Scarlet Quince Ramblings

My cat, Lucky, has diabetes. (Yes, this is the cat who also has a heart murmur, hyper cardiomyopathy, inflammatory bowel disease, and asthma.) We found this out in May and we’re still trying to get the insulin dose right. If I take him to the vet to have his glucose levels checked, stress causes his blood sugar to go way, way up, so I’m testing him at home with a little glucometer. The test strips come in a little vial with an attached lid that snaps tight shut. It is PERFECT (once empty) for keeping needles in. Not only is it just the right size, these vials have a dessicant built into the lining, so they should keep rust down. If you know someone who has diabetes (and from what I read you probably do, whether you realize it or not) ask them to save you a vial. (The vials for human test strips are the same — we started with a human glucometer but they don’t work right for cats.)

I don’t make her go outside, she wants to. Cats make good thermometers. This is what 95 looks like.

Although you can’t tell from this picture, Topsy is on the “catio”: a little useless porch that is enclosed top and sides with chicken wire to keep the cats safe (and to keep them from wandering off, since Jemima doesn’t come when called).

I’m working on Blue Peacock – Jesse Arms Botke, and in most places the colors are mixed to very mixed. Since I’m working on 22 count aida, my size 24 needles are a little too big, and that’s what I have the most of. I bought a new packet of 26s when I started this, and have several times raided the various places I put needles, even coming up with an old packet of 28s. I don’t know why I have them because I don’t like them much — besides not having a very smooth finish, they bend easily and I have somehow broken the eye in a couple of them. So to make a long story short, I have been chronically short of needles on this project, partly because I sometimes have 2 or 3 needles going with the same color in different spots. I went to Michael’s recently to get more needles and they were out of 26s, of course. The JoAnn that was near us has moved, and while they didn’t move to Timbuktoo, they’re probably 3 times as far away as they used to be. It’s probably only a couple of miles further (there’s an algebra problem for you) but the psychological distance is much greater.

I’ve been thinking about getting some needles in bulk but the only sources I knew of had packages of 1000 needles and I wasn’t quite ready for that. But earlier this week I settled down to solve the problem of needles and I found a place that has bulk needles in packages of 25 or 50. It’s Anita’s Little Stitches. She has John James and Bohin needles. I’d never heard of Bohin (they’re French) but she says that they’re the best needles on the market so I ordered 50 of those. I also wanted to try Thread Heaven so I added that. This didn’t get me to the minimum order of $15 so after wasting time admiring the scissors I included a needle minder, which I’ve never tried either. When she emailed me that my order would ship the next day, I couldn’t help replying to say how excited I was! Then I thought, how pathetic to be excited about needles, but I’m sure she understands.

Here’s my loot.

I’ll tell you more about the needles after I have more experience with them. I’ve only used one as yet and now I don’t know which one it is. The most interesting thing so far about having lots of needles is the effect it has had on my stitching. I no longer hesitate before starting a new color. I don’t spend time checking whether I may get to a stitch with this color where I will need to put in stitches of another color above it before I can do that stitch. When you’re short of needles, you spend a lot of time trying not to run out. I was running out a lot and robbing needles from parked threads, which obviates part of the point of parking (not having to rethread needles). It makes my stitching, even in the confetti areas, much faster and much more fun.

I like the needle minder too. I usually weave the needles I’m not using into the edge of my fabric but it was getting pretty dilapidated. I then pinned a scrap of extra fabric to the edge and put my spare needles into it. But the needle minder is really fast to use. (It’s in two pieces, with a magnet glued to the pretty front and a separate magnet. You put the front on the front of the fabric and the loose magnet on the back and that holds it tight to the fabric.) You just drop your needles on it and they stay put even when you flip the frame over. I don’t think it will hold 50 needles but when you have one to a few needles not in use it works really well.

I haven’t tried the Thread Heaven yet. It’s gummier than I expected but I’ll let you know what I think of it too.

One night recently, MRA went out to see if the wild cats had food (we leave food for the feral cats in the garage, and have 3 or 4 regulars), and there was a very small skunk eating the cat food! Very cute.

