Goldwork returns

Finally, after a week of heavy cold, complete with hacking cough that made it practically impossible to stitch without stabbing myself, and sore throat that demanded much self pity and hot tea and moaning, I am well again and stitching up a storm playing catchup.

I had recently transferred one of my own drawings to green linen (a companion pair to another two I did a while back) and I'm stitching the results, designing as I go.  That's the other thing about designing rather than following instructions: you can't do it indefinitely. I need to stop and set it aside and come back later to see again what is to happen next, to avoid having a kind of by-the-book piece of work.

Nothing wrong with following instructions, though I find it really hard to do (!) but my natural bent is to design, make as I go, paint gold with the needle.  And taking breaks is part of the work. Like resting between sets.

This, up to now, is a combo of gold cord, iridescent narrow ribbon and fine gold flat thread whose name I do not know, laid down two threads at a time and couched with very fine variegated sewing thread. 

It flows and that's one reason to take breaks: to see how it should flow, and avoid weird jerkiness.  The other thing to avoid is great neatness, that sort of disciplined orderliness and perfection-being-the-enemy-of-the-good, that destroys the movement within the piece.  If a static effect is wanted, that's fine.  But that's rarely the case for my work.

The outer edges are a mixture of the fine gold cord and a the flat shiny ribbony stuff that looks like beads when you couch it, an optical illusion I like a lot.  I did a pic of the whole and of a detail.  Light not  very good, and it's too cold to take my camera outdoors, so bear with me.

Anyway, that's where we are right now. And at some point I may need help with a title for this piece.