Garden Update

underatopazsky

Jun 19

I have to confess that I've not actually done anything with June's Move It On Project yet. I know that it's all to do with my reluctance to attempt the drawn threads, but I've also had a lot of other projects claiming my time so far this month. Chief among them has been my stumpwork garden. Last seen, I'd got this far:

The next vegetables to be added were the cauliflowers and this is where the larger scale of my second garden proved problematic. The cauliflower leaves are created with cast-on stitch and in the original, the caulis were small enough that the width of the cast-on stitch leaves were in proportion to the French knot centres. However, in spite of working the cast on stitch in the heaviest perle I had, the leaves for these look much less luxuriant and if anything, a bit mean. I'm also not happy with the very white looking thread I used for the French knots, so I've not stitched any more of the three I had planned to do while I work out if I can be bothered to take out those knots and re-stitch the centre again!

While I decide whether to unpick or not, I started the rather more straightforward carrots. These consist of a loose double wrapped French knot and then several loops of green thread worked over a cordonnet stick, as shown here when I was working them last year.

The loops are caught at the back with a couple of little stitches every two or three loops and then snipped to form the ferny foliage.

It's easier to make all the loops first and then snip them but I got impatient and snipped my first row. So now I'm having to try and stitch the second row of loops while trying not to catch the loose ends from the first row...

I've also discovered, thanks to my ladies at In The Stitch Zone that if you run the needle through the strands that make up each thread, it fuzzes up beautifully and looks even more like carrot tops. But I am resisting doing that until they are all stitched!

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