A couple of nights later, the little skunk was back, and this time he had a friend with him.

I was nervous taking this picture because you never know what might set a skunk off, but it didn’t faze them. Sandy, one of the not-very wild cats, was hanging around, and he didn’t seem to mind the skunks and they didn’t mind him. Fortunately, the skunks have not continued to multiply.

I’ve been a believer for many years in continuous process improvement, which basically means that when a problem occurs, you look for the root cause and do something about it so that the same problem doesn’t occur again. So for example, if someone returns a pattern because they thought they were buying an art print, I look at how I can make it clearer what is being sold. The thing about feedback is that you have to understand it before you can act on it.

Recently, I’ve heard from a couple of people in Canada that their orders took much longer to arrive than they had expected. One told me, when her order finally showed up, that the package had been cut open, then taped back shut (presumably in Customs). When the second person received her order, I asked if it looked like it had been opened, and she said the flap of the envelope had been taped, so that one was opened too. I’ve been puzzling over this. Why would Customs need to open the envelope? The customs form says clearly that the contents are cross stitch charts and the value. What else would they need to know? Were they curious? It didn’t make sense. The problem was that shipments were being delayed because Customs was opening them — but why?

Then I had a request from a regular customer in the UK, where cross stitch charts are supposed to be duty-free, to add “printed matter” to the customs form. He told me they are having their shipments held up in Customs, they have to pay the duty, and then apply to get the duty refunded. (I’m not sure why it has to be so circuitous, but maybe British Customs doesn’t open the packages.) I suddenly realized — if “cross stitch chart” doesn’t automatically tell you that it’s “printed matter”, you must not know what a cross stitch chart is. Canadian Customs must be opening the packages to find out what’s in them. At least this is the first explanation that makes any sense.

There is already a numeric code on the customs form which indicates the content is printed booklets, and this code is part of a supposedly internationally-agreed upon system. I don’t know why that isn’t enough, but apparently it isn’t.

So I’ve changed the wording on the customs form to “cross stitch booklets (printed matter)”. I hope this will help international orders go through faster. I don’t know how Customs works (and I’m sure it’s different in every country) but I can imagine that if they can determine whether a package is dutiable or not by looking at the customs form, it goes through quickly, and other things go into a pile for some backlogged person to open.

There are two online needlework shows coming up in the next month — both retail.

First is the Needle Show Retail, July 15-18 (Thursday through Sunday).

Following that is the Counted Wishes Cross Stitch Festival, August 1-7 (Sunday through Saturday).

Scarlet Quince will be featured in both shows and we will be offering different show specials, so be sure to visit both shows for the details. These are retail shows which means everyone can shop the shows, so don’t miss them!

OK, there’s only one snake, but it’s a big one. [Full disclosure: I consider any snake over 6 inches long to be a big snake.]

I first saw this snake crawling into the jasmine in the back yard. I only saw its tail but there was plenty of that. After some hunting around online I decided it was a blotched water snake. They eat fish. So I looked out at the pond and THERE IT WAS right by the pond. Creepy.

I saw it go into the water a couple of times and the first thing it does is stick its head under water, I guess to see who else is there.

Then it takes its head out, gets situated, and just dives in. I think most of our fish are too big for this snake to eat, but probably not all. I don’t know how long it has been around or if any of the fish are missing. I got the skimmer and bothered it around the pond a lot but I couldn’t make it get out. I didn’t see it attack a fish and they didn’t seem overly concerned but if there is such a thing as smart fish, they don’t live here.

The snake mostly just hangs out under water. This is blurry but he’s just lying in a water lily pot.

He comes up for air about once a minute. How does a snake tread water?

That was Monday, and I haven’t seen him since. I hope he decided our pond wasn’t as peaceful as he thought it would be, or that there wasn’t anything to eat, and moved on. Of course there are a million places a snake could hide in our back yard and it worries me not knowing where he is. It’s not a poisonous snake but it will strike if it feels cornered and I don’t know how paranoid they are. As a friend said, it doesn’t matter if it’s poisonous — if it attacked me I would drop dead on the spot.

