More Knotgarden

It's been a busy week and I don't seem to have gotten much done on Knotgarden at all...ack! I have however finished off the third gate and am currently working on the flowers/greenery at either end. Confetti stitching. How do I love thee. NOT!

And no, your eyes are not deceiving you - I have finally started filling in some of the specialty stitches, starting with some of the Algerian eyelets in the border. The pattern calls for using just a single thread but I didn't care for how that looked, so two threads it is. The eyelets are fairly simple to make as long as you can manage to get them started properly AND keep the tension even throughout since you want to open a small hole in the middle (hence, an eyelet!). I just did a few down the one side so far, but they're fairly quick to bang out. Hopefully the rest of the specialty stitches will go that smoothly.

You may recall in previous posts that I debated for a long time whether to spring for the hand dyed silks for this project or just substitute DMC. I ended up going with using the Caron Waterlilies conversion rather than Thread Gatherer mostly because they were just easier to get. I've also used Waterlilies more in the past and there was a better chance that I'd be able to use any leftovers since that's what Mirabilia uses. While hand dyed silk fibers ARE gorgeous and bright and have their own luminescence, I will say that if you wanted to use DMC, the final product would still be gorgeous.

I pulled out the baggie of beads for Knotgarden as well. Specifically I wanted the Kreinik so I could start adding that to the gate. I'd forgotten how many beads are in here! A lot of those are the Treasures, so it's not like they're all the tiny seed beads that need to go on. As always, I won't start beading until all the stitching and specialty stitches are in.

And as always, when one project is nearing an end, I'm thinking about the next project. It's been 2+ years since I decided to do a couple of the Chatelaine garden mandalas, and I still think I got it right with three I picked to do (Knotgarden, Watergarden, Alhambra Garden). I still love all three designs, to the point where no other Chatelaine is going to line jump. I appreciate that I went with projects with no over-1 stitching and had reasonably affordable materials lists. Every time I look at the patterns...I'm just so in love with them still. Good call, if I do say so myself!

I have decided that I rather like some of the architectual Chatelaines mandalas and will probably do some of those after I've worked on these Gardens. But that's what - 4 years before I will finish the next two? No rush to decide!

I am very much looking forward to getting Watergarden started. I have the DMC floss for it, as I got a piece of blue fabric in trade a while ago and wanted to do a floss drop. Unfortunately, I don't think I'll end up using that fabric - the blues of the center don't pop enough off it, and I need to get a piece of antique white instead. Rather than piece together all the beads/specialty threads like I've done with Knotgarden, I'm going to go ahead and order the kit from European Cross Stitch. That should make my life a little easier!

I'm debating a little bit whether or not I'll just work on Watergarden until it's done or get started on Alhambra and work on both at one time...what's another BAP, right? I'm at the point where Knotgarden HAS gotten a little repetitive, but at least it's a couple of weeks out from being completed.