So I decided not to go outside making miles by walking, but instead stay at home and make the miles with needle and thread, maybe even pass the finish line with the stab stitch.

And there I was, sitting in my conservatory, listening to the tick-tack of the raindrops falling on the glass roof, to the wind beating the windows, it felt much like camping in a translucent tent. To complete the picture, I choose my new cd with Liszt Cello Sonatas (present from Mr. B for my birthday recently) on Itunes and started to stab, stab, stab into the cloth. It was so lovely to sit & stab feeling warm and comfortable, the stab stitches going like they were running the marathon. Tea cup near at hand. Music singing in my ears. Forgot almost the time. And so I finished the double square, at last! Hooray! Looks quite nice, if I may say so.

The next job is to complete the design by drawing with the blue (washable) pencil and start quilting the ordinary stitch, one at a time in the beginning, after a while trying to get more stitches on the needle. It’s all about learning and improvement, that’s the idea of course.

Enough for today, of this. Cooking time!

Making miles... and learn to smile

Making miles, that is what you are supposed to be doing when learning the stabstitch. In the beginning it was like learning to swim or to skate. More falling than menaging, but after going on stubborn and strong, and also getting some good advice from my fellow stitchers - they told me so! - I now can say: Yes, I can! I am there.... I think.
It is starting to look nice and even the stitches are becoming more and more like little hyphens in the row.
It even feels like fun again, needle in, straight down, catching it under the cloth, turning, stabbing straight back, gripping it and see... there you are: stab stitch!

Making Miles makes me smile ;-)

This design is from the course: Hand Quilting, by Nanny de Haan, in The Stitch Cottage, The Hague.