My next project is Blue Peacock – Jesse Arms Botke. I can’t tell you how nice it is to be stitching with colored floss again! This is my progress after about 10 weeks of stitching (maybe about 70 hours):

I’m just getting into the peacock feathers, at the boundary of pages 2 and 3. This piece is very confettifried so I’m doing much more parking than ever before. Which is good in a way because I have learned some things that are not required, but desirable to do if you’re parking as a way of life. I’ll be sharing those tips with you after I have a chance to collect my thoughts on the subject.

I had several pieces that I was considering when I made my panic trip to Hobby Lobby to get fabric. I showed them all to MRA and he was strongly in favor of this one. After I had worked on it for a couple of days, he asked if he could have it for his office when it’s finished. (This is the most interest he has ever shown in any of my needlework.) I said, “Sure, if you haven’t retired by then.”

I’m stitching on 22-count aida to keep it a little smaller. That has also been interesting. Size 24 needles are too big, so I’m using 26s which I don’t usually like since they’re harder to thread. The stitches are so dense that it really is a very bad idea to leave any holes, which is part of the reason for all the parking. Even if you don’t skip stitches, it’s tricky to make stitches without splitting the thread in an adjacent stitch. This becomes a major problem if you need to rip anything out. (My mistakes have been due, not to the parking, but to putting floss back onto the wrong bobbin.) The other thing is that I’ve noticed that one or two threads in the fabric are broken. I have a tendency to stick needles I’m not using at the moment into the fabric wherever, and in the past this hasn’t been a problem, but this fabric has just 2 fairly fine threads each way, and I think it can’t take even minor abuse. So now I’m being careful to put my needles outside the area to be stitched, and through holes, not into threads.

Even though the stitching is going very, very slowly, I’m thrilled with the way it looks so far.

I finished this February 25. Very rude (or lazy) not to post a picture sooner.

It’s a little ripply in the picture because taking the picture against a wall didn’t work, so I had to have someone hold it.

I plan to finish it as a banner and here are my notions (which I also bought quite a long time ago):

There’s heavyweight non-woven interfacing, which the woman at JoAnn swore was fusible. Doesn’t look like it, but we’ll see. I don’t think I want to fuse it to the stitching — maybe just between and around the squares. I’m also not sure how I will make sure the squares are really square before I do the fusing. Then there’s ticking for the back and to make a frame. The lines will be vertical on the top and bottom and horizontal on the sides. This ticking has a cream background, rather than white. They had red and white, but the cross stitching doesn’t completely cover the fabric which makes it look a little dingy, so I hope that cream will make the stitching seem brighter. Also, if I recall, the red and white was that worst of all possible worlds, dry-clean only 100% cotton. And apparently I plan to make a border of bias tape. Forgot about that.

I’m not sure how I will make it hang flat. I don’t think the interfacing will make it heavy enough. There will be a pocket on the back at the top for a curtain rod, and depending on what kind of rod I get I might put another one at the bottom. Or maybe I’ll use curtain weights. I think I have some around somewhere, that I got for curtains that, when it came to actually sewing the weights on, suddenly seemed to hang remarkably straight.

I’ll be winging it, for sure. Hopefully I will feel motivated to drag out the sewing machine soon and see what happens. If anyone has done this, or anything like this, feel free to jump right in if you know good ways (or bad ways) to proceed.

My horse crippler cactus is in bloom!

I find it so rewarding to have a cactus bloom. Mine only bloom once a year, if that, and the flowers are so beautiful.

Look at the shading, and the fringed petals. What can the purpose of the fringe be? I have no idea.

The fishhook cactus, on the other hand, keeps getting bigger but has never bloomed. It’s really a magnet for oak leaves. Later I’ll take some tweezers and try to get the leaves out of it. It looks drab today but it’s really striking after a rain — the spines turn bright red.

Nor has the prickly pear, although it gets several new pads every year. This is a blind prickly pear. It appears that there are no prickles on the older pads. Appears.

This is a new pad just getting started. The new pads are very cute, I think, with their little curly deals. I guess those are leaves, since the pads themselves are technically stems.

Think how excited I’ll be when these two bloom after years of keeping me waiting!