Fiddling with felt

... because it felt good at the time?

actually it did - there is something strangely satisfying about sitting and stitching whatever comes to mind/falls out of the needle onto a bit of fabric/felt/etc ...

Tuesday afternoon I had a couple more ideas for things to do with blanket stitch and herringbone stitch (the first 2 week's stitches for the TAST challenge) so I dug out a bit of white felt and some black thread (I was tempted to do it the other way but decided that one black background to try and take good photos of is enough ;-) ... and this is what I came up with that evening:



The star thingy at the top is 2 circles of blanket stitch, with some detatched chain being worked around that (more about that in a later post - that is the stitch we are doing this week).

I also did this weird thingy in blanket stitch:



I am not sure what it is - it just "fell out of the needle" ... but I quite like it.
Also I did the funny pointy herringbone thingy at the bottom right.

But neither of those were what I had the ideas for - the first 2 things I stitched on the block were a blanket stitch fish skeleton (a blanket stitch herring bone?! ;-) and the tail of what is going to be a herringbone snake.

Here is a close up of the fish:



I made the photo lighter so that the stitching shows up better (all these photos should come up as clickable links too - so you can click on them and see the full size picture if you want a closer look at anything ;-)
The fish is done with 2 rows of blanket stitch back to back ... and his mouth and tail are - yes - more detatched chain (you know me - why just do one thing at a time if I can do several things at once? :-)

Here is the snake's tail:



again - I made the photo lighter so the stitching shows up better.
This is worked in herringbone stitch, and in just one row, not 2 rows over the top of each other (which would look almost the same) - instead of bringing the needle up next to where it went in, I came up one "cross" further along, leaving a gap that is then filled in whith the next stitch on that side ... if that makes any sense.
I worked this bit of stitching free hand with no lines marked (and I started in about the middle, worked to the tail and then went back to where I had started off and worked back in the other direction) ... then I realised that I was going to have to plan where the snake was going to be so that it fitted in around the other stuff on the block, and so I can leave a gap where the head end of the snake crosses over the tail end - so I stitched the blue dotted line to use as a guide.
(that is not visible on this detailed photo but it is on the first photo, and on the next one ;-)

hmmmm - that little bit of detatched chain poking into the bottom right hand corner of the photo has given me an idea - one of those would make a really good tounge for the snake too!

Tonight last night (it is after midnight so anything before then is technically yesterday, but I am thinking of it as "tonight" because I have not been to bed yet) I added some more bits while watching something on TV:



There is now another blanket stitch circle thingy next to the other one (inside what is going to be the loop of the snake, when I finish the snake) and a herringbone star ... that is a bit wonky on one side (the side I started on - with some stitches, such as blanket and herringbone, I tend to have to fiddle to get them right when I first start ... probably because I don't do them every day, and I probably never work the stitch the same way twice in a row either;-)
I also did an "ear" of grain using this weeks stitch (detatched chain) but I will post more about that later (sometime in the next few days).

... and, while I was putting those photos onto the computer, I just had another idea and did this:



not the top bit (that is the upside down top of the ear of grain) - the blanket stitch bit at the bottom of the photo - ?half of a worm? ... or it could be a grub/caterpillar/whatever ... I could use the idea for any of those things, and maybe also for a body for an insect too (like a bee or moth or something else with a segmented body). I will probably finish this and make it a worm, or maybe turn it into a centipede or millipede? - I left it half done for 2 reasons - 1: I had done enough to take a photo of and I want to finish doing this and go to bed before it starts to get light! and 2: by leaving it half done so there is a bit where only one side is done, it shows how I have worked the 2 rows of blanket stitch facing each other (as opposed to the fish, where they are back to back).

That last photo is a bit blurry too (the other one I took was even worse) ... I have noticed that close up photos don't work too well in bad light (the flash washes out the whole photo, or if you don't use the flash the shutter speed is a bit too slow)

Anyway ... the clock on the bottom of the computer screen is just about to tick over to 4am ... oops ... I wasn't going to stay up quite this late ... sigh ...

(it's a good thing I am still on holidays from work ;-)

goodnight