So I finally finished the purple temari.  I’ve stitched designs that took longer but somehow this one seemed to never end.  Now I am stuck on what to do next.  Part of the problem is that most of the temari ideas I have to pursue right now involve multipoles.  After the last one I am not sure I want another that might linger on in the same way.

Another part of the problem is that my brain is being hijacked by website redesign.  My temarimath.info site is long overdue for a reworking.  Both the design and the functionality need work.  I’ve got some ideas that I think are really good and exciting but they require me to learn a little new technology and dig back into web design topics again.  (I won’t bore you with the details… yet.)  I’ve get two new books on the way to help me out.

So I’m torn.  What to stitch?  I can’t just not stitch!  I have too much time that I am sitting around for various reasons and I need something in my hands, something I can take with me to piano lessons and drum lessons and other little places I end up waiting around.

What to do?  Go shopping!!  I am sure the right fibers will inspire me to stitch some massive complex multipole design that could take weeks and weeks, right?  I have a gift certificate for my LNS that happens to carry the full line of Vineyard Silks.  I’ve been wanting to try them so…. I’ll be out this afternoon shopping for inspiration.  Wish me luck.

Recently I’ve been more motivated to work on my cross stitch project than any new temari projects.  I can blame it all on Jane who’s been blogging about a beautiful project that she is finishing up over at http://worldembroideries.blogspot.com/.

But as always, I think of temari when I am stitching.  (Probably because I have temari within view just about anywhere I sit to stitch at home.) This project has an interesting feature:  the main design is stitched over two threads of linen with two strands of floss, but the words are stitched over 1 thread of linen with on strand of floss giving a smoother outline and more detail.  See:

Notice how some of the edges of the dragon look jagged whereas the edges of the word appear smooth

It strikes me that this idea of detail has a counterpart in temari when we take a design on a marking with large areas and transfer it to a design with more and smaller areas.  We get more detail in the same space.  Look at this progression from a C6 to a 32.  See how the design becomes more and more detailed as the markings create more and smaller stitching sections.

C6 with 4 large areas

C10 with 12 smaller areas

32 with even smaller areas

However, that idea does not quite allow for the more detailed area to coexist on the same temari with the less detailed one like it does on the cross stitched piece. Perhaps a better temari analogy would be to change the thread size and the design area. That is, mark a multipole based on a C10 marking. Stitch a section of the design using #5 perle or a similar large fiber using the C10 markings. Stitch other sections of the design using the multipole markings using a much smaller thread, like a #12 perle.

While I have explored using different size fibers on the same temari before I have not really looked at it in this way.  Hmmmm. That’s a new design challenge to explore!  It will have to wait a bit though.  The little dragon above is only one out of three and they are calling to me more than the temari is right now.

Going off on a sidetrack here…

One of the jobs in the house that my kids help with is making dinner.  They do small preparation jobs here and there as they learn to cook.  Usually they are the ones who make the salads.  I’ve been trying to get them to make more interesting salads for some time now.  Sometimes they just don’t quite understand that a bowl of iceberg lettuce really doesn’t count as a salad.

So, I work slowly on them, trying to buy more interesting veggies to include.  Tonight it was not a particularly exciting salad… but it was quite pretty.  Iceberg lettuce, green peppers and carrot strips.  It made for a nice collection of colors that made me think of temari:  very pale green, nice strong medium green and accents of a strong orange.

Perhaps I have been trying to inspire them in the wrong way.  Perhaps instead of trying to inspire them with their sense of taste, I should be trying to inspire them with their sense of color.

If this keeps up, maybe there will be a salad temari coming your way soon.

Oh, dear pin,
so long,
so slender
so straight.
You guide me when I need guidance.

Oh, dear pin,
so strong,
so secure,
so bright.
You hold the things I need held.

Oh, dear pin,
so reliable,
so sharp,
so plentiful.
You draw my eyes to what needs to be seen.

Oh, dear pin,
what would I be without you?

I felt a need to make up for spending so much time complaining about pins so I asked my daughter to create a poem for me.  Enjoy!  :-)

Yesterday was a temari research day.  I had several temari questions running through my head that I just needed to get some anwers for.  Here are the questions:

1. How unique are the shapes I created in the negative space on my new temari?  They do not feel that familiar.
2. What could I do as a background layer to make them more interesting?
3. What about C8 multipoles?
4. There’s a temari in the latest Japanese book (Thimbles and Flowery Temari ISBN 978-4-8377-0308-2) that uses net stitching and an overlayer to create beautiful structures.  Have I seen that somewhere before?  Are there clearer directions for net stitching somewhere?

The answers to all of these lie in my collection of temari books.  So I spent part of the afternoon thumbing through the books to see what I could find.  Now, I don’t have all of the published books so my answers are not complete, but I do have enough books that I can get a good feel for what is commonly published.

Here’s what I found out:

1. I found very few designs (maybe 2?) that use the three way shape like I have in my negative space and none of them used that shape as the focus of the design.  It was more of an afterthought that appeared as a result of the other stitching.  There were no designs that used the interlocking shapes that I did although one did use them interwoven.  It is nice to know that something I am working hard to create is at least a little unique.
2. I didn’t see anything stellar to use as a background layer but I did see examples that confirmed the ideas that I already had about it.
3. C8 multipoles are more common than I first thought.  They are still not really common but there were probably about 15 designs in all.  I expected about 5.  They are not utilized in the same way that C10 multis are so they are easy to miss.  Most common are basketweave and grid type designs to give a background for small kiku or rose garden designs done on the 6 squares or 8 triangles.  I suppose you could argue that those are not quite multis since you can do the design without placing all of the multi support lines.  Also, there is another class of C8 multis that are created by subdividing the squares into smaller squares leaving small triangles at the 6-way intersections… and no hexagons.  This topic will definitely need more investigation and further blog entries.
4. I saw very few examples of net stitching in any of the books so it would seem to be a fairly specialized technique.  That is what I suspected.  However, the technique in the new book of using the net stitching as a grid for further layers has definite possibilities.  I need to try one and play with it a bit.  I did not notice that style in any of the other books but I do think I have seen it somewhere before.

As a bonus, I also found out that there are a ton of cool designs in the books that I really have not fully explored.  So inspiring!  I am at the point now that I can decipher most of them but there are still things to be learned about stitching them on the ball.  Sometimes I get so wrapped up in the designs swirling around in my head that I don’t think to go stitch something that already has instructions.  I think I will finish up the current design idea that I am in the middle of and go back to the books for awhile.  That should mean less ripping out too!